The Making of “Adaptation”

Have you ever run out of things to read on a flight? I did once, and, while rooting around in the seat pocket to see if there might be something there to distract me, I came across a story that would keep me engaged for years thereafter. A previous passenger had abandoned a day-old copy of the Miami Herald between the evacuation-procedure card and the air-sickness bag. As I idly flipped through it, I noticed a story about a local nurseryman named John Laroche and three Seminole men who had been arrested for stealing rare orchids from a Florida swamp. It was a sliver of a story, but I was intrigued by it, by seeing the words “swamp” and “orchids” and “Seminoles” and “plant cloning” and “criminal” together in one place. I headed to Miami for the initial hearing in the case, and published “