Guest Author: Marilyn Victor

Being involved in the incestuous world of writing, I (Lois) met Marilyn Victor years before she was published, then re-met her after she and her literary partner, Michael Allen Mallory, wrote a wonderful novel called Death Roll with which I promptly fell in love. A busy duo, Marilyn also happens to be the president of the local chapter of Sisters In Crime, a zoo volunteer, a mother, grandmother, and fosterer of finches. :) Michael tends to keep company with his wife, his two beloved cats and, on occasion, wolves. Please welcome M & M, authors, friends, and fervent animal advocates:

I will admit to having never missed watching an Academy Award show since the days when Bob Hope was the host. While I try to see all of the nominated movies it isn’t the big pictures I enjoy the most. It’s the little ones. This year it was the French animated short film, Oktopodi that got my vote for the best of the best. It has all the elements of a good romantic suspense: boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy rescues girl from evil villain who wants to turn her into sushi, girl rescues boy from evil hungry seagull. The two love birds in this flick are octopi. Or is that octupuses? Whichever, in Oktopodi, our hero escapes from an aquarium, crawls across the floor, slippers his way outside and grabs hold of the back of a fleeing truck for the ride of his life, all to rescue his love. Far-fetched? Not entirely.

Not long ago the caretakers at a public aquarium puzzled over who was stealing soft shell crabs from their tank. Suspecting a staff member, they hired a security guard to watch for the thief. As it turned out he didn’t have to look far; the thief lived close by. Like in the next tank! In the evening hours the eight-legged marauder slipped the top of its tank open like a skilled safe cracker and climbed out. Then it slithered across the floor to the nearby crab tank and helped himself to dinner. Afterward, he’d return home to sleep it off. The perfect crime.

We’ve all seen the video of the crow stealing money from a vending machine, haven’t we? Animals are amazing and these are the type of stories I never tire of hearing. Writing a zoo mystery series has turned me into an obsessive collector of facts and factoids. Did you know a frog uses its eyes to swallow? That Elephants are the only animal that can’t jump? And kangaroos can’t walk backwards?

But the saddest bit of information I’ve recently come across is that fewer and fewer Americans ever get to see a wild animal in its natural habitat. Nature is becoming a lost experience for many kids. They all watch Animal Planet and can Google up a photo of a garter snake but most have never actually seen the real deal slithering through the grass beneath their feet. When I volunteered at the Minnesota Zoo and had the opportunity to show off my favorite corn snake or bearded dragon to zoo visitors, there would always be a couple of children in my rapt audience asking, “Is it real?” While I wanted to reply with something snarky, I’ve come to realize that this is simply a sad sign of the times.

When DEATH ROLL was published, its protagonist, Snake Jones, was the first crime-solving zookeeper in the world of mystery books. Last year Betty Webb and Ann Littlewood added two more zoo mystery series to the menagerie. While zoos aren’t a substitute for national parks and nature preserves, I hope it shows that people still continue to be enthralled by our animal cousins as we learn more about them, and how their lives are far more emotionally and intellectually richer than we had originally thought. Apart from that, animals add beauty and companionship to our lives. What a lonely place this planet would be without them.

So please help me feed my obsession. I’d like to give away an autographed copy of DEATH ROLL to the commenter who can add the most interesting animal fact or story to my collection.