Into the Bewilderness
Charles Waterton was born in Yorkshire, England in 1782, to an aristocratic Catholic family whose ancestors included members of several royal families. The life of an idle nobleman didn't appeal to him, however. From a young age, he displayed a passion for studying and interacting with animals in a very hands-on way.
An inveterate tree-climber, Waterton was grateful for the wide array of bird species found on his family's estate. He was so much of a birdbrain that teachers complained of his "vast proficiency in the art of finding birds' nests" distracting him from his studies. Like his teachers, Waterton's classmates noticed his fondness for being amongst animals. He was the one called upon when the boys wanted someone to tame an angry goose, or to ride a cow for their entertainment. He was even appointed rat catcher at his Jesuit boys' school.
Waterton's youthful interest in trapping the animals around him evolved into a specialist desire to understand less common animals. This being the Victorian era, and Waterton having the time and money to devote to his preoccupations, his obsessions prompted amusement in the readers of his prolific writings, rather than consternation. For instance, he once described a dissection of a vulture's nose as "beautiful." And he was an expert on how a variety of tropical animals, from the howler monkey to the toucan, tasted. The former, apparently, is not dissimilar to goat, while the latter should be boiled for best results.
This type of contradiction-being moved by animals, yet also scientifically dedicated to studying them by killing and preserving them in scientifically novel ways-would be a theme throughout Waterton's life. The man clearly had complex feelings about his relationships with animals. Perhaps the most significant of these feelings was the desire to transcend the divisions within the animal kingdom: divisions between animals, but also ones separating himself and the creatures he loved.