Why did Kimber delay moving his wood indoors for the winter to allow a deer mouse to relocate its babies, but then go and shoot a porcupine? Why did he risk collision on a rain-drenched road to escort a painted turtle across, but spend a lifetime killing deer and ptarmigan and fish? In these nimble, ruminative essays on man's responsibility to animals, Kimber's first book in more than a decade (after Upcountry: Reflections from a Rural Life), the writer and German translator elaborates his ideas about what it means to treat creatures humanely. He recalls a happy boyhood in which he lived to fish; the thrill of receiving his first real rod and rifle; and the pleasure of putting food on his own table for more than five decades, most recently on his farm in rural Maine. Yet all this isn't bloodsport, Kimber argues; he is a hunter-gatherer, not a sportsman, consuming what he shoots or catches rather than merely pursuing the thrill of the hunt. The mouse and the turtle lived because he could not use them responsibly; the porcupine had to be killed because it threatened his dog Lucey—a circumstance he folds skillfully into his clear-eyed, level-headed naturalist philosophy, justified by the fact that he skinned that porcupine for stew. There is little sentimentality in Kimber's thoughtful book on his relationship with the animal and plant life around him; instead, there is enormous respect. (Nov.)
