Gordon Grice's Blog, page 10

A Bowl of Beer (short story)

“A Bowl of Beer” by Gordon Grice. A lycanthropic tale of horror. In Unfading Daydream 3. 

Publisher's blurb: 11 speculative tales of fresh starts and renewals. Authors include Donovan Bertch, Alice Godwin, Gordon Grice, Tim Jeffreys, Cate Millican, A.L. Nachtman, Charlotte Platt, Stephen Paul Sayers, Fanni Suto, Michael Thomas, and Olin Wish.

Shark Attacks

Shark Attacks: Inside the Mind of the Ocean's Most Terrifying Predator (National Geographic Shorts) 

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Amazon
National Geographic pairs gripping and gruesome stories of shark attacks with cutting edge research to illuminate a fascinating underwater world that few truly understand. Sharks are the world's most fascinating predators—capable of detecting a single drop of blood in 25 million drops of ocean and sensing electricity emitted by their prey. In this ebook short, acclaimed nature writer Gordon Grice takes readers deep into the beauty and danger of the deep.

Cabinet of Curiosities

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What kid doesn’t love picking up shells on the beach, or finding a bird’s egg or snake’s rattle, or—treasure of treasures—a fossil? Then taking it home to put on a shelf or in a shoebox? That same impulse has, since the Age of Exploration, motivated collectors to turn their passion into amazing “cabinets of curiosities”— collections of beautiful and unusual objects that in many cases became the seeds of the world’s great natural history museums.
Cabinet of Curiosities is exactly the book for every young explorer who loves finding stuff in nature and bringing it home. Lavish, oversize, illustrated, and chock-full, it introduces kids to the wonders of natural history and the joys of being an amateur scientist and collector. Nature writer Gordon Grice, who started his first cabinet of curiosities at age six when he found a skunk’s skull, explains how scientists classify all living things through the Linnaeus system; how to tell real gold from fool’s gold; how to preserve butterflies, crab shells, feathers, a robin’s egg, spider specimens, honeycombs—and a skunk’s skull (and other skulls and bones); how to identify seashells; the difference between antlers and horns; what a thunder egg is and where to find it; the metamorphosis of cicadas; what a porcupine quill is made of; what to do with a shark’s tooth; how to read animal tracks. And then, what to do with your specimens, including how to build a cabinet of curiosities out of common household objects, like a desk organizer or a box for fishing tackle.
Reviewed in New York Times

I take some kids collecting--from the publisher's blog

Mentioned in Baltimore Sun

Reviewed in Boys' Life

Wisconsin Public Radio's Central Time interviews me about Cabinet of Curiosities


Science Friday interviews me

Read an excerpt about bones (courtesy of Science Friday)

Reviewed on Boing Boing

The Book of Deadly Animals

Previously published as Deadly Kingdom.


Audible
Amazon.com
Barnes and NobleIndie Bound
UK Edition


Did he say repugnatorial gland? What a wealth of information Gordon Grice is, and what a fine, beguiling writer. This book is a must for anyone even remotely thinking of getting a monkey, a sea lion, or, heaven forbid, a dog. – David Sedaris

Grice eagerly seeks encounters that most of us would gladly avoid. The book is good when describing creatures that are patently murderous—sharks, crocodiles, bears—but even better when recounting the hazards of those regarded as cuddly and benign.  . . . The author clearly adores the fearsome creatures he corrals here. – Brad Leithouser, “Five Best: Dispatches from the Natural World,” Wall Street Journal
When it comes to the most deadly animals on the planet it is best to be prepared. With The Book of Deadly Animals forewarned is forearmed! - Bear Grylls

Gordon Grice writes about animals with a wit that relies on tone of voice, his ironically exact diction and an instinct for analogy. . . . Vivid language never fails him. The author has limitless interest in the fierce side of nature. – Michael Sims, The Washington Post
If Cormac McCarthy turned his hand to nature writing, the results might sound something like Grice. –Mark Dery, True/Slant
A wonderful, slightly terrifying, utterly captivating encounter with the animal world—not quite like anything I’ve ever read before.—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed

A highlight reel of anthropophagy spiced up with dashes of science. . . . Read it for lines like this: "Men sped across the face of the water, propelled by unseen sharks. – “Hot Type: Best New Books of Summer,” Outside Magazine

An excellent, addictive read. – The Animal Review
Deadly Kingdom is an engagingly original field guide to the venomous, the sharp-clawed, the infectious, and the downright predatory. It’s a witty, fascinating, and playfully macabre read. – David Baron, author of The Beast in the Garden

Deadly Kingdom is sometimes gory, always gorgeous, and really great. Gordon Grice is a warm and funny guide, his fingers always on the facts. There are amazing stories here, fascinating people and places, but above all, there are the animals we thought we knew, and the ones we’ve never heard of: hagfish, guinea worms, eyelash vipers, blister beetles. You’ll never go barefoot in the barnyard again. – Bill Roorbach, author of Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey
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I get interviewed about Deadly Animals

Read an excerpt on Gizmodo

The Red Hourglass

available in hardcover * paperback * eBook *audiobook
Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Indiebound * UK Editions
Audible.com (also available on iTunes)

The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators is a memoir of my adventures with the most fascinating predators I know. It received favorable reviews in theNew York Times and more than thirty other newspapers and magazines, and was named on best-of-the-year lists by the New York Public Library, the Los Angeles Times, and PEN Center West. I read from The Red Hourglass on National Public Radio'sAll Things Considered.


