This post can be read on its own or as a follow-up to "Kidnapping Personhood." I: One or Several Birds A pair of pigeons deterritorialized my deck last spring. I discovered their nest when I was attempting to move a large, wicker deck-chair that I had decided to put into storage. As I lifted it, two eggs and a clump of twigs tumbled out from some hidden spot within its inner framework. Alarmed at what I had done, I pushed the chair back into its original position, but the nes

I have always found myself drawn to deep sea documentaries. The hypnotic and wonder-full displays of these underwater dwellers turn me into a child all over again. I imagine my excitement as something akin to what British readers would have felt as they scanned the pages about the hummingbirds of North America in William Bullock’s Six Months’ Residence and Travels in Mexico (1824). He writes: [T]he sides of the laminae, or fibres of each feather, being of a different colour f

I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around our troubled relationship with nonhuman animals for quite some time now. On the one hand, this relationship appears crystal clear: when it comes down to brass tacks, nonhuman animals are a commodity, a tool, an object to admire or fear, but hardly ever a subject with comparable “rights” as human animals. Sure we can drum up a few exceptions to this like our beloved and ever-faithful canines, our lackadaisical and snarky felines, or any

I joked with a friend the other day that I start each morning by thinking about Derrida. This wasn’t meant as a hyperbolic comment acknowledging my fascination with French poststructuralism; it was simply an account of my typical workday routine. You see, each morning, just before NPR news gives way to the NET “Signature Story,” I step out of the shower and make eye contact with my cat, and in that moment, I think about Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am. Derrida’s medi