A couple of observations while watching Animal Planet during dinner:

-Ads for the show "Crocodile Hunter" (make sure you have your sound turned on) are shameless. Every one shows the star coming oh-so-close to being bitten or attacked by some variety of exotic animal, and the promo for next week bragged "see the encounter that almost ended it all" while showing a giant crocodile about to chomp on his leg. The website shows a digitally-enhanced picture of the "hand of God" pulling the Crocodile Hunter out from between the jaws of a large crocodile and has the following to say about the episode:

After a near-fatal accident, Steve is partly incapacitated and a target for prey species able to detect any weakness. A wounded lion is a potential man-eater, and Steve keeps a wary eye on an old male that limps into a shady tree. Steve wanders into a charge from a female cheetah protecting her cubs and a close encounter with three white rhinos. The Zebra spitting cobra is the one animal Steve hoped he would encounter, but this dangerous snake proves a real handful to wrangle with only one hand.

You can't get much more entertained than watching someone stumble through Africa being attacked by animals and not being helped by his trusty cameraman.

Other future episodes include:


Danny the vet gets a nasty bite while treating Kenny the water rat


a Burmese python puts the squeeze on Gus


Wes chases down an elusive whip snake hiding in a shed.

Obviously Steve lets his poor helpers handle the smaller, sometimes more dangerous animals while he gets all the glory.
Just in case all of this mayhem isn't enough, go here to see video clips of past maimings and snakebites.

-Some people will believe anything, and all of them make an appearance on The Pet Psychic, featuring a creepy British woman named Sonya who claims to be able to communicate telepathically with animals. Take that Dr. Dolittle. The website even gives tips on how you can communicate with your pets yourself, but not very good tips or else Sonya would be out of a job. Check out the picture of Sonya and the cat on that page. I don't have to be psychic to know what it's thinking: "Good God woman, I'm an American cat. Ditch the accent for Christ sake."

It's not just a one way conversation, though. Our pets can apparently also read our minds. Uh-oh.

Sonya apparently can also contact dead pets, which she did on today's show, in order to find out why someone's dog died. The woman was weeping throughout the whole show and would've believed anything. I firmly believe that if I jumped up on stage and told her that her dog joined a 5-piece bluegrass band to play the banjo and died in a bus accident just north of Dusseldorf on a European tour she would've completely agreed.

There are so many things wrong with the idea of Sonya reading the pet's minds, including but not limited to:

Why does she always ask the owner for the pet's name, when most of the pets respond to (and therefore know) their own names?
If dogs could read our minds, why do they sleep during burglaries and attack small children?
Why does she always tell the owner that the pet wants some new and fancy product (i.e. that a woman's bird wanted a mirror)? How would a bird know the concept of a mirror having never seen one?
Why do all pets speak telepathically in English?
What does one major in during college in order to become a "pet psychic"?

Oh the things you learn from watching Animal Planet, a subsidiary of the Discovery Channel.