PRAISE FOR THE RED HOURGLASS"This is first-rate, unsentimental writing about nature and about the ways that human beings try to cope with the most terrible cruelties that nature offers up."--The New York Times
"An absolutely spellbinding book."--Elle
"Gordon Grice is one hell of a writer. I was originally disturbed by some of the killing he depicts, but his descriptions are so compelling that I had to read on. I'm glad I did. Grice pays close attention to the creatures he writes about, and it really pays off. The Red Hourglass is an absolutely first-rate book." --Jeffrey Masson, author of When Elephants Weep
"The most interesting collection of essays I've read in years."--Arkansas Democrat Gazette
"Gordon Grice's essays hold the reader in their spell, and then carry him beyond the usual romance of the insect and animal world to something darker and far more interesting: Nature's Gothic. The Red Hourglass marks the debut of a fresh, strange, and wonderful new voice in American nature writing."--Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma
"Elegant, and wryly funny."--Esquire
"A precise and savage blow aimed at our predatory supremacy--I wolfed it down."--Will Self, author of Great Apes
"First-rate. . . Feisty, felicitous prose."--Publishers Weekly
"Grice's fusion of scientific and literary gifts converts dangerous and ugly predators--including tarantulas, rattlesnakes, black widow spiders, and jungle pigs--into objects of fascination. . . He weaves an expert's knowledge of biology into an engrossing tapestry of personal narrative and philosophical reflection. . . . Inviting comparisons with Lewis Thomas and Peter Medawar, this book will delight those interested in either animals or literature."--Booklist
"Chilling. . . fascinating."--Houston Chronicle
"The stories can be gruesome, but they grip you because Grice never blinks . . . . The quality of his attention to the facts of life and his willingness to look the awful and the repellent straight in the eyes will earn your admiration."--Men's Journal
"A superb book. . . . Grice possesses the combination of a 9-year-old's fascination and an adult's common sense. . . . His reactions are enchantingly lyrical."--Los Angeles Times
"Eye-popping. . . . Grice combines homespun observations with biological facts, flavoring his findings with just the right measure of philosophical spice."--Entertainment Weekly

FREE SAMPLE: "There in the darkness I see something round as a flensed human skull, glinting like chipped obsidian, scarred with a pair of crimson triangles."


Paperback edition

Rescued Raptors (and others)

Harris hawk
African vulture
Peregrine falcon
American crow
American crow
African vulture
Photography by Dee Puett

Assassin Bug Comes Indoors

Photos by Dee Puett

Cabinet of Curiosities Under 2 Bucks!

The ebook edition of Cabinet of Curiosities is on sale now for only $1.99! Get it for this special price now through 8/11. https://goo.gl/3yd9ge

An Elephant Hunt

By a British medical officer just returned from the Bay of Bengal, 1829
Imagine 2,000 or 3,000 men surrounding a tract of country six or eight miles in circumference, each one armed with different combustibles and moving fires; in the midst suppose 300 elephants, being driven towards the centre by the gradual and regular approach of these fires, till at last they are confined within a circle of about two miles; they are then driven by the same means into a space made by the erection of immense logs of ebony and other strong wood, bound together by cane, and of the shape (in miniature) of the longitudinal section of a funnel, towards which they rush with the greatest fury, amidst the most horrid yells on the approach of fire, of which they stand in the greatest dread. When enclosed they become outrageous, and charge on all sides with great fury, but without any effect on the strong barricado; they at last gain the narrow path of the enclosure, the extreme end of which is just large enough to admit one elephant, which is immediately prevented breaking out by strong bars laid across. To express their passion, their desperation, when thus confined, is impossible; and still more so, to imagine the facility and admirable contrivance by which they are removed and tamed. Thus it is:—A tame elephant is placed on each side, to whom the wild one is fastened by ropes; he is then allowed to pass out, and immediately on his making the least resistance, the tame ones give him a most tremendous squeeze between their sides, and beat him with their trunks until he submits; they then lead him to a place ready prepared, to which he is strongly fastened, and return to perform the same civility to the next one.
In this way seventy wild elephants were captured for the purpose of government labour. The tame elephants daily take each wild one singly to water and to feed, until they become quite tame and docile. The remaining elephants were shot by the people.
I took possession of a young one, and have got him now tied up near my door; he is quite reconciled, and eats with the greatest confidence out of my hand; he is, however, too expensive to keep long, and I fear I must eventually shoot him. Some idea of the expense may be supposed, when I tell you that in one article alone, milk, his allowance is two gallons per day.
I was at this scene with thirty other officers and their ladies, and we remained in temporary huts for nearly ten days.

Lost in America: A True Story

A graveyard tale of human and hyena. 



By Gordon Grice and Addison Turner