Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You (2 page)

I heard him take another breath, followed by a long pause. Then I felt the prick of a needle, freezing the area. Soon I felt a little tug, and then blood started pouring down my forehead in the front, and down onto my neck in the back.

He passed me a towel and I put it across my forehead. In just a few more seconds this thing would be out of me. I couldn’t wait.

But then the doctor said, “I still don’t see anything.”

If the doctor couldn’t get it out, my plan B wasn’t going to work either. Now I had a big cut in my head. Were my friends going to have to dig around it? Reopen it? Maybe I
was
imagining things. What if it wasn’t a botfly? Then what was it?

I didn’t respond. He kept tugging or cutting (they felt the same at that stage) for what seemed like several minutes, and then he made a quiet, surprised gasping noise.

I didn’t feel anything at all. I didn’t want to turn my head to
see what he was doing because I had the towel on my head just right to soak up all the blood.

“Did you get it?”

He rolled his chair around in front of me so I could see him, and presented me with a small urine-sample container full of alcohol. Near its surface, Georgia floated lifelessly.

I was finally free.

Today Georgia sits in that same urine-sample container, on a shelf next to my desk at work. She’s only a few millimeters long, disappointingly small compared to the other botflies I’ve seen on the Internet. Apparently, a lot of people don’t know about botflies, so when they get them, they just let the mystery sore grow for six weeks or so until, to their total surprise, a maggot writhes out of it. Georgia was removed long before that stage, but even though she’s smaller than some of the others, she’s mine. I earned her. I’m proud of her. Ask me if I’ve ever felt like I was “at one with nature,” and I can hold her up and show her to you. She’s like a medal.

I went to Belize as a scientist, to study how biological organisms live in nature, and instead I experienced nature
as
a biological organism. That really influenced how I perceive the natural world. To me, nature’s not just a pretty photograph of a rainforest. It’s constantly changing, twisting in a dynamic life-and-death drama driven entirely by a battle for energy—energy that flows from host to parasite, from prey to predator, and from rotting carcass to scavenger, in a never-ending battle among all creatures to persist and pass on DNA. Belize reminded me that I’m part of that epic system. We all are. My botfly fed on me to get energy, and I spent energy trying to get rid of it. That’s what nature is—a place where animals selfishly
try to survive and make babies by getting the upper hand on one another.

When you think about nature that way, it becomes strange that lately everyone and their dog seems to be telling us we should be living
more
naturally. We’re surrounded by advice on diet, exercise, medicine, and lifestyle, all championing some version of a “natural” way to live. Since humans evolved as part of nature, we’re told that escape from our modern problems is as simple as getting back to our roots, by moving/eating/behaving the way humans did millennia ago.

The main flaw with that kind of advice, of course, is that it ignores the basic fact that a few thousand years ago people typically only lived into their thirties. There are predators, parasites, and decomposers everywhere, ready to break us down for food at the first opportunity. Living in a modern, Westernized society, we’ve done such a good job of keeping most of those threats at bay that those “natural” advice givers can act as though things like botflies, rattlesnakes, and malaria don’t even exist. But believe me, they do.

If anything, Mother Nature is trying to kill you.

My perspective on nature is a little bit different from the way nature is typically portrayed, but that’s often because advertisers and marketers are using the word
nature
to sell you something. In their world, nature’s a benevolent bounty of well-being that can always make you healthier and would never, ever hurt you. It’s all honey and no stingers. Nature gives us fruits, vegetables, and shade-grown coffee beans, but not the mold around the bathtub or ants or tapeworms. Advertisers would like us to think those things aren’t really part of the green world. Instead, they’re somehow invaders of it.

Think of a typical shampoo commercial with scenes of soft meadows and waterfall-fed pools, where beautiful models frolic and no two strands of hair ever cling together. There are plants and maybe butterflies, or even horses, but there are never any hornets, scorpions, or leeches. Icky animals hurt sales, so the image of nature has to be left half-finished.

With that utopian version of pseudonature established, companies can then boost sales by making you associate their products with that friendly world. I was at the grocery store recently and saw a cleaning solution that said “nontoxic,” “organic,” and “green” on the label. It also said, right on the front of the package, that it kills mold, mildew, and bacteria. One wipe of that cleaner across the kitchen counter can snuff out millions of lives, but they call the product eco-friendly, as though somehow bacteria don’t count as part of “eco” (whatever that is). I’m not arguing against using green products—in fact, I encourage it—but look at the irony of the labeling. I mean, the organic apples and oranges you buy aren’t grown in nature, they’re grown on farms. How are they more natural than the mold in your home that came in through the window?

Because magazine editors, TV executives, and advertisers don’t like to acknowledge the dark side of nature, we don’t see the whole picture and we end up with a warped perspective.

When I was an undergrad, I worked in a restaurant with someone who once told me that she would never do any drugs made in a lab but that “if nature made it, it’s okay to take it.” When she said that, I remember thinking it
sounded
like it might be logical, but that turned out to be one of those statements you just have to think about carefully for a minute or two before you realize it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I think she was
talking about marijuana and magic mushrooms, but heroin, crack cocaine, and cigarettes all start as plants too. Whether you’re talking about recreational drugs, food, or anything else, pretending that nature is 100 percent benign requires either ignorance or willful disbelief.

