"However, humans are prey." Feminist ecophilosopher Val Plumwood confronts the most secretive truth of humans and nature through her near-death experience of almost being eaten by a crocodile.

We all die someday. Whether it's old age, an unexpected accident, or departing from loved ones due to illness, death is the most certain truth, albeit with differences in its process and timing. However, what if we were to end our lives as prey to another being? Even the mere thought of it invokes fear and a shiver of anger.

Val Plumwood, the author of "The Crocodile's Eye," forcefully asserts that humans are indeed prey. In 1985, while canoeing in Australia's Kakadu National Park, she encountered a crocodile three times in what she describes as the "whirlpool of death." Facing the eyes with vivid golden edge of the predator, Plumwood felt a rupture in the seemingly secure world she had inhabited until then. The anthropocentric worldview of the West, where humans reign supreme as top predators and can exploit other non-human beings at will, but not vice versa, crumbles as the painful truth emerges: humans, like all other forms of life, are also part of the food chain.

Plumwood shares this shocking experience candidly, attributing the arrogance of humans, who often perceive themselves as masters, as a cause of the ecological crises we face today. 

She argues that overcoming this crisis requires simultaneous efforts both from an ecological perspective to reposition humans, and from an ethical perspective to reposition non-human beings. Beyond the binaries of human and non-human, civilization and nature, mind and body, Plumwood suggests that all living beings are minds as much as they are bodies and deserve respect, yet must also accept the fact that they, too, will become prey when their turn comes.

In her gentle yet consistent voice, Plumwood recounts not only her overwhelming experience of almost being eaten by a crocodile but also memories of her companion wombat Bilby, with whom she shared a part of her life for over a decade, and reflections on visiting her son's grave, reconsidering Western burial practices. She seamlessly integrates these experiences to show that this perspective is not detached from our lives but rather fundamentally permeates them. "The Eye of the Crocodile" is a book that encourages us to courageously approach this important yet often overlooked truth. For those contemplating the act of sustaining their lives by taking the lives of others, this book will serve as a reliable guide and companion.