Saturday, November 05, 2005

"NATURE"

END OF AN ALLIANCE

"The PBS series "Nature" enlivens the screen with colorful, robust animal behavior, but its undertones are also mournful, longing for lost links between society and ecology. In the Sunday premiere of its 24th season, cooperation between man and beast is recalled through the story of how an Australian whale killer and a killer whale together harvested enormous humpbacks."

Could the writer get the word "killer" into the story just one more time maybe? It does make one wonder if he sidles up to the table at this favorite restaurant and weepingly inquires as to what the kitchen-cow-killer has on the menu today, but, heaven forbid this little tree hugger fashions any semblance of common sense from his version of reality versus the real world.

This COULD have been one amazing story. I'd never heard the likes of it before, and man and beast forming a partnership is always good stuff, but here's more:

The bloody teamwork took place in a far-off idyllic cove off the southeast coast of Australia in the early part of the 20th century.

"Bloody teamwork...idyllic-cove..." Getting the picture now? It's okay to kill chickens and sheep and cows and of course every fish in existence, but it ISN'T okay to kill loveable beasts.

"George Davidson led wooden rowboats into rough waters, churning with the chaos of sleek orcas corralling longer, less nimble humpback whales. The valiant Mr. Davidson harpooned the bigger beasts by hand, and the reward for the cooperative killer whales was a chance to attack the carcasses and pull out their tongues, which to them are some sort of delicacy."

Delicacy? Some sort of? Sweet mother of pearl but can we STOP making them people in funny outfits and remember that they're animals? Somewhere there's a journalism/creative writing teacher screaming and not knowing why, and I for one do not have the heart to tell him or her that a former student believes that this sort of writing is permissable outside of the 3rd or 4th grade level. I'll watch this amazing tale, knowing full well that since it IS PBS there's going to be an awful lot of weeping because some people like eating things different than what WE eat.

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