He did not wish to sully his hands with gardening.

Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake’s neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies. […] The Devils Lake Basin is an endorheic, or closed, basin covering about 9,800 square kilometers in northeastern North Dakota.

As though the benamed things carried the longings of humans;

He is a policeman by day and a thief by night.