Winegard’s “ The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator” and Dan Egan’s “ The Death and Life of the Great Lakes,” that often lacked focus and bogged the reader down with minutiae, Baron keeps the narrative tight and focused. If you replaced great white shark in “ Jaws” with a group of mountain lions, the plot of that movie (I haven’t read the original) and this book would be eerily similar. Seemingly unfazed by humans, the mountain lions’ natural hunting instincts shifted from deer to domestic animals, and over the course of two years residents would witness an ever-escalating ecological calamity that would come to a head on a running trail.īaron presents the events as a tense, slowly unfolding disaster complete with disagreeing citizens, unconcerned politicians and a few people determined to raise the alarm. Had I not been reading David Baron’s absolutely phenomenal “The Beast in the Garden,” I wouldn’t have given the moment a second thought, but instead I peered cautiously over my porch railing convinced that a mountain lion had claimed the canine as prey.īaron’s nonfiction account of how mountain lions descended the Rocky Mountain foothills into Boulder, Colo., neighborhoods is the best environmental nonfiction book I’ve read, and, quite frankly, one of the finest nonfiction books I’ve read - and that’s a genre I frequent. just three miles south from an urban center - I was struck by the darkness and quiet of my backyard.Īs I fussed with the grill’s electric starter, temperamental after months of no use, my neighbor’s dog started a slow bark that soon reached a frenzy before ending abruptly. Stepping onto the back porch of my home around 7:30 p.m. The temperature had reached 60 degrees for the first time in months, and I was itching to grill pork chops.

The Beast in the Garden by David Baron