Twenty-six snakes. Three sting rays. Two centipedes. One scorpion. Like a twisted version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry goes through and lists the number of each group of venomous animals he’s been bitten or stung by. It’s November in Brisbane, and we’re sitting at a small table in the Red Room, the University of Queensland campus pub, in part so I can ask him a few more questions for an article I’m working on, and in part because I couldn’t go to Australia and not catch up with Bryan. I’ve known him for several years now; when I was in desperate need of stonefish antivenom to complete one chapter of my dissertation, I messaged him on Facebook, and he was nothing but eager to help out. He brought it with him less than a year later, carefully packed in his baggage, as he traveled from Australia to China and finally to Hawaii for the International Society for Toxinology meeting. “I carried this halfway around the world for you,” I remember him saying sternly as he handed over the glass vial, the first time I’d ever met him face to face. My heart stopped — had I somehow offended such an influential scientist in my field? — until a half a second later, when his mouth cracked a smile.
“What about hymenopterans?” I ask with a grin two and a half years later over a pint, knowing how he’ll reply.
“Who counts bees? You want me to count every fucking fire ant, too?” Continue reading “A review of Venom Doc, the adrenaline-packed adventures of one scientist and his almost-fatal obsession with the world’s deadliest species”
