J. D. Porter

When author J. D. Porter retired after a forty-year career managing parks, zoos, and museums, he found a new adventure as the pilot of a mule wagon for a local quail hunting lodge. This fascinating gig led to yet another job title for Porter: newspaper columnist, for his local paper, the Albany Herald. This charming collection of essays, anecdotes, and tales is the result.Being tasked with writing about his work on the mule wagon prompted Porter to explore with humor and poignancy a wide variety of topics, from how shotguns can be works of art to the art of the walk, from a bridgebuilding slave to a tortoise and a billionaire, and from a dog named Joy to contemplating tombstones. Fans of Southern writers like Rick Bragg and Roy Blount, Jr., and nature writers like E.B. White and Wendell Berry, will find much to love packed into this collection of essays.

Animals have much to teach us if we will take the time to listen. Animals have quite literally changed J. D. (Doug) Porter's life. He looks at some of the most noteworthy in his memoir, Lessons from the Zoo: Ten Animals that Changed My Life. From animal keeper to zoo director, Porter's career spanned over forty years. It included positions with a half dozen of America's great zoos during the most transformational era in zookeeping in more than a century-a time when zoos went from 19th century menageries to modern day arks.A chance visit to the Atlanta Zoo in the 1970s launched a career that began at Busch Gardens and continued during the construction of a massive new zoo in Toronto. Porter oversaw the animal collection at the Louisville Zoo, directed the redevelopment of the Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo, and served as deputy director of the Toledo Zoo during its centennial years. Humans have been training animals for thousands of years. We have trained them to pull wagons, herd livestock, and guard our camps. We have also taught them to perform useless tricks for our amusement. These days, animal care professionals train animals to submit to behaviors that improve their own lives (injections, blood pressure monitoring, and other health related routines) as well as tasks that benefit human lives (therapy, search & rescue, and law enforcement). But animals can teach us, as well. The earliest dogs appeared about fifteen thousand years ago when humans began displacing Neanderthals in Northern Europe and Asia. People might be surprised to learn of recent speculation that perhaps humans did not create dogs by domesticating wolves. Perhaps wolves domesticated themselves. They might have accomplished this by staying in proximity to human settlements, scavenging our leftovers, and adapting to our ways over generations. We have long imagined some clever human training a wolf to guard the camp and hunt for food. What if it was the other way around? What if it was clever wolves that taught those primitive humans to accept them into their society?Porter developed his love of nature growing up in the piney woods and mangrove swamps of Florida's gulf coast and nurtured that passion for nearly fifty years as he managed parks, zoos, and museums. The number of animals he worked with during his career is beyond measure. He has been bitten, clawed, kicked, and head-butted. He has watched animals being born and seen them take their last breath. He has had an impact on the lives of countless animals, but they have had an impact on his life, as well. They have taught him some valuable lessons. Porter learned to trust by facing off against Bwana the elephant and to walk his own path from Thelma the wayward mule. He learned how to overcome some of his fears by handling snakes and the importance of the Golden Rule from chimps and gorillas. Rhinos helped him realize that he will never be too old to learn, and a dog named Joy taught him how to seize the day. But what is the greatest lesson of all? Find out in Lessons from the Zoo: Ten Animals that Changed My Life.

Dogs are disappearing from the streets of 1920 Chicago and Raven Griffith with the Animal Welfare Association is on the case. She is a courageous woman who has reined-in a team of runaway horses, faced down a racist mob, and been kidnapped and shot. But when she assumes the seemingly trivial task of investigating those missing dogs, her adventure really begins. As a lodger in the lavish home of eccentric widow Katherine Ruebottom, Raven gains a circle of fierce female friends, including Jo Washington, a young woman with a murky past, and Min Lee, the child of a conscripted railroad laborer from China, who is also hiding more than she tells. To solve the mystery of the missing dogs, Raven and her posse team up with a handsome policeman and a gangster known as the Fox. But against the backdrop of murder, corruption, and racial violence, Raven's cause seems futile. How can this young woman prevail against corrupt cops, an Irish street gang, and a sinister drug company in her pursuit of justice for the animals? In the end, Raven rescues the dogs, inherits Katherine's estate, and assumes control of the Animal Welfare Association. She is surrounded by her dogs, her friends, and her lover. But sinister forces are still outside her door. "The Dogcatcher and The Fox recalls the great social novels of the era, like Henry Blake Fuller's The Cliffdwellers and the sweeping historical fiction of E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime." Ian Morris

The Dotson Park Zoo is a typical American zoo-a zoo that has long prided itself on being at the cutting edge of zoo technology. Its history includes a wrestling bear that kills a man in a bar-fight, a cobra in a baby carriage, and chimpanzees and elephants living together in the same space. It is a story replete with shady deal-making, backstabbing and even murder. At the Dotson Park Zoo, the only thing more dangerous than the animals is the politics. Many modern zoos have reached their hundredth anniversary and dozens of books have been written for their centennials, but it is unlikely that any zoo had the knowledge of past events to tell the whole story-until now. The Dotson Park Zoo story may be a work of fiction, but it is a tale that will ring true for anyone who has ever been immersed in the culture of zoos.