S
cience has confirmed that women are the most
powerful variety of human being, but the ones I
work with still scream if they see an ant. Luckily,
I am The Man Without Fear in this regard, and
can remove the offending ant WITH MY BARE HANDS. (I
know, but hold the applause.)
Not that men are any better. At a garden party, I saw
a sticky, smelly toddler run to the adults holding a live
spider. The women ran shrieking from the spider and the
men ran shrieking from the sticky, smelly toddler. The
child learned a vital lesson that day about adults. Can’t
trust ’em.
Small kids aren’t scared of nature at all. In fact, their
total all-round fearlessness is a major cause of parental
stress. My kids used to fall out of trees all the time until I
broke the news to them that if they died in real life, they
would also die in RuneScape, their favourite computer
game. After that they sat quietly on the bench with the
mums.
Digital natives
We modern adult people are cut off from nature these
days by technology. I was on the morning bus the other
day and some guy actually looked up from his phone. It
was quite scary. I mean, who does that sort of thing these
days?
Arriving at the office, I found I’d been sent several
news cuttings which showed that unfamiliarity with nature
is a growing problem around the world. A man in China
raised two “dogs” for several years without realising that
he was actually sharing his home with a pair of bears.
All creatures great and small
It’s official: We are losing touch with nature,
says father-of-three
Nury Vittachi
.
It doesn’t say how the owner finally twigged, but he
probably found them sitting upright eating honey-coated
picnickers.
It said the man gave his non-dogs to some sort of
animal centre. He should have sold them to one of those
TV talent shows as the only bears in the world who wag
their tails, lick your face and hide under the bed if you
switch on a vacuum cleaner.
Maybe the spread of animal parks will help. At a safari
park in China recently, a group of tourists in a small bus
(or “packed lunch container” as the animals probably
prefer to think of them) found the exit gate jammed. This
gave the visitors a fascinating 45 extra minutes to take
close-up pictures of large beasts licking their lips, fetching
cutlery and unfolding napkins.
In the UK, a snake catcher was summoned by a man
who said there was a dangerous-looking snake curled
up asleep inside his computer’s box part. The thing had
red and black markings, which suggested that it was
poisonous. The snake catcher raced to his house, where
he opened the computer to find it contained a red and
black electric cable. It was dangerous, but unlikely to
slither around the house biting people. Unless it was an
Apple computer, then someone’s probably made an app
that gives it this function.
I have to go now. I’ve just remembered that the dog we
adopted from Hong Kong Dog Rescue likes honey, so I
just need to get home and count the kids.
Nury welcomes your comments and ideas at his
Facebook page:
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