Lice, leeches, roaches, and rats, what people call vermin are fascinating cultures with vivid life styles. Marilyn Stablein, their chronicler, is a non-judgmental and generous writer who watches these nonhumans with serene detachment, humor, and uncanny empathy. Stablein may be the reincarnated Sumi-e (1420-1507), the master of ink painting who revealed universes with a few brush strokes. She reports in elegant prose the lives of creatures we usually crunch, tear, ignore or recoil from, and in so doing, she writes also the marvelous adventures of two contemporary traveling monks.