SHE'S GOT NO FEAR
TERRIE GONZALEZ
My four-year-old daughter burst into the house with her hands cupped together in front of her. "Mommy, mommy," she cried. "Look at my baby ammul."

My heart skipped a beat as I peered into the spaces between her fingers and tried to figure out what kind of creature she had captured. Fearing something dangerous, I felt relief to see a little gray ball of fur, a familiar wiggly nose and tiny little ears that would grow long and floppy.

"You have a cotton-tail rabbit," I told Lauren.

"I want to keep it," she said as a statement, not as a question seeking permission.

I explained to the precocious little girl that the bunny's mother would hop all over the field and cry and cry because she couldn't find her baby. We agreed to give the bunny a name, Hoppy, and take a photo so we could always remember when Hoppy had an adventure with Lauren one fine summer day in 1989. Then we took it back to the magnolia tree and released it.

It shouldn't surprise me that Lauren is seeking a career in biology involving animals.

Boston University student Lauren Gonzalez sits on the front of a research vessel off the coast of Belize where she conducted research on damsel fish. She is currently assigned to a research expedition in Ecuador.

She was always bringing home "sad luck" cases of abandoned cats and dogs that needed her brand of TLC. She took in even more animals after her 16th birthday when she obtained a driver's license. She didn't have to plead with anyone to stop the car and go back to rescue a critter on the side of the road. She just did it.

Dr. Anthony Holcomb taught Lauren to care for many of her injured animals, and once she talked him into letting her assist with a horse castration. She happily handed him instruments and ran back and forth to the lab for him.

A year ago, Lauren underwent three painful rabies injections so she could work for her school, Boston University, and do bat research in Central Texas. It was all in a day's work to put on rubber boots, don a respirator and a miner's headlight, and wade into dark caves filled with knee-deep guano.

Lauren Gonzalez l carefully holds a Central American bat that she captured recently while conducting research in Belize.

Lauren is now 22 years old, and she is six weeks into a four-month research expedition in Ecuador. A few nights ago she called to say she was relaxing in a hammock under a cabana and was watching the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.

My husband and I asked about her current research, and she explained that she is visiting fish markets and conducting a bio-diversity inventory of fish species.

"It's so sad, and it smells of death," she lamented. "I saw a nine-foot manta ray that was being chopped into little pieces for the Asian market. This had been a magnificent animal in the ocean and now it's dead."

And she spoke with alarm about the number of sharks in the fish market. "There weren't any adult sharks," she said. "They were all small, too young to breed." She expressed concerns that over-fishing is taking a toll on all species in the world's oceans.

After hearing her tenderhearted concern for the environment, I tried to connect her words with recent news stories about over-fishing, pollution and global warming.

And then she giggled. The laughter seemed strangely out of place after the serious subject matter of our conversation. "What's so funny," I asked.

"I'm under this cabana, and three bats just flew in here with me and they're flying around and talking to me," she said.

"That's my girl," I thought to myself. "No fear."

While others might run from bats or try and harm them, Lauren probably watched the aerial performance with the same wide-eyed curiosity that she demonstrated so long ago with "the baby ammul."

Lauren's South American research will take her to the Galapagos Islands later this spring, and she will retrace the steps of Charles Darwin, history's most famous naturalist. She'll have the opportunity to research species unlike any other on the planet. Blue-footed boobies. Giant Galapagos tortoises and albatrosses. Marine iguanas, finches and penguins.

Finally on May 18, she will trade in her straw hat, beach sandals and tattered shorts for a cap and gown. piece of paper will confirm that Lauren Elizabeth Gonzalez is indeed a member of Boston University's class of 2008, with a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in marine biology.

Then she will be ready to do her part to make the world a better place. Earlier this year, I saw a little cotton-tail venture out of hiding to inspect his world that was our lawn. And I wondered if that little guy is a descendent of Hoppy, 18 generations removed. What will the world look like 18 generations removed from Lauren? Will there still be bats and manta rays and sharks? herald@mediactr.com