Monday, August 17, 2009

In Blood

Got home early enough to run an episode of Life On Earth from my DVD set. It was number 11, The Hunters and the Hunted. Astonishing stuff. At one point the camera perfectly tracks a speeding cheetah through the chaos of a herd of zebra whirling to get out of its way, to the point where it downs one of the poor creatures. I felt horribly privileged to watch. In quick succession we also had lions and hyenas hunting wildebeest. I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, just what effective hunters hyenas are.

All this a reminder that the extraordinarily beautiful books of nature are written in blood.

2 comments:

Trebuchet said...

That reminds me of Clive Barker's horrific five-part work, 'The Books of Blood'. They're shockers, but unfortunately in the grand tradition of British horror.

In other news, some amusement might be had in this place:

http://idisk.mac.com/brythain-Public/?view=web

The file titled '2009 IGCSE GP T2-Humans_Others_v2a.pdf' actually references Attenborough's masterpiece. And even more than one of them!

Brian Connor said...

Great minds think alike. I had Barker in mind as I wrote the heading.