Gordon Grice's Blog, page 27

Horned Lizard vs. Harvester Ants

Here's my childhood in a nutshell. Thanks to Brian for the link:

Brown Recluse Fatality

This is the first case I can recall involving paralysis because the spine was directly involved. The location of the bite was obviously a factor. Most recluse bites are not serious; in fact, only around 20% become medically serious at all. It's the few gruesome cases like this that make the news. 

Thanks to Bob Z. for the news tip. 

Fla. Man Dies From Brown Recluse Spider Bite - Yahoo: ""It bit him right on the back of his neck and rotted out to the vertebrae," Bill Reese told WFTS. "He wasn't afraid of anything. He thought he was invincible. But he wasn't.""

An Elephant Amok

Thanks to Max for showing me this story of an elephant in musth — “running amok” — from Through the Tiger's Eyes. There’s a lot more to the story, which I’ll have to leave out for copyright reasons, but I’m eager to track down this book.

There is a small, neat, whitewashed building roofed with terracotta tiles. A steep hill covered in large, black boulders rises directly behind the house, which in fact is the Kopa Dubri guard outpost. It was here Shivaji went berserk. There were signs that something was amiss with Shivaji about a month before this, when he started attacking Jung Bahadur, another large tusker.
Shivaji was fine for the next two weeks in the care of his grass cutter. But then the elephant came into musth properly and he went mad. Neither his grass cutter nor the other mahouts could control him. Shivaji broke the enormous chains that shackled him, dragging a length of chain on one of his hind legs, and took off into the jungle. He took all the female elephants and their calves with him. Three nights later, on a bright moonlit night, Shivaji with other elephants approached the guard outpost. They came silently. Three men were asleep inside, two laborers and a forester called Bagwan Das Patel. The men woke to the sounds of Shivaji tearing the back of the house apart. Other elephants surrounded the place. The two laborers ran up the steep slope behind the house. The elephants chased them but could not climb the rocky hill. Shivaji returned to the house and pushed the walls in with his forehead. Bagwan Das ran out of the other side and down the road. Shivaji ran after him. The two laborers heard Bagwan Das scream twice. They ran through the night to the next guard outpost, where they stayed until dawn. When they returned next morning, they saw Shivaji standing over Bagwan Das's inert body with the other elephants close around him. The laborers went on to the elephant village and raised the alarm. The mahouts rushed to the scene in a Jeep. The elephants had gone. First they found Bagwan Das's towel. Then they saw the marks of Shivaji's tusks in a sal tree. Bagwan Das's body was on the other side of the tree, literally torn limb from limb.
Shivaji, recaptured, is bathed and fed every day now and is no trouble. Everyone agrees Shivaji cannot help what he did. He went mad and did not know what he was doing.

Giraffe Kicks Woman to Death

Scott Harrison/Creative Commons
Thanks to Natan, who pointed me to this item. The story is a few years old, but interesting:

Giraffe kicks woman to death trying to protect calf from her dog | Mail Online: 

"'It is possible the dogs scared the giraffe and the animal reacted on instinct to protect her young calf. The impact must have been enormous and we believe the victim would have died instantly.'"

In current giraffe news, we have a controversy over the killing of a zoo giraffe. I responded to this article in a recent Facebook exchange:

This article is misguided, in my opinion. The fact that zoos
also have a profit motive doesn't cancel the good they do in preserving species. And the fact that many zoo animals aren't endangered is hardly the point. Managing wildlife is a tough pursuit. It involves hard choices. This business of tracking the parentage of the animals to avoid risky inbreeding is far more complicated than can be explained in brief articles. Sure, it would be great if there were safe places in the wild for all animals to breed and live
without human interference. There aren't. It's a tough world with too many people on it. I respect the Copenhagen Zoo staff for being open and trying to turn this killing into education--and lion food.

I didn't get very particular about the management of zoo populations, as Facebook isn't an ideal space for long explanations and I'm not the ideal person to give them, but here's an article that gives a taste of the issues involved.

Now another Danish zoo is saying it won't kill its own giraffe, also named Marius. Apparently nobody ever planned to kill Marius 2, but that didn't stop people from protesting. 


Related Post:

Birth of a Giraffe

Lion Attack Video

A mash-up of lion attack footage, mostly involving captive lions and people who might have known better. 

Battle of the Alligators

Thanks to Croconut for showing me this video. Two gators disagree on a golf course. 

Zombies by Beckett

My son the artist has been on a zombie kick lately. Some samples of Beckett's work.


That's a crowbar broken off in that fellow's head. He has some interpersonal problems, as many zombies do.

It's Here!: Deadly Animals on Audio

The Book of Deadly Animals is now available on audio!



Actor Keith Sellon-Wright (Seinfeld, West Wing, etc.) has narrated my most popular book for audio download. It's available from 

iTunes
Audible.com

To hear a sample, click that link to Audible.com and then hit the little PLAY arrow just below the cover. 

Listen to the Deadly Animals. . .

Coming soon to audio:


I'll have details in a few days.

Hissing Cockroaches

"As I sit here typing this with my left hand, I hold in my right a cockroach just over three inches long and almost an inch wide. It is a member of a docile species, the Madagascar giant hissing roach. It moves more or less constantly, its clawed feet clinging to my skin as it climbs over the fleshy fold between my thumb and forefinger to reach my knuckles. It is searching, I think, for ground that doesn't wiggle and shake so much. When I pause in my typing it stops and stands waving its antennae, each thin and segmented, the right one abbreviated by some accident.
I’m sure many readers will find my comfort with the cockroach surprising. In areas where they pose a serious hygiene problem, roaches outrank even spiders as a focus of phobia. But my little friend does me no harm, unless I count his cheddary smell. He is a pet, part of a colony given to my eldest son by a biologist friend of mine. If not for human interference, he would have passed his life in the jungle, having nothing to do with me or any other human. In that way, he and his kind are like most of the 3500 species of cockroach."
--from The Book of Deadly Animals




Photography by Dee Puett