I’m almost done reading Mary Roach’s Fuzz: When Animals Break the Law and I’m keen to blog about it, having failed to resume sleep during my tenth hour in bed. Roach is an entertaining writer, though I haven’t read many of her books because she loves to write about gross stuff, eg cadavers, while I have a squeamish nature and like to read during meals.

Fun facts I’ve learned include:

• Residents of outlying areas of Aspen allow voracious pre-hibernation bears to enter their homes and raid their refrigerators. The bears in turn are careful not to disturb other items in the houses.
• Animals under attack often vomit not out of fear, but in order to tempt their prey with an alternate food choice. This strategy also deters human attackers, though not for that reason.
• Deer don’t “freeze” in headlights; they simply don’t see the attached car. An invention that illuminates car grilles with UV light significantly increases cases of deer exiting the roadway in time, and is currently patent-pending in the US.

In addition to animal scofflaws, this book addresses animal/human interactions of various sorts worldwide, with humans on the iniquitous side of the equation as often as not. I will now share the startling story of sunflower seed farming. This story may make you briefly allow your heavy head to droop toward the ground.

Huge sunflower farming operations in the Dakotas lie directly in the path of migrating birds during harvest time, and their owners have been battling mightily to stop those birds from landing for a meal en route. You read that right: Farmers are trying to stop wild birds from eating birdseed.

Quick fill-in-the-blank quiz: This is a(n) ________ battle.

Losing was a good choice, although there are others. The birds take 1-2% of the crop, which is less than is lost by the combine during reaping. The flocks also consume tons of insects which would otherwise damage the plants, so one could posit that remuneration is more appropriate, but depredation is what is on offer. The sunflower-farming operations have poisoned, bombed, shot, and frightened the birds, with 200,000 or so killed most years, through at least 2018.

Quick True/False quiz: The proportion of seeds eaten by the flocks has been reduced during this campaign.

Of course the answer is False; quizzes never have an obvious T/F question, though you would be an odd duck if you weren’t asking, Why not? Mostly because the balance of nature can’t be completely destroyed by humans. When populations are reduced, there is more food for the remaining creatures, so they are healthier for reproduction, producing larger litters and/or having more offspring survive to adulthood.

Extinction would work, if it is even possible to kill all of any given type of bird, and No, I’m not going to quiz you for counterexamples. In this case, multiple species of mostly songbirds are involved so extinction attempts might hit the news media and generate some outrage among the public, for a few days at least.

What is really keeping me awake as far as sunflowers go is, should I be eating them in my salads? I already try to avoid industrialized nut and seed oils, including sunflower oil, but it’s getting harder; at work I’ve noticed their use expand beyond processed foods into body care products. I’m pretty sure the USDA Organic rating does not cover this case, since it specifically addresses biocides. I also wonder whether sunflowers should continue to be considered vegetarian fare since songbirds are killed in their production. All of which leads to the question I avoid: What else don’t I know?

We have a lot to be outraged about. It’s tiring. However, I hope that won’t deter you from reading this book. There are lots of amusing and encouraging stories, including a chapter about how albatrosses ejected the US military from Midway Island. Whatever the topic, Mary Roach makes you LOL on every page.