The Flight of the Iguana by David Quammen Page B

again is the matchmaker. ESD lets him be all he can be.
    The moral: Identity is such a crucial affair that one shouldn’t rush into it.
    No doubt that seems perfectly natural to a spoon worm. Some of us “higher animals,” on the other hand, don’t have the luxury of such a convenient biological postponement. And probably our Bonellia would be horrified, or silenced in pity, if he (or she, depending) could see the desperate, bizarre ways by which we humans must try to cope with the intractable dilemma of self.

II
WILD NOTIONS

THE DESCENT OF THE DOG

    A Tempered View of Canine Evolution
    Let’s begin slowly, with a relatively safe statement: Not all dogs are bad.
    We Americans live today amid a plague of domestic dogs, a ridiculous and outrageous proliferation of the species, true, but not every one of those animals is damnable beyond redemption. Not every one has had its soul twisted by misery and neglect, spending long days chained or fenced within a tiny yard and taking its revenge by barking at the neighbors. Not every one is ill-trained, intermittently hysterical, half insane from sensory deprivation. Not every one is indulged to prowl free, defecating on other folks’ lawns and reorganizing other folks’ garbage, playfully snapping the necks of other folks’ cats. A few dogs, worthy beasts, help blind people to cross streets. Several reportedly perform ranch chores. Dozens of canines in the U.S. alone fulfill a useful service as the quiet, well-behaved pets of old people and shut-ins. The rest, unfortunately, are as we know them. But dogs are a sensitive subject; some dog owners, like some tobacco smokers and most members of the Ku Klux Klan, tend to be passionately defensive about what they are pleased to think of as their own rights. Consequently you find two diametrically opposed and equally extremist points of view: on the one hand, thatall dogs are irredeemably noxious and should be banished, at least from our cities and suburbs, by enlightened legislation; and on the other hand, that some dogs are okay, at least some of the time. My own view is a moderate one that falls about halfway between these two.
    Brothers and sisters, as the Lord is my witness: We got too many dogs.
    A reliable estimate puts the total U.S. dog population at about sixty million, and that figure has risen by ten million over the past decade. Roughly five million are unclaimed strays held in animal shelters, awaiting adoption or execution, but meanwhile pet dogs are still breeding away. As I write this sentence there are six lunatic barkers within earshot (and one charming old mongrel with sad friendly eyes, next door, who maintains a monk-like silence). That’s just too many. The situation is crazy. The dogs of America are—individually and demographically—out of control.
    Of course we also have too many cats. Let no smug feliphile deny that. But there are a couple of important differences. First, cats are generally far quieter and less intrusive. They just don’t have the vocal equipment, the heft, or the territorial instincts to assert themselves as conspicuously as dogs do. Second, when a human society has too many cats, it is mainly the cats who suffer. People drown them. Set them on fire for kicks. Hang them, in cute little nooses. Club them to death and toss the carcasses into the trash. Thereby achieving some sort of sorry equilibrium. It’s less trouble that way, evidently, than exercising a modicum of foresight to get the females spayed and the males neutered. When a society has too many dogs, however, people and dogs both suffer. The extras (aside from those strays who end up in animal shelters) are not killed, but instead are given away or sold cheaply to persons who have no idea what a dog needs in terms of training and attention and sheer physical space, and who are not in a position to supply those things if they did know. Result:miserable, desperate dogs who share out that