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Roger Rabbits with |
Sit back and rejoice. Hallelujah and pass the grass, leaves, grains and thorny desert plants.
Because 2024 is The Year of the Camelid – celebrating “the timeless bond between Arabs and camelids”, to show how important they are to the livelihoods of millions of people in 90 countries, their contribution to food security, nutrition and economic growth.
I am sure you are positively glowing at the news.
I’ll save you a Google search – a camelid is an even-toed ungulate, a ruminant mammal with a three-chambered stomach.
A camel, a llama or an alpaca…You any the wiser?
But how did we get to this?
How did those bad-tempered, bad-mannered, spitting and kicking camels, creatures of the devil, manage to corral the hearts and minds of the entire United Nations to become animal of the year.
I’ve already fired off a message of protest to António Guterres.
And it demands draft resolution 2344/181 revoking the 2024 International Year of the Camelid be submitted to the General Assembly.
We will see what sort of power The Weekend Sun pulls.
Foul smelling soup
Anyhow camelids – vile things.
Camels have a vicious slashing bite.
They also gob a ‘foul smelling soup of regurgitated food’ if you upset them.
No style!
Did you know Australia has the largest wild population of Arabian camels in the world?
Yep – it’s a country of convict blood and camels.
So why are droves of Kiwis headed there? But I digress…
Llamas are also into the spitting thing – streams of green, partially-digested food.
And there’s something called Berserk Llama syndrome, BLS, or aberrant behaviour syndrome which causes them to be dangerously aggressive to humans.
Anyhow Mr Guterres – I respectfully submit two new and more deserving contenders for UN Year of the Whatever.
First, the dirty, diseased and much unloved pigeon.
That’s their reputation because city pigeons perch high and poop on everyone and everything.
Pigeons are called rats with wings.
And they have that rat cunning.
We were reminded of this a couple of weeks ago when a pigeon outsmarted the pest controllers and security at a New Zealand supermarket.
The pigeon flew in, did a low pass over fruit and vegetables, skirted wine and beer, banked around the deli and bakery and came in for a graceful two-point landing down the dry goods aisles by the bulk seeds, legumes and grains.
Damned smart
The pigeon then stuck his beak into a dispenser and gorged himself.
Health issues aside, that’s one damned smart pigeon.
How did it know where to go? Where did it get its co-ordinates?
“It was out of necessity,” the pigeon later told The Weekend Sun.
“People used to toss us bread crusts down on market square. But with food prices soaring people are eating the crusts themselves.”
And if David Seymour has his way, the crusts will be commandeered for school lunches.
To add to my case for ‘International Year of the Pigeon’ there is the legend of ‘Cher Ami’ or Dear Friend.
Cher Ami was serving in the trenches during WWI when a commander of trapped infantry needed to get crucial information back behind the lines.
The job fell to Cher Ami, who took off under a barrage of German fire.
Bullets zipped all around as the bird flew 40km back to its coop.
Cheri Ami lay there on its back and covered in blood – blinded in one eye, a shot to the breastbone and a leg hanging by just a few tendons.
What a bird! But the message got through and nearly 200 lives were saved. Cher Ami was awarded the French Croix de Guerre – cross of war.
Cher Ami was immortalised in verse.
“Little scrawny blue and white, Messenger for men who fight, Tell me of the deep red scar, There, just where no feathers are.”
Cher Ami died of war wounds in 1919. A taxidermist preserved what was left – one eye, a stump and a few feathers.
Living in a hippo’s butt
I respectfully submit another of God’s creatures for the UN ‘Year of the Whatever’ – if only for its extraordinarily difficult living situation.
It’s the Placobdelloides Jaegerskioeldi. These creatures live in the butt of hippopotami.
You heard me right. Hippos have very thick, tough skin and a layer of blubber.
And the butt is the only part of the hippo that’s sufficiently vascularised, or veiny, for the leaches to get a good blood meal.
It must be difficult for the Placobdelloides Jaegerskioeldi to accept the cruel deal life has dealt it.
But as some compensation, it has been blessed it with two powerful suckers to withstand the hippo’s rather explosive bowel movements.
We were thinking of door-stopping the leach for comment, but that would have created health and safety issues.
And so, in their ignominy, I suggest Placobdelloides Jaegerskioeldi deserves celebration. We all love an underdog.