I've been thinking about the reported sightings you get from time to time of exotic beasts in unlikely places - panthers and big cats mostly. There are plenty of exotic species now living within these shores - parrots in the London area, escaped wild-boars pretty much anywhere where there's enough woodland and less welcome visitors too - such as non-native crayfish and the blight that's hitting our ash trees.
The wallabies up on The Roaches near Leek appear to have died out, though, it's a good few years since I've heard of any sightings.
It struck me that many of the taller tales tend to appear in the tabloids and the dear old Daily Mail - you know, the Daily Heil or Daily Wail, the paper I wouldn't even use for the most basic of ablutions.
So I've linked that to the paranoia that such papers try to stir up over immigration and asylum-seekers and so on. It's meant to be a bit of a laugh, this one, but I couldn't resist the closing squib ... a bit Ancient Mariner-ish perhaps ...
LESSER
SPOTTED
With a tapir loose on
Teeside,
what will the townsfolk
do?
There are lemurs loose
in Leamington,
a cougar down in Crewe.
There’s a herd of boars
in Bolton
and a pack of
civet-cats,
strange herbivores along
Bexley’s shores
and in Barnstaple,
fruit-bats.
With Beasts that prowl
on Bodmin,
and wallabies on the
Peak,
a giraffe’s been seen on
Golder’s Green,
more sightings week by
week.
Barn-owls are rare in
Bangor
and dormice on the
Downs,
but with leopards,
minks, exotic lynx,
David Attenborough’s
come to town.
He’s filming apes and
antelopes,
vast hordes of
wildebeest,
a wombat in
Wolverhampton,
flamingoes down in
Fleet.
There’s a pangolin in
Preston,
peccaries in Perth,
no need for foreign
travel,
now he’s filming Life On Earth
at the corner of your
ring-road,
at your take-away or pub
–
a guest orang-u-tan on
Tuesdays
at Wistaston Social
Club.
So many hints and
rumours
it’s hard to find the
facts,
(and I’m told there’s
now on Fridays
a Johnny Morris Tribute
Act).
Across fields so grazed,
you’d be amazed
at what animals can be
seen,
up in Dunoon, a
blue-arsed baboon,
aardvarks in Aberdeen.
With so many fancy
creatures
now found across our
land,
some think it’s time the
Government
should act and take a
stand.
That panda up in
Prestwick,
that porcupine in Poole,
those camels, lions,
cheetahs,
Brighton’s
lesser-spotted mule,
should all be rounded up
and captured,
imprisoned in a pound,
until our fevered
imagination
takes stock and settles
down.
Stop writing to The Daily Mail
about footprints, tracks
or spores,
putative panthers that
pad across our moors.
Let’s take a look around
us at such diversity,
let’s help preserve the
hedgehog,
let’s help conserve our
trees.
Let’s celebrate all
living things
that fly or swim or
crawl,
make room and space for
everything,
life, love and peace for
all.
