In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. Found abandoned, Leo soon became a much-loved member of the family who played with the daughter’s teddy bears, sat on Krüuger’s lap, and became the devoted companion of Wolfie, the family dog (from whom he learned all sorts of dog lore-lessons that had to be unlearned when Leo began to live as a lion with other lions).Ī Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.

She beguilingly records their encounters with elephants (hard to see in the dark), a resident cobra that guarded the front door of their second home, the genet cat she raised that refused to play alone, and the lion cub (named Leo) who captured their hearts. At Mahlangeni she reared an abandoned honey badger, the first of the many animals she raised as the family moved on to two other camps. Krüger, whose love for this way of life is always evident, had to send her children away to school, bringing them home for weekends-not an easy task: she had first to row across the river, then pick up their car parked on the other side (and often the hippos were obstructive or the river either too low or flooded). There were no telephones or electricity, and no neighbors. Their first post in 1980 was at Mahlangeni, in the far northwest corner of the Park on the banks of the Letaba River-an idyllic spot far from civilization and home to lions, hippos, elephants, and a leopard that patrolled their compound each night.

Krüger met her husband at college, married him soon after, but then had to wait a while before he was able to fulfill his dream of becoming a game ranger in Krüger National Park (South Africa’s largest game preserve). Enchanting portrait of the South African wilderness, by a woman who lived there with her game-ranger husband, three daughters, sundry animals, and a lion cub whose best friend was the family dog.

The wilderness family by kobie kruger