Gordon Grice's Blog, page 9

Kiss and Kill

Sure, it sounds like it’s about a serial killer, but it’s really about the wildlife of a river, and how you can sometimes see it better at dusk than in the full light. My new poem “Kiss and Kill” appears in the May/June issue of Oklahoma Today.

(The current issue isn't posted yet, but it's for sale. Or just subscribe; they have more cool stuff coming up.)

New Horror: In the Mountain Valley

He’d changed since the day they tried to carry his corpse home. He was far larger, swollen with decay; or maybe he’d simply had plenty to eat. Ripe horror from Gordon Grice--new in Aurealis #119

Doctor Polidori Shares a Case History

A new story by Gordon Grice in the latest Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter. (It's only six minutes; you have time.)

The Book of Deadly Animals

On Mice
He had taken the bait from my traps and left unscathed. He had skittered around noisily inside my kitchen range, crackling under the foil lining. I think I went a little mad. Finally I turned on the oven, meaning to cook him out, but the smell was soon intolerable, and my wife made me turn it off. I opened the oven—how much work would it be to scrape him off the heating element? None, as it turned out, for I had only cooked his droppings. “A mouse’s calling card,” my grandmother used to say when she found the tiny dark dunce caps in a cabinet. But I had no time for reminiscing, because my enemy leapt from the top oven rack and bounced off the open door. It looked like those elaborate gymnastic dives one sees in the Olympics, I noticed, even as I screamed like a child and slapped at the linoleum with a miniature baseball bat.
This happened the weekend of our anniversary. Tracy made me a strawberry pie to celebrate. She went out of town the next day, so only the mouse and I were there to share the apartment. The fridge was full of food, this being also the weekend after our Thanksgiving feast, so the pie sat on the counter, covered in foil. I noticed, as I dished up a piece of pie the next day, that I must have left a strawberry mess on the counter the night before. I relished the first few bites of the pie—its flaky crust, its tart-sweet insides, the seedy counterpoint to the general smoothness of its textures. But something was picking at my memory. I pictured the mess on the counter, a random smear of red syrup. But it wasn't random. It held some meaning. It was a code tantalizingly on the verge of coming clear. Doubtless you have already guessed its significance, but I didn't. I pushed the mystery out of my mind to concentrate on the book I was reading. The fork moved from the plate to my mouth over and over, steadily diminishing the slice of pie. When I had finished, I ran my index finger around the plate a few times, the sticky red adhering to me, then the last few crust crumbs sticking to that. I licked my finger clean.
It was so good that I judged a second piece advisable. At the counter again, I wondered when I could have left the smear there. I remembered cleaning up the night before. It was in fact quite impossible for a mess to exist there, because only I had been in the apartment. I saw everything then. Through the smear ran a curving line, a drag-mark in the red. A tail-track. My eyes followed this tail-mark to the point where it left the general mess. Yes, it went on, faintly, a slight strand of red curving all the way to the range. I opened the top of the range, and there the mouse was, zigzagging among the burners. I dropped the top. Then, gathering my courage, I lifted it back up, but in that second he had disappeared, presumably finding a hole down into the oven.
It was not nausea that hit me then so much as moral indignation. I know, intellectually, that I have often eaten food on which a mouse or rat has trod, wallowed, defecated. So have you. One accepts that, if one knows anything at all about the conditions of food manufacture. The FDA specifies how many insect parts are allowed in a jar of apple butter, how many kernels of popcorn may show the tooth-marks of rodents before a batch is rejected as unfit for people. The box of macaroni in my pantry may hold nine rodent hairs. A kilogram of wheat is allowed nine milligrams of rodent excrement. These “defects,” as the FDA calls them, are unavoidable. When a batch of food is rejected for having higher levels than these, the problem is one of aesthetics, not health. We simply eat, and have to eat, many things we’d prefer not to think about.
This, however, was quite different. Tracy had made the pie for me, an anniversary gift, a token of love. She’d even drawn a heart in the top crust. The mouse had contaminated it. Of course I knew at the same time that this kind of resentment gains me nothing. Mice are mice, and in this world it is impossible to avoid vermin. We are made of them, really: our bodies host headfuls of dust mites, gutfuls of bacteria, a pocket of Staphylococcus here, a toenail’s worth of fungus there. But I wanted the mouse out of my apartment, even though the word my was problematic.
He died early the following morning, his spine broken in a snap-trap I'd set days before, one he'd already robbed successfully at least once. The bait was a chunk of peanut butter that had dried so thoroughly it crumbled like a cookie when I stepped on it accidentally -- the trap had thrown it clear as it sprung. Nothing personal, sir, I thought as I looked at the mouse bent backward in the trap, already dead. Just you and me wanting the same food. But what I actually said was, “Take that, you little bastard.”
READ MORE ABOUT CRITTERS SMALL AND LARGE IN



Audiobook
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
*

I get interviewed about Deadly Animals

Read an excerpt on Gizmodo

Cabinet of Curiosities--for the curious kid

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

IndieBound

Direct from the Publisher


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

Tawny Eagle

Photography by Dee Puett

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 


Audio

Dee's Bugs

Photos by Dee Puett

"A Stiller Ground" in Faith Reader

This Land’s newest anthology, the Faith Reader, is full of surprises, from Woody Guthrie’s religion to a lethal injection. My own contribution is a memoir called “A Stiller Ground,” which appeared in the magazine a few years back and was listed as a Notable Essay of the Year in Best American Essays 2014. What I love about This Land, aside from its devastating stories, is its commitment to keeping them alive. Through its multimedia website and anthologies like this one, the press stands behind its authors and their work. I should make clear that Faith Reader doesn’t advocate for any particular religious view. It explores, with open mind and a respect for diversity, many aspects of its topic.

Bugged by Zombies

Illustration by Beckett Grice
We saw a call for stories. They must feature zombies battling some other kind of monster. My first thought was: That’s corny. My second thought was: I’d love to read that. My third thought was: I’d love to write that. 
I told my son Parker about it. He leapt straight to the third part.
“I challenge you,” I said.
“It’s on like neck bone, old man,” he replied.
Weeks went by. The action was nothing much to witness. Typing, basically. By the deadline, we’d each sent in a story.
Parker’s “other monster” was an aquatic critter. Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but with Lovecraftian touches.
As for me, I remembered how much fun I had as a kid watching giant bug movies. Surely giant bugs would eat zombies. Or vice versa.
In time, the news came. Both stories had been accepted.
Volume One of Unleashed: Monsters vs. Zombies  features Parker’s story “Hakopi’s Death Ritual” among others. 
Monsters vs. Zombies Volume II  features my story “Bugged.”
Read them if you dare!
Volume 1, featuring Parker's story

Volume 2, featuring my story