Review by Ed Quillen
Wildlife – March 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
Rocky Mountain Mammals A Handbook of Mammals of Rocky Mountain National Park and Vicinity
Third Edition
by David M. Armstrong
Published in 2008 by University Press of Colorado with the Rocky Mountain Nature Association
ISBN: 978-0-87081-882-0
THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK is slightly misleading, since it does not cover all Rocky Mountain mammals, but only those in one portion of the Rockies, specifically Rocky Mountain National Park and vicinity. Since the vicinity mapped in the book extends across the mountains and valleys north from Santa Fé , N.M., to Casper, Wyo., it includes our territory. But a more accurate title would be “Mammals of the Southern Rockies.”
That said, this looks like a useful book for your reference shelf or your daypack, come clement weather. It’s clear and concise, the writing has flashes of arch wit, and the pictures are both gorgeous and illustrative.
It also provides information that I’ve never seen in any similar book, listing the internal and external parasites (like bugs) that are likely to be found with a given critter. We are also presented with the customary material about habitat, history, hibernation, dentition, mating, nurture, sightings, and the like.
The book is organized by order (Rodentia, Carnivora, Lagomorpha, etc.) and within orders, by family: Felidae for our three wild feline species, Ursidae for our black bears and extirpated grizzles, Castoridae for beavers, etc. That’s fine with me, but if you’re not much of a naturalist and aren’t sure where some critter fits, an index with informal common names would be handy, and it doesn’t have one.
FOR INSTANCE, I was at friend’s house up in Piñon Hills for Christmas dinner, and he showed me where he had spotted a reclusive and nocturnal “miner’s cat” one night. I had vaguely heard of them before, but no one I knew had ever seen one. Naturally I wanted to know more about it.
An index with non-scientific names would have simplified the process. I had to start with the big reference book that no sane person would carry into the field, Mammals of Colorado (of which Armstrong is one of the three co-authors). It too lacked a common-name index, so I had to guess whether I’d find the miner’s cat with the badgers or the raccoons. I found Bassaricus astutus with the raccoons in family Procyonidae, and learned that it is also known as the ringtail and cacomistle.
Knowing that, I could find the critter in Rocky Mountain Mammals, whose alternate names did not include miner’s cat. It was also one of the few mammals without a photograph. But the writing went past the dull listing of attributes.
It’s a “distinctive animal. About the size of a house cat, it looks like an artist’s composite, with the head of a fox, the lithe body of a squirrel, and a long, showy ringed tail an elegant step beyond the raccoon’s. . . . Ringtails inhabit rough, broken country with shrubby vegetation. They eat rodents, insects, berries, and some carrion. They are strictly nocturnal and are so secretive that they often are fairly abundant in areas where they remain unnoticed.”
That’s about all that can be said of B. astutus, as little is known of their mating habits, litter-size, etc. (It provides our “Tracks” this month).
Much more is known of their close relative, the raccoon, including that they “support roundworms, tapeworms, ticks and lice, but parasitic disease seldom is fatal. On adequate range, protected from hunting and trapping, a two-year-old raccoon will have avoided all major perils except the automobile and may expect a lifespan of three to five years, occasional animals living twice that long.”
This is a handbook that I enjoyed reading just for the pleasure of its prose. Generally with such books, I put it down as soon as I’ve found the fact I sought, but not this one — it’s enjoyable to read. And thus I confirmed what I had read elsewhere — that skunks, which used to be classified with the weasels, have in recent years been moved to their own family. Taxonomy is not a static discipline.
This book focuses on Rocky Mountain National Park, but our terrain holds pretty much the same wildlife, from mice to mule-deer, and the wildlife pictures in this handbook are not merely illustrative, they’re artistic portraits — the sort of photos you’d like to enlarge and put on your wall. This book is nearly perfect if you need a handy guide to mountain mammals, which is reasonably detailed yet still easy to tote and easy to read.
