Mom sez Back Off.
One of Budapest Zoo’s rare Persian leopard cubs (Panthera pardus saxicolor) rests beside her mother during the first public appearance of the triplet cubs, Bella, Bara and Bahar in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007. The triplets were born on June 19. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
2006 saw the showing of the David Attenborough-narrated series, Planet Earth. It was – fabulous. We have it on disk, and not seen on television would be the Planet Earth Diary which was added to each episode. This segment told the story of getting ONE of the series of shots in the episode. The Persian leopard was one such. About forty of these exquisite creatures live in the wild – not enough for a sustainable gene pool. Soon they will be gone – except in captivity. We should not feel the loss of these any more than the loss of the snail darter, a tiny fish – but we do. I guess it’s easier for us, with our limitations, to appreciate the value of a fellow mammal which complies with our aesthetic standards. We lay waste our planet, and notice only the spectacular losses. We are the pond scum or the bottom feeders of the metaphor, the real pond scum and bottom feeders being valuable and also beautiful, rightly considered.
Today seems to be my day for rants.