In partnership with the friends of the UNH library, this is the New Hampshire Authors’ series from the Dimond Library at the University of New Hampshire.

Sy Montgomery travels the world researching exotic critters, silverback gorillas, pink dolphins, golden bears.

She has encountered 18,000 snakes in Manitoba, swum with piranhas, and been stalked by a tiger.

From her home base in Hancock, she documents the wonders of this sweet green earth as an author, script writer, lecturer, and public radio commentator.

Part Indiana Jones and Emily Dickinson, according to The Boston Globe, Sy is a scientist, an adventurer, a philosopher, and acclaimed writer of prose with the sensibility of a poet.

Her many books for adults and children include Spell of the Tiger , Search for the Golden Moon Bear , Encantado: Pink Dolphin of the Amazon , and The Good Good Pig .

Welcome, Sy Montgomery.

(applause) (inaudible) Well, how are you doing?

I'm great.

I'm delighted to be here.

You made the trip from Hancock all right?

Yeah.

Well, I thought we'd start with The Good Good Pig.

That's always good to start with.

It's a good one to start with and it made a huge splash.

Very popular.

Much as he did.

Much as Christopher Hogwood did.

So I wonder if you could talk about the response of readers to The Good Good Pig .

Did it surprise you?

Of all the books you've written, here comes Chris Hogwood, and people respond to this guy.

Well, they responded to him in life.

So, I guess, after you've lived with someone like that, who's been such a luminary...

I mean, he had a vast slops empire.

Everyone loved this pig.

Everyone who met him loved him.

He would break out of his pen and root up people's lawns, and by the time I got there, he'd made great friends with them.

He was amazing.

And he just kept on doing this even after he died in the book.

And I get emails from people in Brazil.

I get emails that I can't read that are from Japan.

People still love him.

He was just that kind of a great soul.

And it didn't matter that he had a flexible nose disc and a curly tail.

He was a great big Buddha master.

And you learned a lot from Christopher Hogwood.

Yeah.

He's the one who, more than anyone else, taught me how to be with people.

I mean, I always felt comfortable with animals but Chris was the one who taught me how to be with people.

Even kids.

I mean, when I was a kid, I didn't know how to play with children.

My friends tended to be plastic dinosaurs or earthworms or honey bees or my lizards or parakeets or whatever.

But Chris was the one who brought kids into my life.

He's the one who you can say really got me started writing kids’ books.

Really?

And he just had amazing social skills.

We have a lot we can learn from pigs if we didn't just eat them for breakfast with eggs.

Chris was safe at your house, though, because you’re vegetarian.

That's right.

My husband’s Jewish.

Jewish and vegetarian; Chris was okay.

He was not going to turn into ham.

Yeah.

Well, you have section in the book that's about an ice storm.

And we, of course, are in the midst of New Hampshire winter, so we know all about it.

This is an ice storm a few years back.

Yep, this was the Ice Storm of The ice storm ten years ago.

The Ice Storm of 98.

It was a bad one.

It was real bad.

But it was good for Chris.

Indeed it was.

Would you read a little bit from the ice storm section of The Good Good Pig ?

I would love to.

I should tell you that when I found out about the ice storm I was in Washington, D.C. And we were watching television and there was New Hampshire, and the power was out just about everywhere.

Not our end of town, but the other end of town.

It did not take us long to realize the consequences of the ice storm.

Far from a natural disaster, the ice storm was a hog's holiday.

Soon, the melting contents of Hancock's best stocked refrigerators and freezers began to make their way toward Christopher’s sty.

(laughter) Over the next week, food came by the bucket.

Food came by the bag.

Mary Garland bought a huge plastic garbage can full which Howard somehow helped her wrestle out of her car trunk and onto the lawn.

It was an astounding boon.

Mary's known to throw lavish parties at the last minute and is always ready to welcome her many children and grandchildren for impromptu visits.

Once I opened her cupboard looking for a glass and found no fewer than four huge bottles of premium balsamic vinegar, back when no one even knew what balsamic vinegar was.

You can imagine the contents of her freezer.

Now, they belonged to Chris.

After the ice storm, our pig got his usual quota of banana peels and celery stalks, but now there were melting quarts of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, frozen blueberries hand-picked the previous summer, Brie and Camembert wrapped in puff pastry, entire frozen lasagnas, Sara Lee chocolate cakes, frozen éclairs, huge slabs of smoked fish, tubs of crème fraîche.

At last, Chris had achieved pig paradise.

His bowl overflowed.

(laughter) Well done, well done.

When I was teaching writing, I always said, Food is good to include in descriptions.’ Well, I see that you've taken that lesson to heart.

