So it comes to this: Stephen Colbert is now making fun of endangered animals. In his new book, I Am America (And So Can You), the host of The Colbert Report publishes a list of “Endangered Animals and Why They Are Unloved By God.” Like: “Ocelot: It knows good and well what it did.” Or “Père David’s Deer: Has an accent mark in its name.” Or "California Condor: Typical West Coast type just cruising on the air currents. Get a job, long beak."

Well, Mr. Colbert, what if the tables were turned? What if Endangered Animals could write a book, and it had a section called “Endangered Animals and What They'd Like to Do to Stephen Colbert.”

Hawaiian Monk Seal
They’d attack him, bite him, beat him up, leave him wimpering in the sand. Male monk seals that are "in the mood" can be extremely violent with their mates, sometimes killing them in the act.

Ocelot
Ocelots are high-strung, unpredictable killers, gunning for nocturnal rodents, lesser anteaters, and spider monkeys. That which they do not kill they mark with their foul-smelling pee. So if an ocelot gets a hold of Colbert’s book, it will definitely autograph it—Dear Mr. Colbert: You stink worse than my urine!

Bighorn Sheep
Colbert thinks he's a master at head-to-head combat. Let’s see him invite one of these babies on his show. Male bighorn sheep are known to smash their headgear in duels that can last 24 hours. Thirty-pound horns can make some serious noise and do some serious damage-- especially to a skinny TV host. Lucky for Colbert, they're vegetarians.

Iberian Lynx
Europe’s most threatened carnivore has excellent eyesight. It can spot a rodent 250 feet away. Even if you start running now, Mr. Colbert, you will never be able to hide.

Père David’s Deer
This endangered Asian deer and Stephen Colbert have so much in common. Both have teeny ears for their head size. And both have funny French names. So just what is your problem, Mr. Colbert, or should we say Monsieur Col-bear. If you run into this deer in a zoo (which is pretty much the only place they live nowadays), be prepared: The 300-pounder will mock you right back.

Florida Cougar
The nocturnal predator would like to be in your studio audience to show off its shriek, which starts out low, gets higher and louder, then dies down. Better have plenty of wild pigs, deer, and rabbits in the house, or else.

Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat
You dare to call them “unloveable”? You love scottish terriers, right? And pot-bellied pigs? And koalas? Who wouldn't love an animal that looks like a cross between all three? Fewer than 100 Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombats live in Epping Forest National Park in Queensland, Australia. If a park ranger took a copy of your book to work, a wombat would no doubt walk away disapprovingly, waggling its behind from side to side.

California Condor
If one of these enormous, soaring birds were to encounter Colbert's book, and if the book were a dead calf, the condor would eat it.

—As told to Marc Silver, Jennifer S. Holland, Helen Fields, and Catherine Barker

Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday in Connecticut. She was 88 years old. Madeleine L'Engle's books were some of my favorites in childhood. Her books weave stories that include science, but never make you feel as if you're being taught something. A Wrinkle In Time is based in part on Einstein's ideas about space and time. In A Wind in the Door, Meg travels her brother's mitochondria (the tiny powerhouses of the cells) to cure him of a mysterious disease. Limb regeneration plays a major part in The Arm of the Starfish.

The books were wildly successful, and they certainly resonated with me - to live in a big old house like Meg's, with lots of siblings and brilliant scientist parents, eating dinners cooked on bunsen burners, was my romantic ideal of childhood. Now cooking on bunsen burners just seems like a bad idea - lab chemicals and food preparation belong in separate rooms. But the interest in unknown worlds sparked by the books lived on, for me and many other readers. I still reread A Wind in the Door every few years - maybe now it's time to pick it up again.

— Helen Fields

Over at Rogers' Rules of Order, a comment came in from Jessica, taking us to task for the Harry Potter story in the August issue of National Geographic.

She wrote: I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed. Being a major Harry Potter fan, I noticed a mistake in the mandrake section of "Harry Potter's Garden." The mistake is that you said that the mandrake "helps Harry's teacher reverse a turn-to-stone spell." There are two things wrong with this. The first is that it is not Harry's teacher, it is his school's nurse. Secondly, it does not "reverse a turn-to-stone spell." It "returns those who have been petrified to their original state" (this is a quote taken from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). i have never found a mistake in National Geographic before, but seriously, if you read about two pages of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, or even watched the movie, this could have been corrected. Thank you for reading my comment.

We asked our Potter correspondent, Melody Kramer, to defend the honor of National Geographic. And magically, she did. Her response:

Dear Jessica,
I must admit, I was petrified to receive your note. I’m wearing my pink fluffy earmuffs because comments like this are like the fatal cry of the mandrake … to my ego. But according to Chamber of Secrets, Professor Sprout prepared a draught of mandrake to revive petrification victims. And "reverse a turn-to-stone spell" is another way to say "returns those who have been petrified to their original state,” because people are essentially “turned to stone” when they’re petrified. I hope this clarifies things for you, and I’m glad you’re such a devoted Potter buff.

Melody

— Marc Silver