Butterflies And Wrens

Butterflies and Wrens

Robert Smith’s first book entitled My Bunny Rabbit Adventures features his father’s repertoire of 1960s bedtime stories about the bunnies who lived in the woods next door. One of the bunnies from those original stories called Hector is featured in this subsequent book, which is a novel about Hector’s life and times from the age of two when he first met Robert, the storyteller, to when his first child reaches this impressionable age. It therefore covers Hector’s circle of life. You will discover how Hector grew up, what happened to him, what he became, how he coped with the good and bad things that came his way, what he learned from his experiences and from those of others, and finally, how he matured into a grown-up rabbit with a family of his own. The reader will learn about, and gain a better understanding of both their and other peoples’ feelings, challenges, and fears and how to deal with them and how to respect and treat others. The novel includes some interesting true stories and facts as part of the story line, which you may find interesting and useful and, hopefully, just utterly amazing too! This book is therefore an ideal first novel for children.

Birds and Butterflies

Hunting the Wren

A unique interdisciplinary study, this book examines the British and European tradition of the wren hunt, in which a bird ordinarily revered and protected for most of the year was killed around the time of the annual solstice. In focusing on this ancient ritual, Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence draws on her training in cultural anthropology and biology to cast a fresh light on the complexities of human-animal relationships.Following an introductory chapter on animal symbolism, Lawrence proceeds in subsequent chapters to describe the wren both as a biological entity and as the subject of numerous tales and legends, to delineate the details of the wren hunt ceremony and the various meanings ascribed to it, and, finally, to relate the ceremony to important contemporary issues in human-animal interactions and current attitudes toward the living environment. Whereas most other studies tend to concentrate solely on human perceptions of animals and fail to include the animal's role in the relationship, Lawrence's approach shows how the participation of both animal and human determines the symbolic status of the animal -- which in turn influences the treatment of that animal within a particular society.At a time when human destructiveness toward nature has reached tragic proportions, Lawrence contends, it is critical that we understand the processes by which certain cultural beliefs, in combination with observations about the natural history of a particular animal, result in emotional and mental responses that may ultimately determine the fate of that species. The author argues persuasively that the wren hunt -- with its ancient roots, associated beliefs, and complex meanings in thepreindustrialized world -- still has much to teach us.