Just watched Paul O'Grady's Orphans and thoroughly enjoyed it.
As he puts it himself "I'm no David Attenborough" but his love of all animals and his willingness to muck in and help them stand out as all his own. The program also shows that, despite all the bad press and stories that come out of Africa, there are still people more than willing to bend over backward to help those that cannot speak in their own defence.
There are some funny stories that make you smile and others that will make you weep. The sanctuary for the African Penguins is the scene for stories of both sorts. The funniest being Paul trying to convince a reluctant penguin to come out into the rain. Que "You're a penguin for pity's sake, you're meant to be waterproof".
The saddest was the penguin that came in blind and ended up having to be put down. Whether the staff liked it or not they are fighting to save a species and not an individual that can't give anything for the survival of that species. That's the darker side of conservation, sometimes very hard decisions have to be taken on where and when and upon which animals to spend the limited resources that they have. Ultimately those decisions mean that some of the animals have to be euthanized, which is not a decision that anyone is happy with but when you get down to it is what Mother Nature does. For the lion to eat the wildebeest must die. To my mind what sets man above the animal is that we can practise mercy to the weakest of the community whereas animals drive out the weak and injured or else use them as a meat shield between the healthy and the predator.
However, not all humans are as pleasant as those who protect those that can't protect themselves, as the baby elephant Suni can testify.
After her mother was killed by poaches someone attacked her with an axe, resulting in sickening wounds that nearly severed her spine just above her pelvis. This has left her with a half paralysed leg which means that she may never be able to return to the wild.
What sort of person does that to an animal that can't fight back? What sort of person half cripples a baby creature and then leaves it to drag itself along the road on its front legs? I could almost understand it if they had killed her and butchered her for her meat but to hack her up and then just leave her to die? That to me makes no sense, unless it is the sense of a twisted mind that enjoys inflicting pain.
I am sorry but the older I get and the more of the depravities of the human world I see the more I think that some humans ought to be put down.
On a more cheerful note, the African Penguin is also known as the Blue Penguin and its greatest threat is the loose of its nesting sites because it nests in burrows in sandy dunes. However, I saw a program back in the nineties about a seaside community in South Africa who, when they extended the sea front, built it all on stilts so that the penguins can still nest in their traditional sites. What this didn't take into account is the fact that African Penguins have little to no natural fear of humans and are quite happy to be around us. So if you ever visit the Blue Penguin Night Club you could find yourself tripping over one of the clubs namesakes as they sometimes climb up the front steps and come on to the dance floor.
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