The Hopes of Snakes: And Other Tales from the Urban Landscape

Science News, Sept 3, 2005

THE HOPES OF SNAKES: And Other Tales from the Urban Landscape

LISA COUTURIER

This collection of essays follows Couturier through a lifetime of her communion with nature in, of all places, Manhattan and the suburbs of Washington D.C. Her lyrical prose recounts her varied encounters with animal life, from unwillingly sharing an apartment with cockroaches to observing pigeons and mice on, in, and around her homes to marveling at peregrine falcons living not on the rocky faces of cliffs but along the glass faces of skyscrapers. Manhattan had no shortage of wildlife, Couturier writes, but even more abounded at her home along the Potomac River outside Washington, D.C., and in the converted farmlands and fields of suburban Maryland and Virginia. She ponders the plight of irrationally detested crows roosting in shopping center parking lots and of other creatures, such as geese, foxes, and snakes, struggling to survive under human influence. These poetic tales reveal nature's indelible thumbprint on urban environments and on the author's personal life. Beacon Press, 2005, 160 p., hardcover, $23.00.