Elaine Egbert, a secretary and a former dean of women, enjoys close encounters with nature. She has kept birds in her basement and boa constrictors, iguanas, and chameleons in her bedroom. She talks to goats, and they talk back. Her seven previous books, with locales in the Northwest rain forest, the deserts of New Mexico, or the alligator-infested Florida swamps, were written on location. Her family has included a coati, five baby opossums, three children, a neurotic cat, and one biology-smitten husband