In 2005 Kate Jackson ventured into the remote swamp forests of the northern Congo to collect reptiles and amphibians. Her camping equipment was rudimentary, her knowledge of Congolese customs even more so. She knew how to string a net and set a pitfall trap, but she never imagined the physical and cultural difficulties that awaited her.

Culled from the mud-spattered pages of her journals, Mean and Lowly Thingsreads like a fast-paced adventure story. It is Jacksonandrsquo;s unvarnished account of her research on the front lines of the global biodiversity crisisandmdash;coping with interminable delays in obtaining permits, learning to outrun advancing army ants, subsisting on a diet of Spam and manioc, and ultimately falling in love with the strangely beautiful flooded forest.

The reptile fauna of the Republic of Congo was all but undescribed, and Jacksonandrsquo;s mission was to carry out the most basic study of the amphibians and reptiles of the swamp forest: to create a simple list of the species that exist thereandmdash;a crucial first step toward efforts to protect them. When the snakes evaded her carefully set traps, Jackson enlisted people from the villages to bring her specimens. She trained her guide to tag frogs and skinks and to fix them in formalin. As her expensive camera rusted and her Western soap melted, Jackson learned what it took to swim with the snakesandmdash;and that thereandrsquo;s a right way and a wrong way to get a baby cobra out of a bottle.

Indiana Jones, step aside! Kate Jackson is an intrepid adventurer and explorer, and her passion for research, discovery, and snakes resonates from every page of this gripping account of a woman in science.

This is the sort of book that makes hardcore field biologists cry out, 'take me to the rainforest.' For the rest of you, enjoying the sanity and comforts of the armchair adventurer, I suggest you hang on and enjoy the ride.

Kate Jacksonis Assistant Professor of Biology at <>Whitman College.

• Prologue

1. How It All Started
2. Back to the Congo
3. In Limbo
4. The Flooded Forest
5. Neighbors, Nets, and Nothing
6. The Red Snake
7. A Bottle of Snakes
8. A Day of Monsters
9. Time to Go
10. Red Tape Revisited
11. Planning My Return
12. Back to the Likouala
13. This Is Impongui
14. Snake Medicine
15. Making Herpetologists
16. The Home Stretch
17. A Stressful Day
18. Kende Malamu

• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Index