Let me put this another way: From the window seat of an airplane, the skyline of New York City stands enormous, majestic, and silent. But when you visit Midtown, it’s a totally different ball of wax. What looked like faceless rectangular buildings from the air turn out to be beautifully decorated, with stone and brick patterns that make each of them unique. Standing on the ground, you can hear honking cars, people shouting into their phones as they walk, and trucks rattling by as they roar over filthy potholes. You can smell garbage and urine, but you can also smell hot dogs and pretzels. You can get a bite to eat, go see a show, take the subway, or just sit down on a bench to take it all in.

New York’s skyline is beautiful, but it leaves a lot out. In fact, I’d argue it leaves out all the best parts of New York.

To see nature as an endless bounty of health is as incomplete as describing New York by her skyline alone. It’s true that nature has produced many, many things that are good for us, but nature has also created jellyfish, fire ants, and cyanide. We can celebrate the healthy parts, but when we take a look at the creepier side of nature too, the whole picture gets richer. In fact, I’d take it one step further: I think the disgusting, immoral, and violent side of nature, the side that the grocery stores and shampoo commercials leave out, contains its most awe-inspiring and beautiful parts.

Walking along a trail in Belize looking at birds through binoculars was like seeing the skyline of New York, but my botfly experience took me down to street level. It changed my relationship
with nature by getting me outside my comfort zone. And a couple of years later I embarked on another up-close-and-personal experience with the natural world—one that would last much longer than my adventure with Georgia. I thought getting a maggot lodged in my head was life-changing, but it turns out that’s nothing compared to having a baby.

In August 2011, my wife and I welcomed our first child, Sam, into the world. Since that day, I see everything differently. I used to weigh myself every single day just because I loved collecting the data, but now I’m simply not that interested. I used to fill my calendar with trips all over the world to see as many bats as I could, but now I would rather stay home with Sam than spend a month catching bats in Africa without him. It’s not just that I care more about this little kid than I’ve ever cared about anything before (and I do), but Sam’s birth also changed how I feel about everything else—including myself. You’ve probably heard someone else say this before, and if you’re a parent you might have even said it yourself. It changes you. And you’re changed because you feel something that you don’t feel from any other experience. Most people would call that feeling “goodness” or “pure love”—but in truth, I’m not so sure that’s really what it is.

Here’s why I hesitate to use that language: you can’t say that botflies are “evil,” since they’re just doing their best to survive and ensure their own DNA’s survival to the next generation. It makes no sense to talk about a botfly’s behavior in terms of “good” or “evil,” and the same holds true for any animal in nature.

Since the feelings I have about Sam very clearly come from my own biological drive to survive and protect my own DNA, I don’t see why the concepts of good or evil should apply there either. What feels like fatherly love is really just my body’s way of
protecting its own DNA in the next generation. If the botfly’s behavior isn’t “evil,” why should I call my feelings about Sam “pure” or “good”? Yes, I experience something that feels wonderful, but that’s just what my DNA tricks my brain into believing. Is there anything
real
behind those illusions?

I wrote this book in part because I’m passionate about the ugly, heinous natural world and want to take you on a tour to see that. But I also wrote this book as part of a personal journey of my own. I need to figure out whether the love I feel for my son is real.

So let’s begin. In order to avoid getting lost, I’ve organized our tour around a list of evils in the world that were outlined by the Catholic Church about 1,400 years ago as vices that could bring out the very worst in humans. You’ve heard of them, I’m sure. They’re called the seven deadly sins: greed, lust, sloth, gluttony, envy, wrath, and pride. Of course, there’s nothing biological about sins—the whole idea of morality is a human one. But I think it’s going to be a fun challenge to ask whether Mother Nature might in fact perform each of those seven sins with even more flair than humans do. Along the way, either the roots of fatherly love will be found in the jungle of selfishness, or I’ll know for certain that the love I feel for my son doesn’t really exist.

So let’s start searching.

I
. I participated in a couple of studies that documented which bats live at Lamanai (Fenton et al. 2000, 2001), but even more species have been identified there since we wrote those papers.

By the way, you’ll see footnotes like this one throughout this book. They’re intended to provide added context to the stories you’re reading. Anytime you want to dig even deeper, just follow the little numbered endnotes to the Notes section at the back of the book.

II
. Some people recommend you lure botflies out by covering their air holes with pork fat. It’s not the smell of food that draws them out, though, it’s the lack of air. That’s why surgeons in one study were able to draw a botfly out by covering its breathing hole with Vaseline, which blocked the maggot’s access to air (Liebert and Madden 2004).

A biology prof, an engineering
prof, and one of their students walk into a bar. Just as the three of them are taking their first sips of beer, a lion walks out of the bathroom, looks at them, then licks its lips.

The biology prof slowly rises from his barstool, then stands frozen with terror. “In the last twenty-five years there have been more than a thousand lion attacks on humans, two-thirds of which were fatal. I don’t like our odds at all.”

The engineering prof looks at the lion, then the door, then starts doing some calculations. As she stands up, she says, “I don’t like our odds either. Based on its size, I’d estimate the top speed of this lion at around forty miles an hour. Olympic sprinters can go twenty-three miles an hour. Even if we could run half that fast,
which I doubt, the lion would get to the exit well before we would. We’re screwed!”

The student looks at the lion, looks at his professors, pauses, and then pulls a phone out of his pocket to take a photo of the lion for Twitter.

“What are you doing?” asks the biology prof. “Can’t you see that there’s no way for you to outrun this lion?”