Teddy Bear’s Picnic

Brown Bear, originally uploaded by http://andrewskelton.net.

The thought, a contentious one at that, of the reintroduction to the UK of a creature already hunted to extinction, which can grow to an average of 265–355 kg and possibly as high as 480Kg is certainly one of the more, ahem, interesting of recent conservation projects to bring back species once established in our lands. There has been resistance from some to certain species re-establishment projects, the White Tailed Sea Eagle predominantly, but generally they have been well received however letting loose animals that are easily capable of killing anything in it’s path has a whole new set of naysayers. Of course, these creatures are always represented in popular culture as big cuddly creatures, in part due to an American President, but they always lack the important features that might make them less appealing – razor sharp claws, 10cm long – bone crushing jaws armed with huge flesh ripping teeth. Does Paddington or Winnie the Pooh still look as adorable?

I know there’s a lot of dispute as to how accurate sources such as Wikipedia can be with un-metered document creation; of course this is true but how ever valuable or invaluable the information is upon the page, what I did notice today is that the pages on Wikipedia include sources as with any good reference book. With my desire to write a book on Cheetah this year, I’ll be using the pages on Wikipedia referring to these big cats, to find all the references I need to ensure that the information within my Magnus Opus is correct.

I think the self-inflicted pressures of the last few months have taken their toll and my enthusiasm and creative spark needed to write this blog is somewhat lacking especially after thirteen months of straight writing. Terry Pratchett says that if you want to write, write at least 250 words a day to help develop your writing style… well, I exceed that number each day so whether anyone gleans any information from these pages… or, dare I say it, even enjoy my writing – it’s great practise for a future literary career. The good news, for me anyway, when it comes to motivation is that I have a few days planned away to recuperate but as you can already guess it will be somewhat of a busman’s holiday as I have a number of photographic detours planned. I just hope there’s a good wifi signal available!

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