Today's my day off, and being the hard working, industrious and productive citizen that I am, I've decided to plop myself down on the sofa and while the hours away watching TV. I could switch on the PS2 and try to beat Star Ocean 3, which I confess is what I usually do, but I can feel a headache coming on, so I'll just let my brain cells rot away instead.
Suddenly, I get a flash of insight. I have a working fridge. I have cold stuff in there just waiting to be eaten, though sadly no ice-cream. So I jump up and run to the fridge, hoping the leftover bottle of wine was corked properly. It is. Coolness. On the way out I grab a container of munchies and dry crackers that my mom bought just the other day, and I was all set for channel surfing professionally.
I click and see a man talking on the screen. Bleh. I click again, this time rewarded with an image of some woman with large boobies running on a beach. In a way that makes me think the choreographer used complex mathematical functions to get the most bounce out of her obviously fake mammaries. Sour grapes, yeah, I know. Aesop probably based the story on moi. So I click some more, and I see news of more suicide bomb attacks. Click. Ooh, anime. Unfortunately, it's Ranma. Click. I see a man with blonde tufts of hair climbing a rock, with an armed black man behind him.
Because my fingers are tired at this point, I toss the remote at the foot of the sofa and paused my surfing for some much-needed replenishment, and I was about to make the worst mistake of the day. Without being aware of it, of course. Honest, I'm not such a sadist that I have to torture myself needlessly. Anyway, when I glance up, I see that same blonde guy walking into what appears to be a crack between two granite rocks. It's dark, it's probably musty, and after he tells me that there're Egyptian fruit bats in it, it's probably stinky as heck to boot. But did it stop him? Noooooooo, he goes on yapping about a micro-ecosystem consisting of insects, and then tells me that there're 15 million bats in the cave, approximately.
At this point, you've got to admire the dedication with which these naturalists and scientists go about their work. Or you can be an elitist snob like me and laugh cynically because you just know there's a thin line between dedication and stupidity.
The guy puts down his backpack and tells me that bat poop is called guano. Educational tip of the day babes, in case you didn't know that. It's pronounced exactly the way you pronounce guava, only you replace "va" with "no". Here I stop a while to think about guano, cos as far as I know, every other animal poop is called animal poop. Okay, it's also called shit, faeces, waste etc, but there's no specific name for a particular animal, just bats. Maybe I'm misinformed, in which case I'll be glad if you can point me to other examples, but for now, it seems awfully biased that bats get a special name for their poop while we, Supreme Rulers of the Planet, don't.
In this cave, there're like a trillion gazillion insects (very much resembling cockroaches, ugh ugh) crawling around on the floor of the cave, and the reason is because bats have been occupying said cave for a very long time. How long, you ask? Well, the ground is covered with a 20-metre layer of guano, that's how long. And the roaches are just crawling over every exposed surface. Good lord, that's my worst nightmare right there, being trapped in that cave with roaches all over me and bats screeching overhead. *shudders*
So this blonde guy goes on and on saying what a miracle this microsystem is, because without the bats pooping all over the cave, there won't be that many insects around. Which to me sounds pretty damn good. We can always use a few dead roaches. Or a few million. *shrugs* Then, he squats down and uses his index finger like a stick to poke some of the guano up. I'm not very surprised that he did this, because a few moments ago he used his bare hands to pick up all manner of dirty creepy insects and talking about them like they're long lost relatives of his. The next thing he did, however, made me think Fear Factor is Sesame Street in terms of grossness. He talks some more about the guano, and the cameraman pans closely to show you what an ugly lump of shit it is, then it zooms back out, and the blonde dude just pops the entire lump into his mouth!
Holy cow. If there were ever a doubt between what's defined as dedication and insanity, this is a clear cut case of the latter. The guy's in the middle of nowhere, he needs an armed guard to bring him to this cave, and he goes and puts guano into his mouth. Guano that was literally crawling with roaches, and roaches aren't the most hygienic things to be around.
I think he said something about the taste, but I can't be too sure, cos seriously, I was reeling from the shock of actually seeing a guy eat bat shit for, well, nothing. At least on Fear Factor those people are driven by greed. This man...I don't even want to think about it.
At times like this, I have to thank my mom, my dad, and if there's a god, him too, for giving me enough common sense to know (even without a PhD) that shit can NEVER taste good.
Note: All bat pics taken from this page. Couldn't find any pics of Egyptian fruit bats from Egypt, and wasn't interested in putting pics of roaches up. Ugh ugh.
3 comments:
Kopi Luwak, ya? Mad props to CSI. *grins* Who says you never learn anything from TV? You have to stop watching the nature channel.
holy shit!( no pun intended)... talk about taking the asian term " you go eat shit lah!!!" a little too far... heck, is bat poo even edible in the first place? was it a cut away shot cos' they can cheat tht way or was it one seamless pick-up-and-pop-the-poo-into-mouth? if it was that, then i have nothing to say... ick >.<
The camera panned wide first, then zoomed into the lump of guano, and then zoomed out in time for me to see the dude pop it into his mouth. Unless it's really flashy editing to make it seem like a continuous shot, the dude really did put shit in his mouth.
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