Crossing Paths: Uncommon Encounters with Animals in the Wild

There lies another world out there in the woods, in the air and in the earth's fresh and salt waters. In this realm, where humans rarely venture, the animals reign. Childs (Stone Desert) has constructed insightful and fascinating tales of his encounters with animals in this wild kingdom. In his slim but potent book, he divides these encounters by animal type: Carnivora (bears, mountain lions, etc.), Aves (hawks, owls, etc.), Artiodactyla (antelope, bighorn sheep, etc.), and Et Cetera (porcupine, mosquito, etc.). His careful observations and open spirit will draw readers into his web of storytelling and natural history. Childs writes of hiking on an Arizona mountain and suddenly sighting a mountain lion only five feet away: ""In a quarter second it was all color and shape, moving fast, and my blood locked onto my organs as if I were flash-frozen."" A meditation on mosquitoes brims with astonishing information: ""If a mosquito is released in still air it will come directly to you even if you are standing one hundred feet away."" If animals in the wild could explain their actions and predatory instincts, they'd choose Childs to interpret these explanations to other humans. (Sept.)