Gordon Grice's Blog, page 111
March 16, 2010
Praise for Deadly Kingdom
My publisher says I should brag more about Deadly Kingdom. So: Here's what other writers have said about it:
"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
"A wonderful, slightly terrifying, utterly captivating encounter with the animal world—not quite like anything I've ever read before."—Elizabeth ...
March 12, 2010
What Eats People: The Complete List, Part 12
In Alaska, it appears that a woman was killed by wolves the other day. They're waiting for autopsy results to be sure.
It's rare for wolves to succeed in killing a person in North America. In Europe there's a far more extensive history of wolves preying on people; in Asia, wolves are still occasional predators of children.
March 8, 2010
Random House gives free sample
Random House has posted an excerpt from Deadly Kingdom on its website. You may learn something about Christopher Columbus . . . and his dogs. Or at least about me and my dogs.
March 4, 2010
Dangerous Milk
In her short story "The Enduring Chill," Flannery O'Connor described the symptoms of a character who unwisely drank unpasteurized milk: "Alone in his freezing flat, huddled under his two blankets and his overcoat and with three thicknesses of the New York Times between, he had had a chill one night, followed by a violent sweat that left the sheets soaking and removed all doubt from his mind about his true condition. Before this there had been a gradual slackening of his energy and vague incon...
February 28, 2010
Killer Whale Attack
In the book version of Deadly Kingdom, I wrote about the first victim of Tilikum, the killer whale. Space prevented me from covering his probable second victim, a homeless man who intruded after hours. I'm sure by now everyone has heard of the third victim, a trainer at Sea World. While explanations for this sort of thing abound, the key factor no one seems to mention in the news stories I've read is that, to most other animals, we're nothing special. We'd like the world to behave according t...
February 24, 2010
What Eats People: The Complete List, Revised: Part 11
On the island of Komodo, a man has been wounded by the bite of a dragon. Worse can happen: The Komodo dragon is the only reptile unequivocally proved to prey on people. In the book version of Deadly Kingdom, I discuss the recently discovered dragon venom that seems to tranquilize prey into submission quickly. We now know four families of lizards possess venom. Until recently, only the beaded lizards, including the dangerous Gila monster, were known to be venomous. Most of these newly-discover...
February 19, 2010
What Eats People: The Complete List, Revised: Part 10
Five kinds of cats eat people. Historically, the tiger was regarded as the most prolific of the human-killing cats. Some reports claim tigers killed more than twelve thousand people in the 20th century. The most prolific single man-eater known to history is the Champawat tigress, which killed 436 people in India and Nepal. A famous hunter named Jim Corbett shot it dead in 1907. Today, in the Indian park named for Corbett—among other places—villagers still face deadly tigers.
February 14, 2010
What Eats People: The Complete List, Revised: Part 9
I said last time that the Nile crocodile is the world's current leader in predation on humans. That's what the numbers show, but there's a compelling case to be made for a few other predators, including the saltwater crocodile. No other habitual predator of humans is as big and powerful. It's the largest of the crocs: the biggest specimens go upwards of 20 feet, and they may weigh a ton and a half. It's also widely distributed across heavily populated parts of Asia, and that may mean it's tak...
February 9, 2010
What Eats People: The Complete List, Revised: Part 8
Here's one of the most notorious internet photos of recent years. The animal is a Nile crocodile; the arm belongs to a Chinese zookeeper. The croc was forced to give it back.
In researching for Deadly Kingdom, I went to great lengths to find out what animal eats the most people. It's not as simple a question as it seems, for a lot of reasons—the most important being that dead men tell no tales. The answer also changes with the times. Large-scale predation on people in the modern world always ...
February 4, 2010
Raccoon Attack
Another mauling that has people surprised pitted a child and her father against an escaped raccoon. Somehow the raccoon has acquired a cuddly image. But, as a biologist quoted in this news story notes, "Raccoon are vicious carnivores, and they're not afraid of people."
People are often surprised, too, to realize how big a coon can get. One that visited my patio stood on the ground and peered over the lip of a 30-gallon trash barrel. Another one, which my wife spotted beside the highway, was st...
