» Swanning Around: Bear essentials
Alison Swann thinks polar bears are fun and pandas need to make more effort
Time magazine recently published a list of the ten most endangered species in the world.
Accompanying the piece were ten very eye-catching examples of wildlife photography. Thank God for long-range lenses, who wants to prove that polar bears really do have black skin under all that ‘cuddly-wuddly’ white fur, only to get batted into the air by a 12 foot high lord of the ice, who will consider your flesh a nice change from that life-long diet of seal babies.
Polar bears are on this list and they impress me. Did you know that polar bears are apparently so clever they make themselves blend into the background by putting a paw over their black nose? How smart is that! The seal might have those big ol’ bambi eyes, but polar bears sound like a right laugh: “Now you see me… Now you don’t! Am I here? Am I not? Woooah!“
Nothing on the list is commonly found here in the UK, well nothing on that list is commonly found anywhere – that’s the point. Which brings me to Pandas. They annoy me. They don’t make much effort, do they? They are too fussy about their food. Why do they only want to eat bamboo? Adapt and survive for goodness sake. Look at the pigeon. It will eat anything. It’ll even eat Kentucky Fried Chicken. Which is almost a relative for heaven’s sake!
I admire pigeons, they are survivors. You just know that if it all goes a bit wrong and we’re all holding out for some robot called WALL-E to save us after a nuclear fallout then the pigeon will be there. Although, if the pigeon had been around when Noah was sending out the dove to check out for land who knows where he would have ended up. Croydon?
“Polar bears make themselves blend into the background by putting a paw over their black nose”
Pandas are lazy. They mate once a year and get away with the obesity look to full effect while the rest of us are being told we’ll drop dead if we even breathe near a bakery. How do they get so fat? You’ve got to eat a lot of bamboo. Do they never move? No wonder they can only mate once a year. Has anyone considered giving the them viagra? Like guests on the Jeremy Kyle show have proved, if you keep on having sex you will have babies. Pandas have a lot to learn from a Jeremy Kyle guest. Meanwhile, I’m sure polar bears could be trained up for a new career as children’s party entertainers.
