Trash Animals: How We Live with Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species by Kelsi Nagy and David Johnson II (review)

One of my first interactions with a so-called trash species was on an ice fishing trip when I was ten. As those who have been ice fishing can attest, staring at a hole in the ice is a tedium broken only by the sharp jerk of the fishing rod and the anticipation of the fish on the other end; unless that fish turns out to be a carp. The carp we pulled out of the ice that day sent my uncle into a tirade about the need to remove this garbage from our lakes. Instead of throwing the fish back which, as a naïve ten-year-old, I thought was what you did with fish you weren’t going to eat, he instructed my cousin and me to bury the fish in the snow. Growing up I witnessed the same type of behavior focused at coyotes, prairie dogs, and blackbirds, but never thought to examine why we behaved the way we did.

Trash Animals: How We Live with Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species, edited by Kelsi Nagy, and David Johnson II, seeks to encourage readers to forget cultural stereotypes about certain animals classified as trash and to look at them with fresh eyes and see that their stories are much more complex than our forefathers and mothers would have us believe. To do this, the authors pull together 15 essays from a diverse array of authors and writing styles, each dealing with a different animal that has been characterized as ‘trash.’ These essays serve as catalysts for debate; forcing us to ask why we think the way we think, where our opinions about animals come from, and why they may be misinformed. By providing a foundation for an intelligent discussion about trash animals and our relationship with them, these essays provide a map to new enlightenment and, hopefully, a new relationship with some of the world’s more reviled creatures.

Divided into five main parts, the book’s primary theme is that there is conflict between humans and animals, but that through understanding ourselves and how animals naturally behave, we may be able to mitigate these conflicts or at least have a more informed appreciation of them and their right to exist, not simply for the utilitarian use by humans, but for their own sake. In Part I, “The Symbolic Trash Animal,” the authors approach the topic of trash animals from the point of view of human culture and how we have been conditioned to view certain animals. The animals addressed in this section are hated more for what we think they represent rather than the harm that they actually cause us. The animals discussed include the ring-billed gull; maligned inhabitant of Toronto trash dumps and symbol of an unsustainable consumer lifestyle that generates vast amounts of waste. The wolf, a symbol of greed, lust, devastation, and our struggle to achieve our manifest destiny and control the environment; and the diamondback rattlesnake and Mormon cricket, both of which carry with them the baggage of biblical symbology including sin, temptation, and apocalypse.

While Part I focuses primarily on how we view animals, all five parts approach human-animal conflict from the point of view of animal behavior and how it can conflict with the ordering of our world. In Chapter 7, for example, Michael Branch relates his experience of a packrat invasion in his home. While his neighbor tries to convince him to eradicate the pests via traps and poison, Branch seeks to learn more about the animal and finds that by simply relocating his firewood pile (which is serving as housing for the rats) he is able to take advantage of their behavior and repel the invasion without bloodshed.

While many of the...