Pointy Animals and The Men Who Love Them
Recently I turned on Channel 7 to see footage of some wildlife wrangler dude in the outback (presumably miles from anywhere), apparently demonstrating his courage and intuitive understanding of nature by dangling a deadly King Brown Snake in front of his face.
Now, I’m no herpetologist (see, this is why no-one ever wants to play Scrabble with me) but I’ve watched enough outback adventure shows to know that the King Brown has enough venom in a single eyelid to kill hundreds of killer whales a million times over or something like that. So you or I might think twice before dangling the business end of Mother Nature’s Draino-filled intravenous drip near our faces. Ah, but men like this are a breed apart. They understand the snake; their years of experience with these creatures- sorry, these beautiful creatures- gives them special insight into how they think. It allows them to take risks that might seem dangerous, reckless and curiously pointless to the rest of us.
Needless to say, the snake bit him. Square on the nose, in fact.
Fortunately for the guy, his family, and society itself, it was a "dry bite" ie the snake didn’t engage its venom gland and pump him full of snakey badness. Of course this didn’t stop the editors from showing the King Brown’s strike over and over again in loving slow motion, over stirringly dramatic music. The narrator alerted us to the gravity of the situation (which of course we would have missed, having just watched one of the three or four most venomous creatures on earth bite a man’s face) while the snake dude calmly strode over to his car to examine the bite in his rear-view mirror. No damage done, apparently, and so no reason to question the wisdom of trying to eskimo-kiss an insanely poisonous serpent.
Of course, I tuned in late, so it may be that there was a perfectly legitimate scientific, veterinary or culinary reason for holding a King Brown that close to one’s face. But I doubt it. I suspect the whole sorry episode is evidence of a deeper, disturbing trend.
Ever since Steve Irwin showed us the joys of watching a freakish man-child irritating our nastier fauna (especially with kids in tow- listen to our discussion of his outstanding parenting style here), we’ve expected more from our nature documentary hosts. Once upon a time you could watch "Born Free" without feeling cheated that some numbnuts wasn’t putting his head in the lions’ mouths every five seconds, but not any more. Now, if you’re planning to fly to Alaska to film a polar bear, you’d better be planning to jump on a trampoline with it, with raw steak strapped to your groin, if you expect the folks at "World Around Us" to take note.
Now that this godawful trend has begun, where does it end? Jane Goodall giving her chimps lengths of chain for the filming of "Gombe Death Match"? David Attenborough’s "Eurasian Hedgehog Rodeo"? "Desmond Morris Tapes Himself To A Komodo Dragon"?
The British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch wrote that animals have so much power to captivate and compel us because of the "sheer alien otherness" of their lives. Having watched a man holding a King Brown bare inches from his nose, all I can say is there was only one creature distinguished by its "sheer alien otherness," and it wasn’t the snake…
Now, I’m no herpetologist (see, this is why no-one ever wants to play Scrabble with me) but I’ve watched enough outback adventure shows to know that the King Brown has enough venom in a single eyelid to kill hundreds of killer whales a million times over or something like that. So you or I might think twice before dangling the business end of Mother Nature’s Draino-filled intravenous drip near our faces. Ah, but men like this are a breed apart. They understand the snake; their years of experience with these creatures- sorry, these beautiful creatures- gives them special insight into how they think. It allows them to take risks that might seem dangerous, reckless and curiously pointless to the rest of us.
Needless to say, the snake bit him. Square on the nose, in fact.
Fortunately for the guy, his family, and society itself, it was a "dry bite" ie the snake didn’t engage its venom gland and pump him full of snakey badness. Of course this didn’t stop the editors from showing the King Brown’s strike over and over again in loving slow motion, over stirringly dramatic music. The narrator alerted us to the gravity of the situation (which of course we would have missed, having just watched one of the three or four most venomous creatures on earth bite a man’s face) while the snake dude calmly strode over to his car to examine the bite in his rear-view mirror. No damage done, apparently, and so no reason to question the wisdom of trying to eskimo-kiss an insanely poisonous serpent.
Of course, I tuned in late, so it may be that there was a perfectly legitimate scientific, veterinary or culinary reason for holding a King Brown that close to one’s face. But I doubt it. I suspect the whole sorry episode is evidence of a deeper, disturbing trend.
Ever since Steve Irwin showed us the joys of watching a freakish man-child irritating our nastier fauna (especially with kids in tow- listen to our discussion of his outstanding parenting style here), we’ve expected more from our nature documentary hosts. Once upon a time you could watch "Born Free" without feeling cheated that some numbnuts wasn’t putting his head in the lions’ mouths every five seconds, but not any more. Now, if you’re planning to fly to Alaska to film a polar bear, you’d better be planning to jump on a trampoline with it, with raw steak strapped to your groin, if you expect the folks at "World Around Us" to take note.
Now that this godawful trend has begun, where does it end? Jane Goodall giving her chimps lengths of chain for the filming of "Gombe Death Match"? David Attenborough’s "Eurasian Hedgehog Rodeo"? "Desmond Morris Tapes Himself To A Komodo Dragon"?
The British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch wrote that animals have so much power to captivate and compel us because of the "sheer alien otherness" of their lives. Having watched a man holding a King Brown bare inches from his nose, all I can say is there was only one creature distinguished by its "sheer alien otherness," and it wasn’t the snake…
2 Comments:
Have you heard of a US show called Wildboyz? It features two guys from Jackass (I think) who travle the world bothering wild animals. One pic I saw was of the Wildboyz dressed in a pantomime zebra costume running through a pride of lions.
You'll be saddened to hear that they survived.
Holy crap... haven't seen it, but I have seen the Jackass bit where they dangle meat from their clothes while crawling along a rope suspended over an alligator pit.
I guess eventually the Jackass franchise was bound to end up in animal documentary territory. Let's just hope they don't branch out into, say, art history or anything.
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