18 April 2008

Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw, and Face

I got in trouble for talking about dead bats as though they were funny, so just so you know - I think nature is wonderful and interesting and awe inspiring and some of the best comedy around. So some topics I promise to cover in the future are:

> Barrel role eagle takes sloth by surprise.
> Panda gets scared by own offspring.
> Panda gets scared by being released into the wild.
> Panda gets scared by rangers returning to site of release one year later and it hasn’t moved an inch.
> How gophers communicate danger to each other, but are also nasty little voyeurs.
> When walruses fall off a slope onto each other, tusk first, in heavyweight hilarity.

But today’s topic is the perennial favourite.

When I was a little kid, I went to the zoo with my classmates, and it was in the days before bullet-proof glass separated you and the gorillas. We were admiring the gorilla family, the silver back’s size, the human-like expressions, the intelligence in the eyes, all the normal stuff that fascinates you when you see something amazing in the flesh, when one of them got tired of the attention, wandered over to the nearest steaming pile of poo and threw it at us. Now here’s the thing, it hit Polly… every class has got one of these. The terminally shy little girl who does all her homework and has a face always stretched to a slight grimace because mum did her plaits a bit too tight. It hit Polly and only Polly. It was the best thing we had ever seen and we fell about in horror and delight. From then on she was “Gorilla Poo Polly” and you just know that the name would have stuck, like the emotional scaring that went with it.

“Do you, Gorilla Poo Polly, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband…?”


Ahhhh… good times.

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