Full Moon

My wife Kristen Lindquist has her third poem on Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac." This one airs on Bloomsday (June 16, the date during which the event of James Joyce's Ulysses takes place).

The poem, "Full Moon," has nothing to do with Joyce or Dublin. What it concerns is the apartment we once shared in Rockland, Maine: the self-professed Lobster Capital of the World. It was the place where I started to write The Poacher's Son, in an "office" that was actually a closet big enough for me to squeeze a desk in beside the hot water heater.

Rockland was—and is—a gritty place. I had a memorable confrontation there with the city's drug kingpin. He ran the "bar that served anyone" that Kristen mentions in her poem, and I am proud to say that I did not back down from him. The last I heard he was serving a term in federal prison for his many crimes. "Full Moon" only hints at some of the nocturnal happenings she and I observed in Rockland. It wasn't Nighttown, but it was always an interesting place after the sun went down.

The World's Deadliest Animals

Over at Maine Crime Writers today I have a post about one of the most macabre books I have read in years. Gordon Grice's The Book of Deadly Animals is a bestiary of every large (meaning: bigger than a microbe) creature ever known to predate on human beings. It's full of amazing factoids like this one:

 

  • The most formidable large predator in the world is the orca, or killer whale, which has been known to rip the tongues out of blue whales for the sheer hell of it, leaving the peaceful giants to bleed to death; leap onto the land to snatch a sunbathing seal; and holdgreat white sharks out of the water to “drown” the gill breathers in the air (before eating their livers).

 

As a mystery author who writes about game wardens—and therefore animals—this kind of trivia is like catnip. Click on over for my full review of this gruesome and gripping book.

A Warden's Workload

At DownEast.com, George Smith has an informative post about the range of duties that occupied Maine game wardens' days during the past year. As I note in all my books, wardens have a diverse set of responsibilities that change with the season and the weather. The job is never boring, to say the least, and the ever-changing assignments certainly offer good material for a crime novelist. It's worth reading George's entire post (which provides historical context), but the recent numbers themselves tell a surprising story. 

In 2011 Maine wardens spent:

  • 30.1 percent of their time on hunting, trapping, and wildlife enforcement
  • 20.9 percent on fishing enforcement
  • 13.8 percent watercraft enforcement
  • 10 percent administration
  • 7.2 percent ATV enforcement
  • 6.2 percent snowmobile enforcement
  • 3.7 percent search and rescue
  • 3.3 percent training
  • 1.6 percent general law enforcement
  • 1.3 percent wildlife/human conflicts
  • 1.1 percent assisting other agencies
  • .8 percent aviation

To me the big suprise was how little time the Warden Service spent on search and rescue, considering the amount of media coverage it gets in the state of Maine. Then again, one has to admit that "administration" doesn't make for gripping TV news segments.