Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys Into the Time Before Bones

The author of Broadsides from the Other Orders delivers a glorious celebration of the Earth's wee creatures, lowly invertebrates like sea slugs, corals, glowworms and millipedes that we rarely encounter or else take for granted. Some of these animals have obvious practical utility--earthworms convert vegetable debris into soil; sponges provide hospitable housing for worms, fishes and shrimp across the world's oceans. But Hubbell also champions creatures that seemingly have no immediate benefit to humankind, like sea cucumbers, barnacles and the elusive Aphrodite or sea mouse, an iridescent furry worm that lives in the ocean deeps, where, scientists say, there may be as many as 10 million species awaiting discovery. Such animals may play vital, as yet unrecognized roles in complex ecosystems. Engagingly illustrated with sensitive line drawings by Liddy Hubbell, these deceptively easygoing essays ripple with a fierce commitment to understanding and preserving all of creation. Hubbell's quarry is always of interest, and often curious indeed: the pill bug eats its own dung during extremely hostile conditions, recycling nutrition and moisture; sea mice ""send their gut out for dinner,"" everting their muscular pharynx in search of food; modern horseshoe crabs are ""living fossils,"" close cousins to 500-million-year-old trilobites. Hubbell gets around in these essays, moving from a Guatemalan rain forest to Delaware's barrier island. On a personal level, her delightful book charts her trajectory from a farm in Missouri's Ozarks to a house on the Maine coast, a move that triggers reflections on learning to accept change and to grow old gracefully--which involves, she comes to understand, a talent for letting go. Author tour. (Apr.)