INTRODUCTION

To Mongolian herders, “wild animals” are those that do not enter the domestic sphere of the encampment. Herd animals are seen as part of the extended family. According to Naraa, a wild animal is afraid of humans and hides on the forested slopes, or high in the mountains where few herders would venture on horseback. A co-domestic animal is “fed by people” and nurtured as part of the co-domestic sphere (geriin tejeever). When I asked Naraa what she thought “to domesticate'” meant, she answered with a succinct, practical reply: “we feed them and they feed us.” In fact, Mongolian herders provide only minimal supplementary feed to the herds; however, I interpret her answer to mean more broadly that a herder's role is to nurture, and that then the animals will in turn provide for the herder.

In the previous chapters I focused on herd animals and their closely intertwined lives with herders within the co-domestic sphere of the encampment. This chapter goes beyond this co-domestic realm to encounter other animals and plants that live outside this sphere, inhabiting the forest and mountain slopes and those beings that do not have regular contact with humans.