Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

“If you play dead at that point, there’s a good chance you shortly won’t be playing.”

Mary Roach often uses wry humor when conveying serious information. In this case, she learns that if a bear does attack you, as opposed to using non-threatening postures to appease it, you should fight back to have any chance of survival.

“What if we accepted that risk? What if we chose to live not only with the occasional bear in the kitchen but with the likelihood that someone at some point will be killed by one of those bears? Planes are allowed to operate even though every now and then they crash and people die.”

Roach uses hypothetical questions—a common rhetorical technique in the book—to provoke deeper thought in her reader. Conflict bears and bears that repeatedly break into people’s houses are killed to reduce the likelihood of another violent encounter. Given that some people do not want to take steps toward making their homes more bear-resistant and that we accept risk in other parts of our lives, the author wonders why our tolerance toward animals is so low.

“Whatever you do in this life, stay away from an inebriated bull elephant in musth.”

Bull elephants are loners and usually the most dangerous. When they are in musth, they have raised testosterone, which makes them more aggressive. Elephants also seek out alcohol, and because they lack the enzyme to break down ethanol, they can become drunk easily. Just as with humans, the chance of aggression, violence, and accidents increases dramatically.