Science writer and bestselling author Mary Roach joins the L.A. Times Ideas Exchange on September 30 to discuss Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law in conversation with Times columnist Patt Morrison.

Register for the event here!

Roach presents an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet.

What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict.

Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter’s Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display.. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem―and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.

Mary Roach is the author of five best-selling works of nonfiction, including Grunt, Stiff, and Gulp. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. She lives in Oakland, California.

Books with signed bookplates for this event are available through the L.A. Times ticketing page.