Tuesday, December 06, 2005

In Borneo

Great excitement amongst wildlife enthusiasts this week as they've discovered a new species of carnivore in (on?)Borneo. (The in / on thing's been concerning me since the news reports this morning. Presumably on the basis that Borneo's an island the reporter said "on Borneo", but it's a pretty damn big island, so I'm more comfortable with "in Borneo". After all, you don't say "on Australia".)

Anyway, they have a couple of photos of this thing, which is described as being slightly larger than a domestic cat, red in colour, with long back legs and a long fuzzy tail. Sounds completely terrifying to me, but then as you know I'm even unsettled by chipmunks. And the word "carnivore" covers a multitude of sins. If this thing eats slugs and a few mice then I'm comfortable with it, but what if it has a deep-seated urge to feast on human flesh?

And suppose it stows away on a cargo boat bound for old Blighty? I could be happily making my way round the supermarket and the next thing I know some sabre-toothed ginger wallaby has leapt out of the organic bananas and ripped my throat out. These things happen.

Apparently this is the first discovery of its kind since the famous ferret-badger of 1895. They didn't describe the ferret-badger, which I was pleased about because I was upset enough already. Bet the fucker ain't pretty, though.

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