GROWING UP WILD

What happens after The First Days of Life (1974)—to a tadpole becoming a frog, a rattlesnake during his first summer, an eagle getting ready to go off on her own, and two beaver kits between their first temporary displacement for their mother's next litter and their permanent expulsion from the family lodge a year later. Russell also gives a cub's eye view (based on George Schaller's reports) of a lion pride's kill and feast and describes an uneventful encounter, also from Schaller but observed here by a four-year-old female (an "awkward age"), between a band of gorillas and two men with camera and binoculars. There is no attempt at parallelism among the six different sketches, which could make for a slackness overall, but Freedman does give you the feeling (with his frog escaping from a boy's grasp by emptying her bladder and screaming like a human baby, or his rattlesnake swallowing and digesting a lizard) that you are sharing firsthand observations, not just enduring another regurgitation.