Oh, he took it to heart.

When he ate, he was like a performance artist.

We would have people over and we'd invite them for dinner and a show.

They had to bring their slops.

That was the dinner and then the show was watching him eat it.

And this was how we made a lot of our friends in Hancock.

And they would come over and they would just watch while... that says something about Hancock well, we (laughter) we don’t have a movie theater, you know?

Probably word spread through the town.

Oh, it totally did.

Chris knew how to be happy.

That's what I take from this book.

You know, they say that happiness is not a place you live, it's a place you visit, but I think Chris seemed to live there.

He really did.

And everyone knew that.

People would come to him.

Little kids would come and just be with him and sorrow would vanish, you know?

He had a special friend, Kelly Felgar, who was a teenager.

She was she was 14 when she died of brain cancer.

And when she was sick, her parents would bring her to be in the company of a 750- pound pig with huge tusks.

And this girl knew that she would be treated with absolute tenderness by this enormous, strong creature.

And, whenever they were together, it was just like the cancer vanished.

All sorrows vanished because there wasn't any room for anything else but this radiant girl and a big, fat, happy pig.

Well, let's move away from the domestic front, because although probably The Good Good Pig is your best-known book, I would guess, you've written many other books that are not on the domestic front.

You've traveled the world, and I think it seems to me that traveling and doing this kind of research in strange and exotic places makes you happy.

It would frighten me a little bit, some of these bugs and snakes and jungles and... Well, that’s the good part Tigers.

Well, I want to talk about some of your adventures because when we talked in preparation for this, I said, Well, often we talk about the writing process.’ So I said, Oh, forget that.’ Oh, I loved what you said: It's like you never talk to plumbers about the plumbing process.’ (laughter) We're not going to talk about the writing process.

It's something you do.

You go home and you write.

But I'm interested in the adventures.

Well, that is the best part.

So, I thought I'd throw out some words to see if you have adventures associated with them.

It's not a test.

You can't fail.

How about the grossest’?

The grossest’?

Nothing grosses you out about animals, I can tell.

Well, not about animals.

Actually, I've been bitten by an awful lot of chiggers in the Amazon.

That was kind of bad.

It was right before I was going to go home to my husband, and I had been cuddling with this wooly monkey.

I got chiggers from a wooly monkey.

I mean, this is so embarrassing.

(laughter) The chigger bites got horribly infected because it was in the Amazon and everything goes septic insantly.

That was kind of gross.

And your tweezers were one time they confiscated your tweezers.

That was in French Guiana.

That was doing a tarantula project.

And you know how the TSA is keeping us all safe.

Well, I'm flying to French Guiana to do this tarantula project and on the way, they confiscate my tweezers because I think they assume I'm going to pluck the eyebrows of the pilot until he takes me to my destination.

So, anyway, I arrive, I have no tweezers, but what are there besides tarantulas in French Guiana?

Hundreds and hundreds of little pepper ticks.

And they're so small.

They get in your palms.

They get in your nose.

They get in your feet.

And they're almost too many to bother to pick out.

Now, how do you get out a pepper tick if you don't have tweezers?

Well, in some places, like your palms, you can use two credit cards to remove... now I finally have a use for my credit card... to remove pepper ticks.

But, for the ones in my nose, there was nothing...

I mean, you can't even a nose this big you can’t put two credit cards in there.

(laughter) So, yeah, that might work as one of the grossest.

Well, I love Spell of the Tiger .

I read that book... and I write in the margins as I read and I wrote, Yikes.’ Oh, no.’ Ahhh.’ You you came close in that book to being eaten.

Yeah, I guess so.

If you were eaten, you would not be here today.

That's true.

Will you talk a little bit about...

I guess this is maybe scariest’ or most dangerous’ or, I don't know, but... Well, Howard was not thrilled when I revealed that I was going to do this book on man-eating tigers The MAN-eating tigers... Yeah, I told him, Don't worry, honey, it's men that they eat.’ And this is really generally true.

And the women stay home and they're eaten by crocodiles, but the men go out into the areas where the tigers are, and the tigers will swim out after your boat like a dog chasing a car, and they'll get on board and they will eat you.

And they eat some 300 people a year.

And it's the only place in the world where healthy tigers routinely stalk and eat you.

And this is where?

This is in Sundarbans, a huge mangrove swamp between India and Bangladesh.

And I'm so glad This book has just been reissued like this second hot off the presses, and I'm so pleased because this really is kind of a book that I really could have bought it researching it.

There was a time that a tiger swam after our boat.

And the chilling part about it was that we didn't know it at the time, Because of course you don't see the tiger stalking you.

