Mice in the Freezer, Owls on the Porch is in many ways a love story—about a quiet scientist and his flamboyant wife, but also about their passions for hunting, for wild lands, and for the grouse and raptor species that they were instrumental in saving from destruction.
    From the papers and letters of Frederick and Frances Hamerstrom, the reminiscences of contemporaries, and her own long friendship with this extraordinary couple who were her neighbors, Helen Corneli draws an intimate picture of Fran and "Hammy" from childhood through the genesis and maturation of a romantic, creative, and scientific relationship. Following the Hamerstroms as they give up a life of sophisticated convention and comfort for the more "civilized" (as Aldo Leopold would have it) pleasures of living and conducting on-the-spot research into diminishing species, Corneli captures the spirit of the Hamerstroms, their profession, and the natural and human environments in which they worked. A nuanced account of the labors, adventures, and achievements that distinguished the Hamerstroms over the years—and that inspired a generation of naturalists—this book also provides a dramatic account of conservation history over the course of the twentieth century, particularly in Wisconsin during the eventful years from the 1920s through the 1970s.

"Why were Fran and Hammy so admired and loved? Because of the example they have set. They never forgot that field research is the naturalist’s fountain of knowledge and they never stopped asking searching questions."—Ernst Mayr, Harvard University

   Foreword by George Archibald                         xi
   Acknowledgments                                      xv

1 Prologue                                               3
2 The Complexities of Childhood                         13
3 Self-Discovery and Love                               34
4 Students, Teachers, and New Horizons                  53
5 Conservation Beginnings in a Midwestern
   Appalachia                                           67
6 Enter Leopold and the Chickens                        88
7 An Interruption: World War II                        110
8 The Action: Postwar Scientific Solidarity         119
9 The Return: Deer and a Decision                      132
10 The Setting, the Task                               142
11 Booming Chickens and a Land Boom                    157
12 The Prairie Chicken War                              181
13 Hamerstroms' Kingdom: The Complexities of
    Success                                            194
14 A Naturalist Family                                 208
15 Of Hawks, Humans, and Freedom                       227
16 Free at Last                                        248
17 The Making of a Legend                              265
18 Death of a Biologist                                282




19 Fran                                                 290
20 A Postscript                                         300

Notes                                                   309
Index                                                   340

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