And even with all of these adventures under her belt in the name of researching her articles, films and 39 books — aimed at both adults and children alike — Montgomery said only one animal has caused her pain and suffering, other than the grief of their passing away.

“The only animal that ever hurt me was a mosquito that gave me dengue fever when I was in Borneo,” she said. “I’ve been very lucky. I’ve handled lots of animals — some of them venomous — and never have I been frightened of them for even a moment.”

This week, she braved one of her wildest adventures yet — serving as the keynote speaker for the Ogden School District Foundation’s annual Fall Author Event.

Prior to Thursday’s gala, Montgomery sat down with the Standard-Examiner to discuss her life as a naturalist, writer and addressing youth.

Photo supplied, Ogden School District Foundation

Montgomery’s works include “The Good Good Pig,” “Spell of the Tiger,” “What the Chicken Knows” and “How to Be a Good Creature.”

‘Jungle Explorer Author’

“Growing up, I always felt like animals were my people,” Montgomery said. “I was born in 1958, so ‘jungle explorer author’ was not a job description that was known to people born back then.”

At first, she contemplated becoming a veterinarian, but while growing up in Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton neighborhood, she began to read.

“My father would help me read stories in the New York Times that had to do with animals,” she said. “What animal stories were in the New York Times in the ’60s? They’re all stories about how everyone was going extinct. Whales were going extinct. Polar bears were going extinct. Elephants were going extinct. And why? Because of overhunting, because of pollution, because of human overpopulation, because of us. I knew that if people understood how wonderful these creatures were, if they understood that they love their lives like we love ours, if they understood that these were our family that they would say, ‘We’ve got to stop this.'”

Photo supplied, Ogden School District Foundation

Montgomery said she took a lot of her inspiration from another person who took the time to understand our animal kingdom.

“One of my heroines growing up was Jane Goodall, who just died (Wednesday) at age 91,” Montgomery said. “Died with her boots on. She died of natural causes. She was in California on a speaking tour. What a gentle death and what a great legacy she leaves.”

Through the years, Montgomery has earned a reputation of being very hands-on and making the effort to travel to the habitats of animals and spending copious amounts of time with them.

“It seemed to me when I was looking at the pictures in National Geographic in the 1960s, before I could even read, that being among the animals and making friends with them, knowing them, having relationships with them was a really good tool of inquiry,” she said. “Sure, you want to use your intellect. Sure, you want to use your experience. And as a journalist, you’re going to use what, when, where, why, how, but you also use your heart. And the way you use your heart is by forming relationships with your study animals.”

She said it’s these relationships between her and the animals she has studied that helps convey what an animal is all about to readers.

“In many of my books, I get to know individuals intimately and I get to know what their world feels like, smells like and sounds like,” she said. “In that way, I welcome the reader into their world through my senses.”

Montgomery’s close encounters with animals and her willingness to venture far and wide to study them for her writing once got her labeled by Boston Globe columnist Vicki Constantine Croke as “part Indiana Jones, part Emily Dickinson.”

“That was a huge compliment,” Montgomery said. “It is funny how people think I’m ‘Girl Danger’ and then you meet the person who’s like 120 pounds with little bird bones, and I’m not exactly Cobra Kai, but nothing I’ve studied has killed me yet.”

‘I felt tremendous hope’

In addition to her appearance at Thursday night’s gala — as has been the case with previous Fall Author Events — Montgomery spent part of Friday with 10 winners of an essay contest involving district students before addressing an assembly of students. This year, the essayists and assembly were made up of the district’s fifth and sixth graders.

This year’s essay theme: “How to be a Good Creature — Lessons that we can learn from the animals around us.”

Montgomery said she loves being a cheerleader for today’s youth.

“I look at our young people, not just as leaders of tomorrow, but as leaders of today,” she said. “We certainly need better leaders than the ones we have right now. We need people with compassion, we need people with vision, we need people with conviction, courage and we need people who understand and care about our earth and don’t use it as a cesspool.”

She said that she especially wants kids to realize that there are teachers in and out of the classroom.

“There are teachers all around us and they don’t always just look like the teacher in your classroom,” she said. “They might be a shaman. They might be the janitor. They might be a spider. They might be an anaconda. They might be your dog. They’re all around us and our job is to recognize our teachers.”

Montgomery added that she wants youth to realize the gravity of the situations faced by our planet today.

“I want them not to buy the lie that the world is about accumulating a bunch of stuff like money and cars and clothes,” she said. “That is a lie and every wise man and wise woman who has ever lived has said that. And yet, people fall victim to this and then we wonder why we are so unhappy. We wonder why our ocean has more plastic in it than fish — or will by 2050. We wonder why we have plastic in our brains, in our breast milk, in our blood. We’re ruining our great green earth, which is there to support us and full of God’s gifts for all of us, and I think kids know that. If they don’t just get sucked off into this crazy lie, they are going to save the world.”

She added that she believes Ogden School District’s young essayists will be among those who can save the world.

“When I read the essays by these kids in fifth and sixth grade, I could see how these animals ignited their imagination,” she said. “I felt tremendous hope.”