It sees you.

We saw the footprints.

We had been on a little wooden, handmade boat tha the boatman (inaudible), who I worked with, had built himself, and we'd gone down a part of the river and then turned up a little channel.

And when we turned up the channel, we realized, Oh, the boat's going to get stuck.’ We had gotten stuck once before in the mud, and that was very hairy, because the motor is calling the tiger.

The tiger knows you're there.

And I had had to stand on the deck of the boat back to back with the photographer that I was working with at the time, and she was given a machete and I was given an ax, and we were supposed to... if the tiger leapt onto the boat, we were supposed to defend ourselves this way.

Well, we didn't have to that time.

And this is why this time, as soon as we saw what a small channel it was, we turned around.

When we turned around, we saw all of a sudden there were tiger tracks coming out of the water that we hadn't seen before, and we thought, Oh my gosh, we just missed it swimming across the channel.’ But when we looked across, the tiger hadn't come out of there.

We backtracked.

It had come out of the forest when we were in the larger part of the river.

It had swum after our boat as we had come down the larger part of the river and it had followed us as we turned up that channel.

I wonder how you find your subjects or do they find you?

I mean, sometimes I imagine somebody invites you and says, Would you come and research these animals?’ And sometimes you just get fascinated somehow?

Well, sometimes one book leads to another.

I mean, with this, my very first book, which also is being reissued later this year, it was like an homage to my heroines, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas.

That book's called Walking with the Great Apes .

Now, all my books are about relationships between people and animals, and they're all not-veiled-at-all attempts to turn us into conservationists.

But, when I decided to do Spell of the Tiger , I figured, Well, I've already done something about the creatures that are so like us... that you look into the face of a gorilla and, you know, there's the guy you dated in junior high.’ I mean, you feel kinship right away.

I thought, Gee, maybe it would be nice to write something about someone who wants to eat you with their face.’ So, I thought, I should do something on predators next.’ And I thought, Which is the coolest, biggest, most dangerous predator?’ And very quickly tiger’ came to me and then I found out about this particular place.

But, it was in the Ganges where I first saw a river dolphin, which led to this book, The Journey of the Pink Dolphins.

A different species, but river dolphins are you take a look at this thing...

I mean, just look at the cover of this book.

It looks like something out of a dream.

It's a very strange looking animal.

And it's not actually from the same lineage as Flipper, the dolphins that we know from (inaudible).

They're a totally different whale lineage.

And I completely fell under their spell and that's how that book happened.

The Golden Moon Bear , which took you to... Southeast Asia.

Yeah.

Laos and Cambodia and Thailand.

And, you know, one thing leads to another, in other words.

It's almost like the animals come and get me.

In New Hampshire?

Yes.

Somehow.

(chuckles) They know where I Iive.

Well, you had said you might read a little bit from the dolphin book.

Yeah, I would love to.

Would you read that?

Yeah, I would love to.

Actually, of all the books that I've done, this was the most fun to research.

And, I mean, I did get chigger-bitten and I got sick... you always get sick.

I got in some hairy situations, but the Amazon is just like the most sensual place you'll ever be.

And the sounds and the smells.

To be in this world with these amazing... well, I guess I should just read it.

Give me a painful electric shock when you want me to stop.

No electric shock.

Okay, this is just from the very beginning of the book.

It's called A Woman Rain.’ The days are full of water.

The wet season has drowned the village soccer field and banana groves and manioc gardens, and even flooded some of the less carefully placed stilt houses along the river.

Young saplings are submerged completely, and fish fly like birds through their branches.

Huge muscular trees stand like people up to their torsos in water.

Epiphytic orchids and the tree hollow nests of parrots and bamboo rats are at eye level when you stand in your canoe.

Every day, there's an extravagant, transforming rain.

Sometimes, a storm cracks the sky with lightning, crashes branches, rips animals from the trees, and then it's gone.

This is a man rain, ’ Moises says.

But a rain that pours itself out for hours, sobbing and heaving, ’ that, he explains, is a woman rain, ’ because a woman can cry all day.

As the days are full of water, the nights are full of sound.

It's as if all that is revealed by daylight, trees veiled like brides in lianas, leaves the size of canoe paddles, the nests of ants and birds and termites, is transformed by the night into sound.

From the trees, from the ground, from the water, voices rise like tiny bells and little flutes.

Screams, warnings, laments: they speak in the language of water.

So you had some close encounters with these pink dolphins?

Oh, yeah.

Well, at first it's so hard to see them because they don't leap out of the water like Flipper does, you know?

Theirs is a totally different kind of balletic grace.

They're swimming in the flooded forest.

They're swimming between the branches.

