An interview with AMONG ANIMALS 3 contributor Diane Lefer

This interview was conducted and edited by Ashland Creek Press intern Rachel Harris.

Q: What inspired you to write this story?

A: I love living in a place where—as I think you’ll find throughout the country—all our building and development has blurred the boundaries between our natural habitat and the territory of wild animals. We kind of love it when they show up in our backyards, like when a bear comes out of the hills to cool off in a suburban swimming pool. We’re fascinated by them, and they are curious about us, attracted to our habitat as they search for territory and mates and food.

Here in Los Angeles, I think a lot about the mountain lion called P-22. He’s so beloved, he’s practically the city’s mascot. He’s a beautiful survivor, one who managed to cross two heavily trafficked freeways and find himself a home in Griffith Park. You’re more likely to see a little kid in an I  P-22 T-shirt than actually encounter a cougar face-to-face, but whether in the park or when he prowls the surrounding residential neighborhoods, every time he shows up on a security camera, the news and social media can’t get enough.

So you’ve got all that love, but a mountain lion was shot and killed by police after showing up one morning in downtown Santa Monica. And when a koala was snatched from the LA Zoo for a predator’s meal, P-22 was the obvious (and only) suspect.

All of that underpins my story. As we share space with the wild, we have to hold both at the same time: our love for wild creatures and our cautious respect for that wildness.

Q: What was your writing/research process?

A: I read up about the other mountain lions—a couple dozen living within the city limits and about 100 in the region. I learned more about how they live, and how “civilization” has been a cause of death for them.

One of the other inspirations for the story was a tree I passed on a walk that made me do a double take. What kind of tree could it possibly be when there were so many white and pink and red blossoms that didn’t seem to belong there? Something beautiful was going on that was both natural and very much out of place. It took me a while to untangle what I was seeing: how bougainvillea vines had worked their way up and around the limbs and a nearby magnolia had inserted its own branches among the limbs of the larger tree. I included the tree in the story because it resonated with the situation of the cougar. So in terms of process, I have to thank Naomi Racz, editor of Stonecrop Review, where “Survival Skills” first appeared. When she read the manuscript I submitted, Naomi found my description of the tree so confusing, she made sure I revised and revised again until it made sense.

Q: The situation in this story feels so credible. Was there an incident that inspired this story?

A: My inspiration actually wasn’t a mountain lion but rather a gorilla named Evie. It’s taken me a very long time to find a way to incorporate aspects of Evie’s experience in a story. Since 2007, the western lowland gorillas at the LA Zoo have lived in a beautiful natural habitat, complete with all sorts of vegetation, rocks to climb, a waterfall. But when I first started volunteering at the Zoo more than twenty years ago, the family was still confined to a crowded concrete grotto surrounded by a moat and high fence. People would often sit on the bench across from the gorillas and blow them kisses. Evie, being intelligent and curious and an adventurous soul, managed to make her escape, and do you know the first thing she did? What I heard was that she sat on the bench and blew kisses at the other gorillas.

Evie is not an aggressive being, but gorillas are strong and powerful and could do a lot of damage without any bad intent, so people were quickly evacuated from the zoo grounds. Evie wandered about peacefully, taking in the sights. Then the news helicopters started overhead, and the noise was terrifying. Evie sought refuge in a public restroom and hid there. That’s where staff were eventually able to tranquilize her and get her back to quarters.

Now, whenever news helicopters or police helicopters swoop over my neighborhood, the awful noise and the whirring and wind give me such a visceral jolt that I think of Evie. Her pleasant stroll turned to fear and panic as soon as she became a human-interest story.

Q: Which writers inspire you the most?

A: For nonfiction writing about other-than-human animals, I love Carl Safina’s books. His prose is like poetry, so while he shares his knowledge and compassion, the language itself is such a pleasure to read.

I mentioned volunteering at the LA Zoo. I’m with the Research Division, which doesn’t do anything nasty like invasive research. It’s all about observing animal behavior in order to promote the healthiest, most natural, and happiest lives possible for the zoo residents. I started out with the endangered drill baboon breeding program, so while I do have a lot of scruples about animals in captivity, I appreciate how much zoos contribute to species survival and conservation. I’ve mostly been involved with primates, so Frans de Waal, who writes about apes, is a favorite author.

As for fiction, honestly, I’m not trying to curry favor with ACP’s editor, but Midge Raymond’s novel, My Last Continent, inspires me. It’s exemplary in the way she braids a story of a complicated human relationship with a naturalist’s knowledge of penguins and with an environmentalist’s understanding of what threatens Antarctica. It’s a beautiful novel and a model of what ecologically aware fiction can be.

In my own writing, the early and long-standing inspiration has been Gabriel García Márquez. I was eighteen or nineteen when I first read One Hundred Years of Solitude. I never thought of his fiction as magical realism. García Márquez started out as a journalist. He simply wrote the world the way his characters saw it in a just-the-facts manner, without excuses or labels or explanations or justifications. When I write, I keep his example in mind. I can’t worry about whether a reader will say, Oh, that could never happen. I just have to write it as though it’s real to me and I believe it.

Q: Why did you choose the puma (and the house cat) to focus on?

A: That’s easy. I love cats.

Q: What do you hope readers will take away from your story?

A: It can be so easy to think of wild creatures as cute opportunities for selfies. Wild animals may have become accustomed to the presence of humans, but that doesn’t mean they are tame. There’s risk in our desire to get close to them. They can be dangerous, but I don’t forget—and I hope readers will recognize—that we threaten their safety and security much more than they threaten ours.

Diane Lefer’s story, “Survival Skills,” appears in Among Animals 3. Diane is delighted to appear in another ACP anthology. Animals often figure in her novels. Confessions of a Carnivore was inspired by her relationship with a baboon at the LA Zoo. In Out of Place, scientists become suspect after 9/11 while characters include rattlesnakes, bears, one good dog, and many cats.