Category Archives: Wildlife

Stingray apologizes for killing Steve Irwin

Posted on by

 

Finally, someone on this planet takes responsibility for his actions. I’ve had enough with people taking refuge in “temporary insanity,” “I was drunk” and “it’s my cultural heritage” excuses. Somebody stepped up and took it like a man.

Too bad it’s a coldblooded, murderous fish. I may have to start dating outside my species but given my opinion of humanity it’s probably a step up. Popbitch’s tips on having sex with dolphins awaits in the Gmail archive…nah. Squid, different story.

LAist via, I think, Defamer.

After days of blaming everyone but himself, Wednesday morning the stingray responsible for the tragic death of the beloved tv personality Steve Irwin finally manned-up and apologized for killing Australia’s most lovable bloke.

“To be honest I thought he was just another asshole tourist trying to ride me. How was I supposed to know that he was the freaking Crocodile Hunter?” the stingray said through his publicist Jo Brooks.

…Stingray, yo

“I know my life is over, they should just kill me now,” he said before breaking down. “Besides, how’s a brother supposed to get any tail without… a tail? Just finish me off and get it over with.”

The stingray has never had any run-ins with the law and is being represented by Johnnie Conchshell who guarantees to get his client off the hook.

Stingray, baby!

the T factor: goatses

Posted on by

Baphomet, yo

Today in Stupid Tourist News, we present the case of the moronic Swiss driver in Eastern Ontario (BBC, please note proper capitalization), whose defence, when pulled over for speeding, was simply that he was carried away by the sheer joy of being able to drive where there were no goats.

And who among us has not felt that joy? Can we blame the poor man? Are we without hearts, without souls?

I say verily we are, for we will laugh at him.

via the BBC.

‘Goat-free roads made me speed’ 
 
Police said goats had not been reported on eastern Ontario‘s roads

A Swiss man caught speeding on a Canadian highway has blamed his actions on the absence of goats on the roads.
The man was caught driving at 161 km/h (100mph) in a 100 km/h (60mph) zone.

A traffic officer’s notes said the Swiss driver had said he was taking advantage “of the ability to go faster without risking hitting a goat”.

Canadian police spokesman Joel Doiron said he had never found a goat on the highways of eastern Ontario in his 20 years of service.

“Nobody’s ever used the lack of goats here as an excuse for speeding,” Mr Doiron told the AFP news agency.

“I’ve never been to Switzerland, but I guess there must be a lot of goats there,” he said.

The driver was ordered to pay a fine of C$360 ($330; £175) for speeding.

The below image is NOT representative of Eastern Ontario, although apparently it somewhat resembles Zurich.

Goatses? Must be Switzerland

no state funeral for Steve Irwin

Posted on by

Steve and some critter 

UPDATE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION: Film at eleven?

Although Australia offered a full state funeral, in accordance with his status as a national hero/monument/insane mascot, Steve Irwin‘s family have decided to have a private funeral for him.

from The Australian, via an Absolute Stranger.

Australian
07 Sep 2006STEVE Irwin will be buried in private after his Crikey!family declined offers of a state funeral, with his father Bob yesterday saying the international celebrity should be remembered as an ordinary bloke.

The laconic, slightly built retired reptile farmer was obviously grief-stricken but he faced the public because it was what his “mate” Steve would have wanted.

Similarly, he declined offers by Prime Minister John Howard and Queensland Premier Peter Beattie for a state funeral.

“He’s just an ordinary bloke and he wanted to be remembered as an ordinary bloke,” said the 66-year-old Mr Irwin, whose two-year-old grandson Bob was named after him.

As Queensland police yesterday locked footage of Irwin‘s death by stingray in a safe, his manager John Stainton said the film was so harrowing it should be destroyed to prevent it ever being made public.

If you go to the front page, you can see that this post has, get this, 4100 comments. For a man who didn’t blog, that’s one hell of a blogstorm.

a Steve Irwin Tribute

Posted on by

I posted this over at Scoble’s site, so I feel no hesitation about cross-posting it here, as there is zero crossover between our readerships. Every time I got cranky about Aussies (like the time six of them drank all the beer in the Bandas in 48 hours and we had to do without for a week till the Pelni ferry brought more) a single reference to Steve Irwin would calm me down. Any nation that can produce a man like that must have more going for it than I could even imagine.

