The Unburnt Egg (More Stories of a Museum Curator)

Museum natural history collections have been called libraries of life. Their very purpose is to help us probe, understand and enjoy the world’s astonishing biodiversity. In The Unburnt Egg Brian Gill continues his spellbinding stories from more than thirty years as a curator. Some tales are so bizarre they read like fiction: a population of ship rats decimating the entire wildlife of an island and then collapsing; birds leaving their young to be raised by other birds; frogs and lizards living in trees and flying. Others reveal the painstaking detective work involved in solving mysteries presented by police, biosecurity agencies, government departments and members of the public. Frogs’ legs on sale as chicken, a feather hidden in a bag of sugar, a live boa constrictor on a street in snake-free New Zealand—it’s all in a day’s work. Into these stories Gill weaves as fascinating a cast of characters as you are ever likely to meet.