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YOU SHALL NOT SUFFER A LIBRARIAN TO LIVE

"Thinking out loud is traitorous now?"
—Pepper (the protagonist), in Sly Mongoose, p.65

As you hold the tiny creature up to your face, its legs flail and stretch outward to appear more threatening. Its antennae swirl around, trying to make sense of its position in space. This is an animal on the defense, but only for a second, because the most notable quality of the craw is its supremely shitty attitude. They're the chihuahuas of the rocks, the Napoleons of the river. The craw is the ultimate curmudgeon. It raises its claws and swipes at your face. Come at me! I've never seen an animal so tiny yet so determined to kick my ass. The craw doesn't care how small it is or how big you are—it wants to take you down. Craw defense is craw offense.
—p±è.4-5

There should be an option for cars in this state that changes the low-fuel warning light—which generally blinks on at twenty miles until empty, accompanied by a polite little ding—to something more attention-grabbing. Like an electric shock on the driver's buttocks. And a foghorn. And it needs to flash when you've got seventy miles until empty, because beyond the city limits, fueling opportunities fade. If you're on country roads and miss your opportunity to fill that tank, there's a decent chance you'll be well and truly screwed. Look at a cell coverage map of West Virginia—the kind of help you'll get will have to come from a passerby.
—p.27

Much like Ben Franklin's unsuccessful attempt to make the turkey our national bird, opossums don't have that distinguished look you want in a representative species.
—p.35

Appalachian writers have a foot in two worlds: the world of language, of literature, and the world where we're looked down upon simply because of our area code. It doesn't matter that the last three letters of your name are "PhD" if the first three numbers are 304.
—p.70

We caught them, studied them, and released them. For injured individuals with a misshapen wing or a broken antenna, we created Lightning Bug Regional Hospital, a level one trauma center and skilled rehab facility. Managed by four seven-year-olds, routine insect care consisted of petting them and offering a pep talk: "It's okay, lightning bug. I'll squeeze you tight and love you until you're all better! Let's practice flying. Try to take off. Oh, you fell!"
Our success rate with firefly rehab was depressingly low. It's hard to imagine how a fumbling set of fingers and a heart full of obsessive love could possibly go wrong, but somehow, the more we caught, the more patients had to be admitted to our facility, which really should have been called Lightning Bug Memorial Hospital. Eventually, the CEO—my dad—stepped in and shut us down. Something about ethical violations.
—p.81