Forrest Galante has faced off with the world’s scariest animals — but this is the creature he fears the most

He’s always in beast mode

Forrest Galante travels the planet to discover animals. Me, on the board of the ASPCA for years, I have a dog. I love animals. So is he brave or just nuts?

“Last month a great white shark charged me. My heart jumped into my throat. I screamed, hid behind a rock, then exited the water,” Galante tells me. “Look, I grew up in Zimbabwe. My family ran safari businesses. I worked with animals when I was 6 and never did anything else. I couldn’t name three famous artists, but I know how to track a mountain lion.”

OK, so once as a houseguest out west, I got up at 5 a.m. All glass windows. Standing on the other side — this giant, huge black bear staring at me. I was terrified. He was working the handle to get inside.

Galante tells me: “Bears. If it’s black, fight back. If brown, lie down, if white, say goodnight. Fight a black bear immediately and likely they let you go.”

“My terror is parasites. I travel all over, drink suspicious water, eat whoknowswhat, get bitten by insects and parasites,” he says. “Been knocked down by parasitic infections. Things you can’t see can kill you the most easily.”

I told him that my friend’s tiny dog was killed by a coyote.

“Do not walk at night with a small dog. Keep it on a leash. A coyote will not attack an adult human but they like skunks and raccoons, which are same as your small dog or cat. Do not let yours run into the bushes,” he says. “It’s situational. If I come over a rise and am on a hippo’s game trail between him and water, that’s a bad situation. If a hippo’s lazily wallowing in a wet pool, OK.

To capture big game?

“It’s three or four semi-trucks, a bunch of safari vehicles, tranquilizer darts from the helicopters, then cut roads into where they went down.

“A crane truck loads elephants onto flatbeds. Flatbeds to the transportation truck. Conveyor belt into the trucks. Then wake the elephants up, then send them onto transportation.”

The Eighth Army doesn’t have this much stuff.

“I’ve discovered species believed extinct. Nobody in history ever found eight lost species before. But I have. Zanzibar leopard, Fernandina Island tortoise, four different shark species, a blind snake, some new frog and gecko species, a new snail in a cave in Vietnam. And blind cave fish. They haven’t eyes, so easy to know that they’re blind.

“In New York, I’ll be with a specialist in breeding rare geckos — believe it or not — under the streets of New York City. That’ll soon be featured on YouTube.

“I’ve been scared. My canoe flipped over by a hippo, a lion asleep on top of me after chasing it on foot. I once rubbed sea snake venom in my eyes after milking sea snakes, which means I thought I’d killed myself.”

So strangest thing you’ve ever eaten to survive?

“Rats. In Myanmar we ate rat a lot, which I wasn’t a huge fan of. They’re greasy.”

Steep cost of time

Celeb trinkets are unloading. Spencer Tracy climbed around with a 1953 Rolex Explorer in the movie “The Mountain” so he got to the studio on time. Now for sale in a store called Wind Vintage. The adventure film co-starred Robert Wagner and — if you care — was one of the earliest product placements of a Rolex in a film. Ownership will be a little expensive. New cost $150. Now $350,000. For that it should come with a mountain. 

Can we discuss Crapdammy’s great idea of cheap, cheap groceries in NY? An idea so effing smart it could’ve come right from the spittle of Bernie Sanders. I mean, like brilliant. Forget the diseased lettuce. May all New Yorkers get together and stare at the bread they can’t afford or the milk that’s costlier than an apartment and let’s all march together in a line holding placards that read: “GREAT IDEA.” Signed by Key Food, Gristedes, Whole Foods Market, Aldi, Costco, Stop & Shop, Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, Morton Williams, Lidl, D’Agostino’s, Target, Fulton Fish Market, Union Square farmers market, Citarella, ShopRite, BJ’s Wholesale and a few churches.

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.