Backyard battle plan

This book takes a stand on the fastest-growing threat to our gardens: animal damage. Ecological imbalance and protectionist policies have produced a skyrocketing population of problem animals. Deer alone number thirty times what they did a century ago. With animal-related property losses totaling $3 billion a year, America's summer backyard--suburban and urban--is under siege. But our romanticization of wildlife, the author argues, blinds us to our need for a balance of preservation and control, even elimination. Part I of Backyard Battle Plan is a complete A-to-Z guide that defines the enemy--from beavers to problem birds and coyotes to woodchucks--and discusses the animals' habitats and the diseases they carry. Part Il is a detailed discussion of control methods from fencing to poisoning to hunting. Complete with information boxes and sidebars, this is an honest primer on an issue we dare not keep taboo.--From publisher description.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.