Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brian, New York, Free Press, 2008.

Indeed, this is a remarkable story, told with elegant precision so that we learn how owls communicate, what they care about, what they won’t tolerate, how they love, eat, gripe, clean themselves, and how they express the obvious emotions we all share.

Enough said. It’s a real eye-opener. We are truly not alone in sensitivity and talent. Life on Earth is more ingenious than we have realized.

Wild Things, Wild Places by Jane Alexander, New York, Alfred A. Knopt, 2016.

The three parts of this book are divided into chapters named after countries, states, “Desert.” “Ocean,” and “Birds,” but the stories are focused more on the author’s experiences than on details about wild things.

In pages 292 and 293, however, the author does a nice job of reminding us that “We are all ”…connected in milliseconds and transport…while faced with the obvious need to…consciously manage the planet [and]…save the declining species of the world…it is a moral imperative as the most evolved creature on the planet to care for the home we share with all others. Everything we need or make comes from natural resources…’”