Fiddler Crabs to Rhinos - Science Stories

“Ouch!” I jerked my finger out of the fiddler crab’s burrow in the black mud. Hanging on was a little fiddler, with its outsized pincers biting into my finger.

At the time, I was four years old, exploring with my grandfather. I held up my finger for him to see. “I guess this one didn’t know me, Grandpop,” I said.

My grandfather carefully pried open the big yellow pincers, relieving my pain. The fiddler scurried back to its burrow.

I was lucky. My family had a cottage that stood on pilings in the New Jersey salt marsh, within sight of the ocean. We went there to escape the stifling summer heat of the Philadelphia area.

My parents sat on the porch enjoying the sea air. I lay for hours on a rickety boardwalk, peering through the spaces between the boards and studying the water below. There I saw a world that my parents never noticed.

A toadfish lay still on the muddy bottom, waiting to gulp down a passing killifish.
Two hermit crabs tapped and inspected each other’s shells. Then in a moment they traded shells to get a better fit.
An eel, long and sinuous, nosed under the patches of sea lettuce for its next meal.
A blue crab emerged from a shadow with a scrap of fish trailing from its claw, then disappeared again under some rockweed.
Snails grazed the fuzzy green algae that grew on an old piling.
A tern flew into the water with a splash and emerged with a fish in its beak.
Everywhere I saw life and action. I could hardly bear to leave this world in the marsh when my mother called me to supper.

Science in the Wild
Back in the city, I liked school, especially science class. I rode my bicycle long distances to collect and identify tree leaves for a science project. I sifted the soil behind my garage because my teacher said I would find at least ten different kinds of animals there. The creatures were all very tiny, of course, but I was amazed at how much life there was right in my backyard.

My basement walls were lined with aquariums stocked with local pond life and creatures brought back from the shore. Maybe I would be a marine biologist,
I thought. Or maybe I could study African animals. In the meantime, I read many books and day-dreamed about faraway places.

For the first two years of college I took lots of chemistry and physics classes. They were interesting, but I couldn’t stay excited about laboratories and test tubes. I wanted to work out-of-doors.

Off to Africa
I couldn’t wait any longer to see Africa and its wildlife, so I joined the Peace Corps and went to East Africa. There I worked in the wilderness, where I helped to plan pipelines to bring clean drinking water to villages.

I loved Africa, but I seemed to be getting no closer to realizing my dream of becoming a field biologist. Then something happened that changed my life.

Nearby, a biologist was studying the ecology of the black rhinoceros. He needed assistants to find and watch the huge beasts and to help drug them so that tags could be put on their ears.

He asked the Peace Corps for helpers. A few days later, the boy who had met a determined little fiddler crab so many years ago was now a young man, helping to hold a groggy one-ton rhino while the scientist clipped a bright tag to its ear. It was the turning point in my career.

Living among the wild animals and glimpsing their world was a wonderful experience. Suddenly I found what I had been looking for. I wanted to learn about animals so I could understand nature.

I returned to college and studied until I received a doctoral degree in wildlife ecology. During those years I worked in the field, studying rhinos, cheetahs, African wild dogs, and Alaskan bears. I studied other things, too, from worms to forests.

I also met and married Lory Herbison. Ever since then, we have been partners in our research, in writing about our experiences for highlights, and in many other areas.

Catastrophe
In 1972, I went back to Africa as a scientist ready to begin field research. Poachers were killing more and more rhinos. By 1978, Lory and I were astounded to see dozens of dead rhinos, which had been killed illegally for their valuable horns. Almost all of the rhinos that had lived in this place were now gone.

I realized then that learning about an animal is not enough to save it. I decided to work to show others why wildlife is worth caring about and to help them understand the need for conservation.

I also set out to help find ways for villagers living near protected areas to earn money and benefit in other ways from wildlife conservation. I hoped to help change these people’s thinking and their situations so that rhinos—and wild dogs and many other endangered animals—would be more valuable to them alive than dead. In several cases, we have succeeded.

As a result, my work includes much more than field research. I also do a great deal of writing, speaking, and problem solving with communities.

No matter where I go, my heart always brings me back to the salt marsh. That’s where I am now, on the boardwalk, in the same place where I spent so many hours as a child. I am happy to say that the natural world still survives here.