Mice in the freezer, owls on the porch

"From the papers and letters of Frederick and Frances Hamerstrom, the reminiscences of contemporaries, and her own long friendship with this extraordinary couple who were her neighbors, Helen Corneli draws an intimate picture of Fran and "Hammy." She follows their lives from their very different childhoods through the genesis and maturation of a romantic, creative, and scientific relationship.

They rejected a life of sophisticated convention and comfort for the more "civilized" (as Aldo Leopold would have it) delights of living and conducting on-the-spot research into diminishing species. Corneli captures the spirit of the Hamerstroms, their profession, and the natural and human environments in which they worked.

A nuanced account of the labors, adventures, and achievements that distinguished the Hamerstroms over the years - and that inspired a generation of naturalists - this book also provides a dramatic account of conservation history over the course of the twentieth century, particularly in Wisconsin during the eventful years from the 1920s through the 1970s."--BOOK JACKET.