Customer Reviews

The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators

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This is without doubt the most gruesomely graphic book on predation that I have ever read. The predators are: the black widow spider, the praying mantis, the rattlesnake, the tarantula, the pig, the dog, and the brown recluse spider. Another half dozen or so ghastly creatures also make their appearance such as the crocodile, a bizarre "cricket-beast," hawk wasps and wolf spiders, not to mention humans.

Gordon Grice, who is a gifted amateur naturalist who teaches humanities and English at Seward County Community College in Kansas is the kind of guy who collects crickets and spiders and beetles in jars so he can feed them live creatures and watch them chow down. He is the kind of guy who goes to rattlesnake roundups and breathes deeply. He is the kind of guy who stops for road kill and likes to attend vivisections. He's like the guy who goes to the top of a tall building just for the thrill of looking down; but what excites Grice's fancy is to watch how predators kill and devour their prey. The creepier the predator, the better. You can put those quick, clean and "humane" lion kills back in your VCR and watch it on TV. What Grice wants us to experience is exactly how the mandibles of the "cricket-beast"sound as they crunch through the beetle's exoskeleton and just how it feels to die, or nearly die, of rattlesnake or black widow venom.

He's not particularly interested in scholarship (there are no footnotes or references), although he is careful about letting us know when he thinks a certain report, say of a nine foot rattler, is probably an exaggeration. He is an excellent writer who knows the value of concrete detail, tersely put; and he has the scientist's love for finding out exactly how something happens. What he does that no other writer in my recall has done is to emphasize the disgusting and revolting details of predation without euphemism or the use of any fig leaves.

Be forewarned then that this is NOT the sort of nature book your eight-year-old grandson needs to read before going to bed--although if he gets his hands on it, he will! And he will have nightmares.

The question that might be asked is why is Grice so intend on rubbing our faces in the brutality of nature? Clearly he has an agenda over and above grossing us out. I get the idea that he thinks a lot of what we hear about ourselves and our fellow creatures is so much pollyannaish tripe. He doesn't say as much directly but consider this from page 245:

"There is actually nothing your average scientist hates more than information from nonscientists, all of whom he assumes to be unwashed, idol-worshipping degenerates good only for working on cars. The thing your average scientist despises second most is a fact that doesn't fit his theory..."

Grice is able to dazzle us with his own observations about the animals he studies, but being an English prof he knows that his standing in the scientific community is (or before he wrote this book, was) zilch. It's easy to identify with his frustration in this matter, and acknowledge that it is a shame that scientists tend to run the other way when they see a nonscientist coming, or that they will not give credence to ideas that come from nonscientists. And it is especially true that nothing is worse for a scientist than a fact that doesn't fit his theory!

Grice's inclusion of dogs and pigs as predators goes toward making what I see as one of the messages of this book. Simply put, we humans are domesticated animals. We have--helped along by our dogs, pigs, sheep and cattle, our grains and fruits, our social and political structures--become "tamed." Grice darkly hints, as H. G. Wells did in his novel The Time Machine (1895), that this may not be all to the good. With our effete fussiness about the vulgarity of the animal world we are becoming like the Eloi who will be eaten by the brutal Morlocks. If we lose our ability to act without inhibition as the creatures Grice describes do when in pursuit of their dinners, we may indeed become something akin to sheep. Grice doesn't mention it directly but there is some considerable evidence that domesticated animals are not as smart as the wild kind.

After advising us of just how horrid dogs can be, especially as pack hunters, Grice presents the counterpoint: "The care of animals, along with the tending of crops, is a root of our social structure. It dictates our need for permanent homes, our construction of walls and fences, ultimately our economy and culture. The dog makes this possible, because it was the dog, with his keener nose and ears, that made it feasible for us to protect livestock from nocturnal predators. Our tools, intelligence, and eyesight complement his senses; we share a territorial instinct that gives us a common goal." (p 231)

He adds, "This bond [between man and dog] distinguishes the dog from other canids. It also distinguishes modern humanity from its older branches, because it is an essential element of the change from hunter-gatherer to the settled life." (p. 232)

Finally, in a kind of summation, after observing the collapse and then rise again of the brown recluse spider populations in his shed, Grice writes, "Serial murder, war, genocide, and even witch hunts have all been linked to population changes and competition. We let ourselves off the hook ["kid ourselves," I would say] when we define such killing as 'abnormal.' We put the behavior at a distance, letting ourselves think of it as something alien, something we normal folk could never do.... But the capacity to murder, to become demonic, is in our nature.

"One of our natures, anyway." (p. 258)

Gordon Grice has a disturbing fascination with bugs, spiders in particular. But his fascination is our entertainment, as he writes in flowing prose his observations of these nasty little crawlers. The Red Hourglass is an extremely well-written account of the habits and habitats of things that creep in the night.

The book is divided into seven different studies, Black Widow, Mantid, Rattlesnake, Tarantula, Pig, Canid, and Recluse. Though Grice gives fascinating accounts of the darker aspects of pigs and dogs, it is painfully clear in his writings that his love is truly for the spider.

The Red Hourglass is a non-fiction book that is written with such interesting and personal observations that it feels somewhat like a monster story at times. If you want to find out more about these creepy, crawly, nasty little arachnids, Grice is an excellent way to learn. This would be a great book to get kids started on taking interest with biology or even anthropology studies, it's that well written

And I hate spiders. Go ahead and grab up a copy of The Red Hourglass, I doubt you will ever find non-fiction reading as fun as Grice, having the same flair with his biology studies as Kurt Eicheneald does with his political studies. Enjoy!

What the reader gets with this book are seven essays written by a literary/humanities based college professor on seven particular predators: the black widow, the praying mantis, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, pigs, dogs, and the brown recluse spider. The writing is surpisingly good and the subject matter, while somewhat dark and gory, is fascinating.

