The curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.

Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalayas to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display.

Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers by combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem—and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.

Hardback: 320 pages.

A yellow book cover for "Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law" by Mary Roach has a nature scout arrowhead-shaped emblem depicting animals in the wild.