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Darkness

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K. Ouchley

As a species, we have never liked the darkness of night. For several hundred thousand years we have retreated to caves and other shelters, huddled closer to blazing fires, and shouldered a heavier burden of anxiety soon after sunset. Predators real and imagined lurked in the shadows; denizens of the spirit world had their way after dark. Everyone had stories of bad things that happened when the vital sense of vision was rendered impotent at night.

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Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.