When it comes to careers in media, Sabrina Imbler is an anomaly. As Defector Media’s resident “creature beat,” they’ve carved out a niche as a reporter that, even Sabrina admits, many publications would consider a “luxury.” Except people love reading about animals; I for one will watch one of those Nature is Amazing videos anytime it comes across my feed. Sabrina’s published one collection of essays—How Far The Light Reaches, in late 2022—and their last three Defector bylines are about sharks on cocaine, owning dinosaur bones, and Bat Boy Summer. To me, that’s living the dream—in this industry but also, like, in life.
Last month, Sabrina announced a new project: Creatures of NYC, an email newsletter dedicated to bringing New Yorkers closer to the critters that share our city. “I’ve been living in Brooklyn for about 7 years now,” they wrote in a welcome bulletin, “and pretty early on I felt a kind of existential dread because the only wild animals I ever saw were rats, cockroaches, and house sparrows.” Now, it’s like Sabrina’s discovered another world that exists above, below, and around us—one of horseshoe crab festivals, solo mothing expeditions, and dragonfly mating rituals. Through our conversation, I was able to catch a glimpse.
Subscribe to Creatures of NYC.
The following interview has been edited and condensed.
Walden Green: I’m so curious to know a little bit about your career trajectory—how does one end up as Defector’s “resident animal beat”?
Sabrina Imbler: When I started in media, I quickly realized that I wanted to be a science journalist. I didn’t have any background in science, but I had always loved animals. At that time, I was reading a lot of Ed Yong, and I was like, “What a dream beat this guy has, just writing about scorpions whose anuses fall off, or whales that are doing incredible, classically whale things.” I guess it’s a popular beat, but not one that lots of publications invest in; it seems sort of like a luxury, since you’re not talking about things that necessarily affect humans.
I started to publish some freelance pieces about animals, which led me to my first job writing about science—at Atlas Obscura—and since then I’ve just tried to find jobs that allow me to write specifically about non-human life and the natural world. [Creatures] is the term that I use to talk about animals, because I think when you say animals, people conjure the idea of a lion or a zebra or a dog, and creature conjures like a weird little parasite. Those are the kinds of animals that I like to write about the most.
WG: That casts Creatures of NYC in an interesting light, because it’s about animals that we, as residents of the city, interact with on a daily basis—knowingly or unknowingly.
SI: I think it’s a mixture of both. There are so many creatures that we see every day and we just don’t give a second thought to, and then there are so many that are a little bit harder to find, maybe a bus ride away. This week, I’ve been reporting a story about noctule bats in Germany and honeybees in Japan; I write a lot about creatures that I probably will never meet.
So I made a New Year’s resolution at the beginning of this year to spend as much time as I could with the wildlife of New York. I also felt guilty, right? Like I’m writing about all of these animals that live so far away from me, and I’m not really getting to know my neighbors—in the most species-inclusive definition of that.
I’m not really getting to know my neighbors—in the most species-inclusive definition of that.
WG: What were some of the first local events you went to that made you think “wow, there might actually be something here.”?
SI: My favorite event of the year is the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Center Horseshoe Crab Festival. It happens in May or June, when the horseshoe crabs meet in New York City, and they come to the shore on new moons and full moons when the tides are really high. They’re easy to observe, because horseshoe crabs—if anyone is not familiar with them, they kind of look like roombas with a little tail, and they have all of these little legs underneath their top shell and they just kind of scuttle around the tides. They don’t go that fast, you can pick them up by their sides without hurting them, and it’s just such a cool way to come face to face with this really primordial-seeming creature. The first time I went was in 2019, and I had an absolute blast. I was so hungover. It was one of those events where you’re like, “Oh, this is meant for children, but I am also having an amazing time.”
I didn’t go for a couple of years, and this year was my first year back. But because I was so anticipating it, I was doing a lot of research, like “Could I see these crabs on my own?” And I learned that you can actually volunteer to count the horseshoe crabs during their mating season, because the species around New York City, they’re often taken for bait to different fisheries. They’re also taken to be like bloodlet, in a very medieval way, because their blood is used to test the purity of vaccines. So I did a couple of nights volunteering with the New York City Bird Alliance. I finished out my day of blogging on the couch, I got dinner, took the B44- SBS all the way to Sheepshead Bay, walked the 20 minutes to Plumb Beach, and met these seven strangers, who were all there to count horseshoe crabs.
WG: You obviously have an affinity for marine life—I mean, you wrote a whole memoir about sea creatures. Do you feel like the newsletter is a complement to what you were doing there, or maybe a needed contrast?
SI: I’ve always loved marine life, and by virtue of it being marine life, it’s really hard to see casually. I’m in the very early stages of working on another book, which I believe will be about arthropods, because I felt really distant from the creatures that I was writing about. I was like, “What are the creatures that I feel all the time?” And that’s bugs, right? It’s the bees on my roof. It’s the lantern flies outside of Lincoln Market. It’s the dragonflies that will mate and sort of curve their long bodies into the body of the dragonfly that they’re mating with.
It’s the dragonflies that will mate and sort of curve their long bodies into the body of the dragonfly that they’re mating with.
WG: I mean, New York City is a bug city before it’s a human city.
SI: What kind of bugs do you see day to day?
WG: I live with my dad and stepmom in Prospect Heights, and their bathroom is a full-on bug gala. We get the little green flying ones with lacy wings. We get moths in there, for sure, even some smaller beetles. Then the other day, I saw this one bug that I had never seen before; it was black with mottled white spots on it, and then orange accents around the head. I took that one outside because it was freaking me out while I tried to shower. Most of the time though, I like to leave the window open and be at one with the bugs.
SI: That’s a great attitude. Letting them come in, letting them come.
So with the newsletter, obviously a big part of it is this main events calendar. Do you have other plans in terms of things that you want to do with the newsletter, or other kinds of writing that you want to publish there?
SI: What I’m imagining is: each month when I send out the new updated list, which I’m continuously updating on the website, [there’ll be] a recap of the events that I went to, or the creatures that I saw, as a reminder that these really are all around, and you don’t need to go to an event to spend time with wildlife.
I know that for me, this is also like a journey of discovery for me in terms of: what is out there? How can I lean more into the life around me?
Something that I’ve been doing on my own time is mothing, which is like birding but for moths. It’s basically an activity where you put a sheet up, and then you shine a light on the sheet, and you wait for the moths to come. I thought that there would be a bunch of mothing events around New York City, but I could only really find a couple. So I was like, “What if I moth on my own?” On Monday, I mothed for the first time by the boathouse in Prospect Park, and I had a blast. Such a hot day, I was covered in bug spray, but I saw some really beautiful moths. Some people came up to me, and they were like, “Is this an art installation?” and I got to explain mothing to them.
I know that for me, this is also like a journey of discovery for me in terms of: what is out there? How can I lean more into the life around me? I do have a full time job where I write about animals, so my therapist was like, “Is this a good idea?” I definitely want to keep it light and focused on “This is what I saw. This is what I love. Maybe this is what I needed to see.” 🪲
Leave a Reply