The world’s second most reclusive, retired comic artist grants an interview about his career and his work with wildlife conservation groups.
Larson says his interest in science, or at least creepy-crawly things, probably had its start at his grandparents’ house on Fox Island in Puget Sound just off the Tacoma Wash. Shore.
“They lived by a great swamp. Today it would be called a wetland. But it was a textbook swamp. Crystal clear water, sandy bottom. Salamanders everywhere.” It was fed by a small creek and right behind the high tide drift line. The “frosting on the cake” was that the area was a major habitat for western fence lizards.
It was a “wondrous place” where he spent hours playing as a boy, Larson says.
Today the swamp is gone. “Filled in and a house or two now stands there, and the creek is just a landscape feature through someone’s yard. But the other creepy thing is that, while the drift line is obviously still there, the lizards are all gone. I’ve gone looking for them, walking among the driftwood on a warm, lizardy kind of day. Not a one.”
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