He's only 10 years old, but Andrew Licht of Rapid City published his first book, "The Ferret Capture," earlier this month.

"What I really like about the whole book thing is that I've always wanted to help endangered animals, and a portion of the proceeds of my book will go to www.blackfootedferret.org," Andrew said. "I never thought I'd get to do that at this point in time, at my age."

"The Ferret Capture" is about a trip Andrew took to Buffalo Gap National Grasslands on Oct. 3, 2006, with his older brother, Brady, and his father, Dan Licht, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service.

Dan had been invited, through his job with the park service, to help capture black-footed ferrets in an effort to study them and help this endangered species survive. According to Andrew, during the "capture," tracking devices were implanted in the ferrets, and they were given shots to keep them healthy.

A few days later, Andrew's fourth-grade teacher at Corral Drive Elementary School gave him a writing assignment, and he chose to write about his ferret-capturing adventure. He said that his teacher gave him an A on the paper, and he brought it home from school with his other work.

"When my dad went through my pile of papers, he read it and said I should try to get it published," Andrew said.

In the book, Andrew describes the process of capturing black-footed ferrets, which includes spotlighting the prairie to find them, marking where they are seen, setting out cages to catch them, the process that wildlife biologists follow in studying them, and finally, their release back into the wild.

Andrew drew all the illustrations for the book, and Dan Licht provided the photos that appear in the book through Pronghorn Productions, his part-time nature-photography business.

"Most kids don't get to do stuff like this, so I consider myself pretty lucky," Andrew said.

He said that he didn't really know that much about black-footed ferrets before the capture but has since done a lot of research on them, which he included as "12 Black-footed Ferret Facts" in his book.

Andrew is not the first person in his family to have a book published.

"My dad wrote a book once (called "The Ecology and Economy of the Great Plains"), but I don't think he sold very many copies of it," Andrew said.

His dad agreed. "I have no doubt that my son's book will outsell mine," he said.

The Lichts are now busy distributing "The Ferret Capture."

Rushmore News is distributing 500 copies to bookstores in western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming, and the Black Hills Parks and Forests Association plans to offer it for sale in U.S. Forest Service and national park bookstores.

Dan and Andrew hope to have a book signing at Borders, as well as more area signing events in the next several months.

Andrew said he plans to be a zookeeper, pet-shop owner or maybe a wildlife biologist like his dad when he grows up.

"Writing is actually my third or fourth favorite thing to do," he said. "I like animals, reading and drawing the best."

He isn't sure if he'll try to be published again or not. That probably depends, as Andrew says in "The Ferret Capture," on whether he goes to bed again "dreaming about the illuminating night that I had just had" and decides to write another book about it.