If I was a male emperor penguin, would I say goodbye to the missus as she buggers off to look for food whilst I spend the winter with an egg up my arse, huddled together with hundreds of other males in order to shelter ourselves and our uncomfortable eggs from the biting Antarctic winds?
No. As soon as the females left the males, I'd be running after them, shouting "Room for a little one?" Some other mug could have my egg and my place in the scrum.
The saddest part of the first of the second batch of David Attenborough's Planet Earth programmes was when the poor male arctic polar bear, after a couple of months without food, after swimming the ocean to look for land (as his old home is melted by global warming), finally spots a herd of walruses on a rocky shoreline. The bear is too weak with hunger to get to one of the walrus babies, is gored and ushered away by walrus mothers, and left to die.
I'm sure George Bush would say that this is what God intended to happen.
Rapid transit
4 days ago
Very sad, that wasn't it.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't the penguins just lay their eggs next to where the fish are? They may be very resilient in the face of arctic winds but they're not very bright are they?
I haven't seen Planet Earth but I know some of those wildlife movie blokes aren't beyond a bit of clever editing if it helps the plot along. Just a nasty thought.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a poignant comment about Jack Duckwoth yesterday which disappeared into blogger - or perhaps I was too pissed.
ReplyDeleteBut I think Jack looked a bit like your sad and sickly bear.
Either he's not long for this world - or it was just good acting.
Realdoc - I think they secretly enjoy all that male bonding.
ReplyDeleteDick - They do a cameraman bit at the end. This week they showed a couple of blokes in a hut with a polar bear hinting that he might be hungry by nudging the window with his nose. They didn't seem particularly scared so I think the bear was a member of Equity.
Kaz - I'm afraid that as well as playing a character with nothing to live for, Bill Tarmey's CD sales are plummeting as Bob Marley is the next big thing for the elderly market stall shopper.
Well, thank god Bob didn't live long enough to find out.
ReplyDeleteWhereas Bill is still struggling on at the 'Dog and Duck' in Droylsden.
The messages in his guest book on his website seem to stop in December 2003.
ReplyDeleteWhy does he never sing on Corrie? Why is it always Rita, but never Jack or Betty?
I got a bit sad reading that...I wish you hadn't told me he died. My daughter told me I looked like a polar bear today. I wonder what that means? But then she said I looked like a rhinopop as well. Whatever that is. Poor polar bears...they are lovely.
ReplyDeleteThe last polar bears we saw were in Berlin Zoo. Although they had a lot of room to move around in, one of them was pacing up and down in an agitated way.
ReplyDeleteSo my last two images of polar bears haven't been happy ones.
I don't know what a rhinopop is, Molly. The name sounds like it should be either a daddy rhino or fizzy snuff. A polar bear is much more attractive.