The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature
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The true tale of an edenic Rocky Mountain town and what transpired when a predatory species returned to its ancestral home. Publishers Weekly In 1991, in Idaho Springs, Colo., a small town not far from Boulder, a young jogger was killed and partially eaten by a mountain lion. Although people were horrified, biologist Michael Sanders and naturalist Jim Halfpenny were not surprised. Since 1988 they had been studying the mountain lions that were invading backyards in the Boulder area in increasing numbers and had concluded that, contrary to the accepted wisdom that these lions don't attack people, the big cats were indeed stalking humans in search of a good meal. In an engrossing book that reads like a true crime thriller, Baron, a science and environmental writer, follows the advance of mountain lions around Boulder as if they were serial killers, building tension as he leads up to the killing. There were plenty of warnings. Numerous homeowners saw lions in their yards, dogs were maimed or eaten and a girl was attacked but survived. Sanders and Halfpenny tried to convince the wildlife-loving Boulderites that a tragedy was about to occur, but people believed they could coexist peacefully with the lions, and the Colorado Division of Wildlife was also determined to leave the animals alone. Even after Scott Lancaster, the Idaho Springs jogger, was killed, area residents refused to endorse killing the big cats that moved into their neighborhoods. Baron is not in favor of killing unwanted lions, but in this timely book he warns that as people continue to displace wild animals from their habitats, they have to change the way they interact with them and be more realistic about romantic notions of wilderness. Illus. not seen by PW. Author tour. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Prologue: Death in the Ecotone5Pt. 1The Peaceable Kingdom1A Land without Carnivory152Return of the Native243Happy Times374City of Nature465Lion Search526The Day Shift63Pt. 2Borrowed Time7Sterkfontein Redux818Cats and Dogs989Trouble in the Canyon11510The Hunt12911Culture - Human and Animal150Pt. 3Plague12The Long Summer16913Final Run18814The Investigation21015Exegesis222Epilogue: The Myth of Wilderness231Postscript241Notes on Sources243Select Bibliography259Acknowledgments275
