My only new year resolution is to get a new prescription for my glasses, long overdue. It is such an expense though (with a spare pair plus sunglasses) that I have been deferring it for over a year.
The mornings of the second and third days of the year were spent unblocking a drain and a toilet and shouting down the phone at chat bots, or whatever they are called. I much preferred the former – at least I was achieving something with visible results. The menus and bots banks and so many others now use to save money and have their customers do the work for them are enough to drive anyone bonkers. They make my head pound and sometimes actually give me a headache as others have said happens to them. It’s the circularity of it. I have said to the staff, once I have finally got through to a person, as part of my complaint, that it is terribly unfair on them. By the time customers reach them they are already utterly frustrated and infuriated. Santander, Metrobank and Amazon by the way, although at least Amazon call you and their people are very good indeed at resolving issues.
This documentary on Youtube was in part calming: The Southern Ocean: The World’s Most Dangerous Ocean and is a fascinating history. There were some irritations, such as the phrase “older than memory” which I don’t think means anything at all, reminding me of holiday advertisements speaking of timeless landscapes. They always harp on about enjoying cocktails at sunset too, which is a lovely thing to do but often means there isn’t much else. The photo at the head of this post was a good moment too – moonlight on gravel.
Hercules the Bear is a a documentary using mostly previously released footage, subtitled “A Love Story”. From the uncritical tabloid reviews alone I felt inspired to write but supposed I had better force myself at least to watch it first. It’s a horror show. I would call it “Hercules the Bear, a tragic tale of the exploitation of an imprisoned wild animal for profit”. It’s the story of the purchase of a Grizzly Bear cub, for £50, from a ‘wildlife park’ (zoo) by a Scottish couple Andy and Maggie Robin. It is anything but “hilarious” or “heart-warming” – I found it sickening and heart-breaking. Andy was a professional and successful wrestler (I have nothing against the ridiculous pantomime of wrestling if that floats your boat, although I despise boxing in any form) who once wrestled a bear (“Terrible Ted”) ten years before Hercules was born. He acquired Hercules for the same purpose. Who knows what forms the training may have taken, that is glossed over, but I have a strong suspicion that the poor creature was declawed – a Grizzly Bear’s claws are between two and four inches long and his are never visible. At the very least they must have been severely cut back. Throughout he is almost always seen on a rope or chain or combination of the two and is muzzled for the wrestling matches.
(These are crude images taken on my phone from my PC).
This was his tiny and very far from palatial, barren caged home.
Not pretty. And this shows just how inadequate and cruel it was.
Hercules was going to be put down by the zoo but perhaps that would have been the kinder option. Andy was a narcissistic buffoon who seems to spend most of his time running around in tiny swimming trunks.
The exploitation continued with a series of advertisements, especially for Kleenex (shame on them) and their were other television and even Hollywood appearances – shame on Russell Harty, the Bond franchise, Bob Hope for whom he caddied, and others. The travel alone must have been traumatising for the bear. The Robins profess to have loved him but according to Wikipedia all this “netted [them] a small fortune”. Maggie was once a showjumper so she was already inured to any moral qualms about animal exploitation. They gave him coffee and, frequently, alcohol in the form of beer, advocaat and Babycham.
Andy picked Hercules out as the softest of several cubs, always the closest to his mother and he is revolting described by Maggie as “a wee pyjama case”. As he grew he went “daft trying to get out and biting anything”. But the couple see themselbes as his “dad” and “mum” and Hercules is thought to have felt “Dad, I’m your pal.”
This image appears on screen just as Maggie is saying that unlike a life in the zoo, at least he didn’t spend time in a cage:
Hercules managed to escape just once, during filming for Kleenex. Newspapers at the time described him as a film star, an actor, and “the amazing swimming bear”. Yes, bears can swim. Local people were ready to shoot to kill but eventually he was spotted, then tranquilised, netted and transported by helicopter. He had tried to run for his freedom. How he must have despaired on his return.
There is much nonsense talked about how gentle his nature was since he did not hunt or kill anything during his days of escape. He would, we are told, rather have starved. But I doubt he would have known how – and pretty tricky for a bear with no claws, if I am right about that (I have looked closely at various images).
Crippled by what turned out to be a spinal abscess in his later years, Robin forced Hercules to exercise, with a view to recovery, in a swimming pool in which the water was presumably chlorinated. For six months. When his vet is interviewed, you can see the guilt in her eyes.
I cannot see how any of this is wildly different from the scandal of the Tiger King, but for some reason people seem to be gushing over this programme about sleazy capitalisation and confinement of an animal which should never have been in Scotland in the first place.
Hercules is commemorated by this terrible statue. Interesting how prominent his claws are.
Leave a Reply