 Her book explores the many adversities of trying to live in a barn, not the least of which is how the smell of resident skunks under the floor permeates and resides in her clothes and hair and how the barn is infested with flies and mice.In the manner of nature writers who often use a small animal or plant as a symbol of an ecological principle, Meyer explains that she doesn't feel guilty about trapping and killing mice, because they are abundant and their population ever growing.By contrast, she notes the comparative frailty of bears who often stumble upon human habitations looking for food.