Evidently, we've discovered 200 new species in Papua New Guinea. Fantastic.
I saw this breaking news on Fox News while running on the elliptical listening to some Collective Soul, so I didn't "hear" the breaking news, but I saw enough to get the gist of the segment which, I believe, was "Hey, look, more species to destroy!"
Among the species newly discovered, there was a guinea pig type creature (must be some connection between Papua New Guinea and guinea pigs, no?) that was awfully friendly, because it was shown sitting on a researcher's arm [quivering in terror].
Growing up, I had a couple guinea pigs. Worst. Pet. Ever. I got two of the things because I thought that one would get lonely. I still wholeheartedly believe that "one-of" anything will inevitably get lonely and sad and ultimately attempt to kill itself. It's why I'm having more than 1 child. Anyway, I was supposed to have brought home two guinea pigs, but one night I went to bed with two in the cage, and woke up with six.
I had inadvertently been sold a pregnant female pig. I think any 12 year old would have been crazy excited to find my number of pets suddenly tripled but I had already come to regret the purchase because I had discovered after just one week that guinea pigs are disgusting.
Seriously. I was keeping them in my room at the time and I don't know how they did it, but they somehow sprayed their urine outside of the cage. My whole room smelled like rancid guinea pig piss within the first week. I hated those little bastards. And now I suddenly had six of them. Well. at least for a day or two.
Several days after the immaculate conception, I awoke to a very quiet very bloody guinea pig cage.
Maybe I wasn't feeding them enough or something, but the surprise female had taken it upon herself to curb the population and eaten one of her young. At least, that's the only explanation that I could come up with. Unless I counted incorrectly the day before and there was a better explanation for the blood. Somebody in the family suggested it could've been an afterbirth thing, which made me sick to even consider so, naturally, I immediately discarded the idea.
Somewhere in the next month or so, the newborn guinea pigs decided it'd be a good idea to start fucking each other and having babies of their own, and that's around the time when I decided I no longer wanted guinea pigs.
I have no idea what I did with them, but I remember the cage looked like it'd been cooked in an 500 degree oven for a month. It was corroded with the foul vermin's piss and shit - and I cleaned it twice a week!
Anyway, I wasn't fooled at all by the feigned cuteness of the Papauian(?) rodent perched on the arm of the researcher when Fox News flashed the "Breaking News" logo and the photo as if we'd finally discovered the cure for cancer.
The next shot was of a crazy looking praying mantis thing.
Incidentally, I have a praying mantis story. I had never seen one of these things in the wild, ever, but there I was, on a shitty par three in Sherman Oaks, about to putt on the ninth hole and looking down what do I see but a crazy green bug on the end of the putter. It was huge. It was a praying mantis. I have a picture of it on my Facebook, I believe. It was mind blowing up close. That's all I have to say about that.
So I don't have issue with the new species of Praying Mantis. I hope we can work slightly slower to not destroy its habitat.
The last picture they showed was of a new species of bat. It looked just as crazy as any other bat I've seen up close (on TV) except for that it was smiling and looked more dog-like.
The whole Fox News report seemed very backwards to me. We, as a civilization are VERY excited when we find a bunch of new species we'd never found before, and yet by this very act of discovery, we severely endanger the well being of the very species we're excited to start protecting from endangerment. You can say the same things about the Discovery Channel's award winning shit they film about the ancient African tribe that has been unchanged for the last thousand years. Uh, I'm guessing that after Discovery Channel brought their fucking thirty person camera crew and gasoline powered generators and portable stoves through their peaceful, unsophisticated, savage village, the tribe was seriously and irrevocably changed. Just a hunch. I feel my Nihilistic thoughts coming on...
I think it's wonderful that we're exploring our planet and looking under every fucking rock for stuff we've never seen before. Great. Unfortunately, that newly discovered adorable, terrified Papua New Guinean rodent has no idea that very shortly it will be living a wonderful life in some 12 year old's room in a very very small cage.
By the way, I'm in no way condemning Fox News for their report or the actions of the self righteous "environmental" group. Fox News is sort of amazing. I'm not sure if I like it because it's hilarious or because it's right 90% of the time. But that's for a whole 'nother blog...
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