The reader from Michigan calls this book 'backyard naturalism' in a derogatory manner. I am a biology major and, although the majority of Grice's claims appear consistent with similar data I have seen, this is not a hard science book; criticizing it in that context is an apples verses oranges category mistake. Conversely, I praise this work as 'backyard naturalism' at its best. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Red Hourglass from front to back. Take a bit of Peter Matthiessen's literary organicism, a pinch of Steven King's macabre involvment, E. O. Wilson's entomology, a dash of Desiderius Erasmus' sad, pragmatic humor, and some of Montaigne's candor, and you can wile away sumptuous moments zoosynthesizing the adventure of the 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' crossed with a bored boy's deific experimentation with arthropods, among other animals; all written with starkness and skill. What's a long pig? one may ask. The very sight of egregious brown recluse bites makes me kiss the soil of northern California.

This book is a good mix of the literary and scientific milieus. It draws one in by the curiousity and repulsion of the subject matter as ruse for the author's peculiar expository skill.

Do yourself a favor and buy this book. If you like to read about the lives of strange critters, and appreciate fine prose and precise natural historical observation,you will enjoy this book immensely. The author also betrays a sophisticated understanding of both the science, and mystery, of life, which he nevertheless wears lightly. The down-to-earth spirit of Nebraska and Oklaholma also shines through the deceptively simple prose style. Finally, the book is devoid of any of the man and nature, circle of life, save the whale posing that mars so many nature books. This is true, backyard natural history, not politics. If you think you might like this book, you will.

Who knew just how deadly the world around us was? Grice covers a wide range of beasts: Spiders (Black Widow, Tarantula, Recluse a.k.a. Violin Spider), rattlesnake, pig, dogs (wolves, coyotes, jackals) and the praying mantis. He has a lyrical eloquence and interstices natural philosophy into the essays, making the book far more than a recitation or list of aspects of bestial killers.
One slightly disturbing feature is Grice's juvenile behavoir in collecting insects and tossing them together in tanks to see who lives. I began to feel that I was reading the Diary of a Madman, and hurried through these anecdotes.
The abilities of these various animals to kill and their instincts to murder--for food or fun--were fascinating, as were Grice's parallels to us as human predators.

An amateur naturalist's musings on the various vermin and mongrels he's studied over the years. The pieces are written in the style & tone of a monthly slickzine, which according to the flap copy is the kind of writer Prof. Grice is. He wisely stays away from attempting much actual zoology, instead confining himself to his own observations and philosophizing. These anecdotes make for the most effective pieces. A giant cricket devouring a frightened praying mantis; dogs being seized by bloodlust to kill rattlesnakes; and a whole, miniature cycle of rotating top predators in an old shed; all make for absorbing reading--if your tastes run to creepy-crawlies, that is. The chapter on pigs feels like makeweight, as he has little first-hand material in the way of predation to relate about that animal.

At the end, he cuts loose a sneer against scientists, behind which there's doubtless another book.

although mr. gordon grice avoides the jargon of the entomologist, his observations and writings are precise and quite informative.

The Red Hourglass ranks among my favorite non-fiction books. Some of the stories Mr. Grice relates are downright creepy -- especially the mantis vs. the giant cricket. I did find myself disagreeing with him on a few points, especially his assertion that humans somehow fit into the middle of the food chain. I'm puzzled how anyone could doubt our species' claim as apex predator when we keep lions and orcas in zoos for the amusement of our children. Still, I don't have to agree with every assumption to enjoy a remarkably well-written and carefully considered acount of the brutal world that surrounds us every day.

Only an author so fascinated by spiders that he admits to spending hours watching them spin their gossamer webs, could weave such a series of tales about animal predators. The contents of this book indicate that the reader will soon be immersed in essays about black widows, mantids, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, pigs, dogs, and the brown recluse . . . but this belies the fact that Grice often, and with great ease, segues between families, orders, and whole kingdoms of life. Halfway thru the "widow" chapter in fact, Grice begins his first of many deviations from the subject at hand, peppering the reader with facts about various beetle species and the short-lived caterpillar that becomes lunch. In the midst of the "mantid" chapter, we not only learn that baboons are pack hunters, but that leopards have a taste for human flesh - a grisly fact that is borne out by the fossil record. This is not a book for the squeamish or for people preferring to encounter wildlife behind a glass window of a terrarium exhibit in the zoo.

The "rattlesnake" chapter reads like a Stephen King novel (with the plot removed) as Grice introduces us to haunting images of winter dens full of seething masses of poisonous snakes, details of the flesh-eating venom rattlers possess, and introductions to a whole host of the judgment-challenged humans who participate in rattlesnake roundups for fun and profit. And, for good measure he combines all this with descriptions of the terror of what it must be like to be buried alive.

Perhaps Grice says it best when he writes, "To understand the pig, we should now take a long detour into the lives of insects and salamanders."

I heartily recommend this book to anyone wanting to take a detour into the natural world without leaving the comfort of their armchair. _The Red Hourglass_ is a well-written map to the fascinating animal/animal interactions which drive life on this planet. Up and down the food chain, everybody gets an opportunity to be a predator, and it's not always the big and strong (and human) who survive.

A mordant masterpiece, in which the author invents a genre all his own: Natural History Gothic, or better yet: Nature Noir. The chapter titles---"Tarantula," "Recluse," "Mantid," "Black Widow," "Rattlesnake"---tell it all. Fascinated by the alien ways of the nonhuman world, Grice combines the sardonic deadpan of noir fiction with the best naturalists' unsentimental scrutiny of animal behavior and a rural midwesterner's applied knowledge of the predator-prey relationship. A Jean-Henri Fabre for literati who drive pickups with rifle racks.