And so they can touch their tail with their lips if they wanted to.

I can't do that.

Certainly.

You know, Flipper can't do that.

And so you don't see them the way that you do these other dolphins.

It requires a different way of interacting with them.

And so, I did do a lot of watching them.

And I also climbed up trees and tried to see down through the water.

And then I also followed them through the people's stories and through myth, and that was a great way to meet them.

And it was only on my last of the four expeditions that I got to swim with them and see them every day and recognize seven dolphins who would come and pull their faces out of the water, and with their pearly gray eyes look into my face.

They knew me, and their looking into my face was so amazing because they have sonar.

They could see what I'd eaten for breakfast.

They can see what's in your stomach.

They can see what's in your womb.

They are giving you an ultrasound.

And people can feel it too.

It's almost like humming with your teeth clenched.

But they still wanted to look at my face.

And that was very moving to me.

And it was also a very athletic expedition because...

I'm really glad that I learned to swim in an early age...

I would swim, I would tread water for hours a quarter mile out into this tributary and you wouldn't get tired at all.

It was almost like you were feeding on their energy or something.

You wouldn't get tired at all.

And then when they would leave and you would swim back to shore, you'd be exhausted.

And then you'd see another one.

You'd go right back out for another two hours, and it was magic.

Well, keep going because we really love the work that you do.

So now is the good part where you get to ask Sy questions that you have for her.

And there are two books that are just out.

I mean literally out like yesterday that you can buy: The reissue of The Pink Dolphins and the reissue of Spell of the Tiger</i> in paperback.

So you're all going to want to take home several copies of each of those.

So who has a question for Sy Montgomery?

Yes (points).

My question is, when you are going off to one of these exotic places to study, let's say the pink dolphins, do you do most of your research before you go and then you just experience the animal while you're there and then come back and write?

Or do you research before and after and during?

That's a good question.

Before I go.

Usually I do several expeditions because when you when you come back to a place, if you've already convinced people of your good intentions, often they're eager for you to come back because they want to tell you something further.

So, for most of the adult books, I make 3 or 4 expeditions.

Yes (points).

I’m wondering what got you started down this path of traveling and writing?

If you could say something about that?

Oh, good question.

When I was little, I wanted to be a veterinarian.

I mean, I didn't know there was a job like what I have, and in fact, I wouldn't know that because it's not like you can major in this.

Okay, I'm 51, so I was born in 1958.

And when you enter school and you want to work with animals, that was pretty much what you knew about.

But then National Geographic started bringing stories of people like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas to us.

And we also started reading about the first environmental movement.

I mean, the word environment’ wasn't known in the 60s when I began to read.

Neither was ecology, ’ really.

But the first stories started coming in about pollution and overpopulation and deforestation and all of the things that we were doing to hurt animals who I loved.

And I thought if I were veterinarian, it would be great that I could heal sick animals.

But really, the largest portion of animals were in trouble are in trouble because of us.

And maybe I would be able to help them more if I was writing to change people's minds and to change people.

Anybody else have oh my goodness lots of questions.

One right in the back.

Yep (points).

I'm wondering if, domestically, there are any wild animals that are in peril that might be lucky enough to have you be interested to write about them?

Well, right now, with the bird book.

Actually, the domestic birds that I'm writing about aren't necessarily imperiled, but they are still, portals to the natural world who show us just how splendid animal lives are.

The first chapter in the book is on chickens and they're not actually in danger of extinction at all, but they are in plenty of peril.

(chuckles) 80 million of them are eaten every year, which is pretty perilous for them.

And if you know chickens... which everybody says they do...

But we don't at all.

We don't have any idea how smart they are.

We have no idea that they have incredible memories.

They have incredible forethought.

They have a great sense of order.

They have an incredible ability for spatial learning.

And even when you take common animals that are in our lives, I think they too have an ability to help us be better conservationists.

So that's what I'm hoping to do with this current book.

Have you ever met an animal you didn't like; you just said, I’m not feeling it’?

Well, the ticks in my palm.

I was feeling it, though.

Not a fan of the ticks.

Yeah, doing the bird book The cassowary thing... by the end of day one, I was covered in blood and not from the cassowary.

I had many, many dozens of leech bites all over me.

Leeches.

Yeah, it looked like I'd been shot.

It was really a horror.

But I couldn't step on those leeches.

I couldn't squish those leeches.

I didn't want them on me, but I couldn't kill them.

And they're very elegant creatures in their own way.

Indeed.

Thank you, Sy, for all the wonderful stories and for the wonderful books.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks.

You’re such a great host.

Oh, that’s so sweet.

Yay.

(applause) ♪