On Reading Despicable Species

Posted by jns on 12 June 2008

Last week I finished reading Janet Lembke’s, Despicable Species : On Cowbirds, Kudzu, Hornworms, and Other Scourges (New York : The Lyons Press, 1999. xi + 216 pages, illustrations by Joe Nutt). You might like to read my book note about it.

I like the author’s portrait inside the back cover: the gracefully maturing lady with her white hair in a bun and the tiny grin of mischief on her face. She’s one of Miss Marple’s friends who invites the lady detective to tea and talks about bugs. How charming! Or–wait!–maybe she’s the murderess and there’s arsenic in the brew.

Ms. Lembke writes with a certain genteel prose but there’s nothing soft about her subjects and her writing is fully informed by science despite her blurb’s insistence that she is, basically, a literary type. However, I don’t see why Shakespeare and taxonomic nomenclature shouldn’t get along as she so aptly demonstrates. These essays about those plants and animals most hated by her friends were charming but robust, personal but informative. Be delighted and learn: what a concept!

Here I wanted to share this little poem that Lembke quoted in the essay “Legs: Centipedes”.

The centipede was happy quite
    Until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray, which leg comes after which?”
That worked her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in a ditch,
    Considering how to run.

– Mrs. Edward Caster, 1871