Contents

Introduction

I. ROADKILL ON THE HIGHWAY OF TIME

Rattlesnake Passion

The Narcotic of Empire

Hard Parts


II. DUBIOUS CERTITUDES, DAUNTLESS THEORIES

Certainty and Doubt in Baja

Phobia and Philia

Who Swims with the Tuna

Tropical Passengers

Spatula Theory

The Great Stinking Clue

The Dope on Eggs


III. FLESH OR FOWL OR WHAT?

The Cats That Fly by Themselves

Local Bird Makes Good

One Man's Meat

Either or Neither


IV. NEAR SIGHT

Beast in the Mirror

Palpating the Tumor

Rethinking the Lawn

Half-Blinded Poets and Birds

Time-and-Motion Study


V. TRICKS OF THE LIGHT

The Boilerplate Rhino

Limelight

Gardening on Mars

Impersonating Henry Thoreau

God's Weakness for Beetles

Limits of Vision

Bibliography

Index

From "one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking writers of natural history" (The Seattle Times), a collection of enduring essays that form a bestiary of wondrous creatures and a gallery of the human faces that peer at them.
The Boilerplate Rhino brings together twenty-six of David Quammen's most thoughtful and engaging essays from his column for Outside magazine, gifting readers with an irrepressible assortment of ideas to explore, conundrums to contemplate, and wondrous creatures to behold.

In lucid, penetrating, and often quirkily idiosyncratic prose, David Quammen takes his readers with him as he explores the world. His travels lead him to rattlesnake handlers in Texas; a lizard specialist in Baja; the dinosaur museum in Jordan, Montana; and halfway across Indonesia in search of the perfect Durian fruit. He ponders the history of nutmeg in the southern Moluccas, meditates on bioluminescent beetles while soaking in the waters of the Amazon, and delivers "The Dope on Eggs" from a chicken ranch near his hometown in Montana.

Quammen's travels are always jumping-off points to explore the rich and sometimes horrifying tension between humankind and the natural world, in all its complexity and ambivalence. The result is another irrepressible assortment of ideas to explore, conundrums to contemplate, and wondrous creatures to behold.