Grasshopper Dreaming

Book excerpt: Grasshopper Dreaming is a collection of first-person musings about the ethical and philosophical implications of the author's work as an entomologist who specializes in grasshoppers and pest control. Lockwood deftly explores the moral implications of his work and speculates on about the actual relationship between "pests" and humanity if we consider all living creatures to have value in and of themselves, regardless of their usefulness or inconvenience for us. The author, self-described as "a hired assassin for agriculture," offers readers a rich account of the sometimes painful, often odd, occasionally funny, and invariably complex realizations that come out of balancing a religious perspective with the practices of modern science and technology. Based on fifteen years of work, the essays in this book represent the rare and compelling integration of understanding of nature with the perspective of a world-class ecologist and struggling mystic.