Every creeping thing that creepeth

The plight of spotted owls has resurfaced in the news recently in the same breath with barred owls. Barred owls, which can live in more diverse habitats than their spotted cousins, are thriving and crowding spotted owls out of what remains of old growth forests. In an attempt to keep spotted owls from becoming extinct, the U.S. Forest service is proposing killing thousands of barred owls.

T.C. Boyle’s latest novel, When the Killing’s Done, presents a similar dilemma set in the Channel Islands, located off shore of Santa Barbara, California. The islands are a unique habitat, supporting over 2,000 plant and animal species, many of which are found nowhere else. Introduced species, namely rats and feral pigs, have been fruitful and multiplied, at the expense of native plants, bald eagles, sea otters, sea birds, and island foxes.

The story is told from the point of view of several people, all with ties to the Channel Islands. Alma Takesue is a calm, cool National Park Service biologist who is leading the efforts to save the islands’ endangered species. As she presents a lecture at the Natural History Museum about the need to eliminate the rat population on Anacapa Island, she is interrupted by Dave LaJoy, a dreadlocked, wealthy, animal rights activist with a hair-trigger temper. Throughout the book, LaJoy tries to undermine the Park Service’s plans, with increasingly reckless tactics. He forms a group called For the Protection of Animals (FPA), which pickets and chants relentlessly outside Takesue’s office. When a raccoon family digs holes in his newly laid lawn, LaJoy captures them and decides to rehome them humanely: on Santa Clara Island. Their survival on the island, where feral pigs are being hunted and slaughtered, is one of the ironies of the story.

Takesue shows a calm demeanor in public, but the continuous protesting wears on her nerves, and causes her to have doubts.  She didn't join the Park Service to kill animals, but how else will she save the murrelets and island foxes?



Boyle does not take sides on the issues, but gives us plenty to consider. To what degree should we interfere with nature to bring an ecosystem to balance? How do we decide which animals are acceptable in an ecosystem and which aren’t? And to what extremes will people go to support or subvert a mission? When the Killing’s Done tells one such story. The final chapter of the spotted owls’ fate remains to be written.