Again “Alfie and me“is more than that. Safina is determined to make this experience a window into humanity’s relationship with the rest of nature. Reading it took me back to William Blake’s poem “Omens of Innocence.” Like Blake, Safina sees the world in a grain of sand, holds infinity in the palm of her hand. In addition to Blake’s poetic insight, Safina brings a a large part of scientific knowledge in his work; he is a renowned environmentalist, author of numerous acclaimed books, and a MacArthur Fellow.
Safina’s main theme is how inattention numbs connection and leaves us living less passionate lives, less aware of our vast animal community. But learning to stay connected takes practice and knowledge. “To be human is to ask questions,” he says simply. And ask them to do it. Often, if not always, Safina’s questioning of each interaction results in provocative and insightful asides, a bringing together of the many tributaries of attention to a particular animal, using her career in the life sciences and the vast reading of world literatures and philosophies that flow through his sprawling narrative.
Like the contemporary naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Safina is determined to overcome labels, prejudices and assumptions about the natural world and our place in it. He wants to interact on a personal level with a particular animal. He knows that a squirrel is not a distillation of identifying traits on the ground. It is an individual living creature. He has eyes, hands, feet, hunger, fear. Like us, he rushes to look for food and avoid danger. Like us, its history dates back to the Big Bang. Safina lacks Haupt’s lyrical grace, but her thinking aloud always gives rise to a lively and exciting conversation with an author – spontaneous, even polite; lively, even elegant. Describing Alfie’s behavior, Safina writes: “She might even pounce on the occasional mouse that sniffed out some birdseed that I would sprinkle on it, so that it wouldn’t forget what its claws were for and his fascination with movement or how to use them. them at high speed.
Safina and her wife and children allow Alfie to run their spacious home on Long Island, then move her to a chicken coop, then leave the door open, then continue to feed her while she hunts and returns to this family adored. She finds a companion who they call Plus-One. With the doubts of a Trollope hero, Safina worries every step of the way: “I joked with Patricia that I was trying not to feel too hurt or left out. Then I wondered if I wasn’t entirely joking. Despite this kind of remark, Safina rarely steps back enough to see the humor of her helicopter of a different kind. He’s a difficult adoptive parent.
How worried he is about this little bird! He worries that she won’t eat (she does), that she won’t fly away (she does), and that she might get killed in a storm (she doesn’t). He worries about the effects of his intervention in Alfie’s life. He refrains from playing jazz drums during Alfie and Plus-One’s “courtship”. Sometimes Safina worries until he seems exhausted, as my mother used to say, out of breath. This restlessness comes in part from its urgent seriousness. But even an admirable desire to preach connectedness—because he knows we only care about protecting what we love—can become tiresome when the author keeps returning to his favorite points.
Safina also maintains a greeting card cuteness throughout. He calls their dogs “doggies,” describes the mating owls as “newlyweds,” and their mating as “so much madness.” Afterwards, Safina speculates that Alfie was “too in love and perhaps too well fed by Plus-One” to return to him or take food. He even titles his acknowledgments page “Gratitudes” and writes it in the form of beatitudes, beginning by bestowing a halo on people like himself: “Blessed are the compassionate, who find wild babies rendered helpless by circumstances and feel compelled to help them. »
I’m glad that people feel moved to help and that knowledgeable writers feel moved to share their stories. There is no larger theme than the complexity of our relationship with a single other living individual, human or otherwise. And scientific knowledge of the complexity of life only deepens the intuitive knowledge of the past. “Alfie and Me” is a colorful if uneven guide to living more deeply through interaction with others who share our experience of inhabiting animal form. “What can we do best with our lives? » asks Safina. “Connection. That’s my answer. The book ends with Alfie still a part of their lives.
Michael Sims’ nature books include “Adam’s Navel” and “In the Womb: Animals,” a companion book to the National Geographic Channel series.
What Owls Know, What Humans Believe
WW Norton. 384 pages. $32.50
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