Steve Irwin’s death is a great loss to the world. The sheer beauty of his enthusiasm for animals was inspiring to thousands of people, more than he ever intended or imagined. He was mobbed when he made appearances here in Canada, a fact which never failed to flabbergast him, but in this detached society we simply never get to see that kind of unreserved love; when we do, how can we help but be drawn to it?

I’ll never forget the time Steve was in Kalimantan, climbing trees with the endangered orangutans, and a mother gave him her baby to hold. He was thirty feet up a tree, but even in a long shot you could see his tears falling down like rain.

The man had a gift for not only feeling love, but for expressing that love before the world in a way that made us all around the world honour and share it, if only for a brief time.

And from CNN:

As fellow countrymen and fans from around the world mourned his death, it was announced that a state funeral for Irwin would be held if his family so chose, an Australian state premier said. “We will honor Steve Irwin in whatever way his family wants,” said Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, speaking to CNN affiliate Channel Seven.

the rainforest is out of water

Posted on by

 Temperate Rainforest at its best

It’s true. The temperate rainforest of BC is out of water, or at least Not-Ucluelet is.

What’s Not-Ucluelet, you ask? Well, it’s a wee hippie town that we’ve blogged before on here the ol’ raincoaster blog, and it’s a town that I love dearly.

But verily, it is a town overrun with tourists and incompetent or ineffectual management.

Looks damp enough, don't it?For lo, although they recieve on average three metres (over nine feet) of rainfall, and they are slung around a harbour right smack-dab, yes RIGHT smack-dab on the Pacific Ocean, they are plumb out of H20.

How’d that happen? Glad you asked.

Hotels, resorts and other commercial businesses in this Vancouver Island tourist town are being told to shut down because of an extreme water shortage, a situation the mayor is describing as one of panic.

Mayor John Fraser said water is so scarce there are concerns about whether there would be enough if there were a fire in the town.

“That’s why the panic’s on,” he said Tuesday afternoon.

The District of Not-Ucluelet issued an order to move to Level 5 regulations. The highest Level 6 means a complete shutoff of the taps.

“This is serious,” said Leif Pedersen, administrator for the District of Not-Ucluelet.

“We’re communicating with resorts, asking them to contact guests and advise them they possibly don’t want to come out there right now.

“It’s going to close all commercial activity in Not-Ucluelet...”

Been there, done the marathon. No t-shirt, though

But Pedersen said high demand and low supply, the result of low rainfall since July, has meant the district’s main reservoir on M—– Island has been drawn down.

When asked how much water was left, Pedersen replied: “We don’t know…”

“Three days notice and we have to what, call every reservation and try and say good luck finding somewhere else, you can’t come?”

Not-Ucluelet is a remote tourist town just outside the breathtakingly beautiful Pacific Rim National Park. It is home to some world-renowned resorts, including the beach-front Wickaninnish Inn.

It borders on a UNESCO Biosphere and Clayoquot Sound [where, by the way, timber companies have just announced plans to resume logging] and draws visitors for a variety of natural attractions from whale watching to surfing.

Municipal staff spent Tuesday morning calling local businesses, asking them to cut back on water or shut down.

The public notice issued Tuesday was blunt, using Yep, no water herecapital letters to hammer home the severity of the problem.

“The WATER SHORTAGE has become extremely severe,” it reads.

“All lodging, food service businesses are asked to shut down PRIOR TO FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1ST, 2006 until further notice. Other commercial water users must not consume any water whatsoever.”
…
Whaylon Arthur, a Not-Ucluelet resident, said municipal staff should have had more foresight and warned people this could be coming.

“It’s a bit drastic and it’s a bit panicky,” he said.

But Pedersen said the district did its best.

Last week, the municipality implemented Level 4 water regulations, meaning residents were prohibited from washing boats and vehicles or watering lawns and gardens.

Oh. Well then. That totally should have done it. After a week of not washing boats and letting the marigolds fend for themselves, that should easily have made up for the estimated million or so tourists who’ve already been through town so far this year.

You know about tourists, right? What do they do? They shower, they bathe, they use the hot tub, they get their cars washed. Decadence, sheer decadence, but you add a million showers time average four-day stay up and you lose one hell of a lot of water.

It’s not like the town didn’t see this coming, which is where we get into the “bad management” part of things.

The single most bitterly Beckettian aspect to this is that the mayor, John Fraser, is the same mayor who has been trying to force through a proposal to approve character-based theme parks and, get this, water slides.

When’s the next election?

Can we be frank?