Rails, World War II and eating mice

8/14/08: Today I got a chance to talk with bestselling natural history writer BERND HEINRICH, author of such well-known books as RAVENS IN WINTER and WINTER WORLD. I talked with Professor Heinrich about his complex and interesting memoir of his family during the 20th Century titled THE SNORING BIRD. The title is coped from an old out of print book written by his father Gerd about his (Gerd's) adventures in the Celebes (now Sulawesi) searching for the legendary and thought-to-be-extinct Snoring Rail. But Bernd's book is a deeper, more nuanced memoir than just a colection of exotic natural history motifs. Bernd was born in Poland near the beginning of World War II. His father joined the GERMAN army out of fear of persecution of his family. Eventually, by the end of the war, the whole family fled the coming of the Russians and lived a life of exile in a small cabin deep in the woods in western Germany. Here the family lived hand to mouth FOR YEARS, often living on staples like trapped mice. Still, for young Bernd, this was where he learned his love of the natural world. Eventually the family emigrated to America in 1951. But it is Bernd's complicated relationship with his father that forms the heart of this unforgettable book. Gerd is authoritarian, often aloof from Bernd, interested only in collecting ichneuman wasps wherever he goes in the world. While living in Maine, he sends Bernd to live for 6 years in an austere school/home/farm for disadvenataged kids so he and his companions can take exotic collecting trips around the globe. Still Bernd does not blame him, and the reasons he does not are discussed in our interview. Much of this book reads like a novel or a movie script, there are so many extraordinary situations and locations (Persia, the Danube Delta, Tanzania, Poland from World War I through World War II, et) the reader has to constantly remind themselves that this really happened. One is left feeling it was nothing short of a miracle, or the vagaries of chance, that Bernd survived at all, let alone lived to become the reknown scientist he is. I cannot recommend this book enough.