Poison Ivy Acres, 250 acres of wilderness in Renfrew County, Ontario, long dedicated to the preservation of natural habitat, has been home to nature writer Carol Bennett McCuaig for many years. Her keen powers of observation, coupled with her insights into wildlife behaviour and her evocative writing style, have produced this captivating collection of stories.

Whether noting the courtship rituals of turkey vultures and red foxes or finding a black bear on her roof, an ermine in her bedroom, and a cougar on her lawn, Carol is always surrounded by the delights and challenges of living in a wilderness setting. Even night visitors bring joy, including flying squirrels at the bird feeder, a whippoorwill peering in a window, and a midnight standoff between a porcupine and a skunk.

Encountering the Wild is a delightful book that will appeal to country lovers in Canada and beyond.

Carol Bennett McCuaig is a keen amateur naturalist, a lifelong country dweller, and a much-published author. A former writer of a newspaper column for birdwatchers, she has also written nature articles for a number of magazines in Ontario, the United States, and in Britain. She lives within a 250-acre wilderness property in Renfrew County where for more than thirty years she has observed the various animals from cougars to turtles, the seasonal variety of birds, butterflies, and other "little critters", the fragile wildflowers, the tracks in the snow -- the myriad of living things she encounters on a daily basis.

Carol Bennett McCuaig's profile page