Findings —From Harper’s, the March 2013 issue

“Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

In Britain, … heavy rains were washing Scottish hedgehogs from their nests, a flock of sheep adopted a young deer at Dunwich Heath, two dragons hatched in Cambridgeshire, and two men were charged with hare coursing in Lincolnshire, where the feet and heads of swans were being found without their bodies… In Australia, … a scrub python climbed aboard the wing of a plane bound for Papua New Guinea but died before reaching its destination. In Nepal, where protesters demanded the execution of a rogue elephant, the government committed to a tiger cap. A pack of stray dogs in India frightened several blackbucks to death. Vietnamese officials allowed a sanctuary for retired bile bears to remain operational in spite of public-health concerns. Flooding in South Africa allowed the escape of 15,000 farm crocodiles. “There used to be only a few crocodiles in the Limpopo River,” said the farm manager. “Now there are a lot.” The Barbary macaques of Gibraltar were biting people for want of chocolate. Bored mink snack between meals and lie awake in bed. Californians were petitioning the White House to end the state’s largely unenforced ban on ferrets. “It’s hard to get in trouble with a ferret,” said an activist. Dolphins on the Gulf Coast were washing up with tails hacked off and wounds from screwdrivers and 9mm bullets. A dead hummingbird was reported to have been found in the pocket of a dead man in the Sonoran Desert…

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