It’s Friday again and, yeah, it’s come to this column’s attention that the last few weeks have been decidedly torrid and full-up with prognostications of doom and political turmoil. We are living in interesting times it is true but sometimes, just sometimes, everyone needs to unplug for a bit, sit back and just read about some cute animals.
This week in Society Diary: the RSPCA has more than 100 rabbits looking for new homes, the National Trust has had a funny tern, and a Theresa which May actually scare the French.
The RSPCA is hopping sad!
This week, in case you missed it, has been Rabbit Awareness Week. Yes, you’re right, Society Diary didn’t know that was a thing either, but it is and, for that, this column is incredibly glad. Rabbits are, after all, incredibly adorable. With their little button noses, floppy ears and soft little legs.
However, much like with cute little kittens and delightful doggies, humanity’s capacity for cruelty towards rabbits knows few bounds. As this column has said over and over in the past: A bunny rabbit isn’t just for Easter, it’s for life!
According to the RSPCA, it currently has some 173 bunnies housed in centres across the country looking for new homes. It says that, since the beginning of 2017, more than 150 rabbits have been abandoned by their owners.
Many of these poor rabbits it seems have not only been abandoned, but also poorly treated as some have been found injured while others were suffering from numerous maladies ranging from upset bunny tummies right through to “urine scalding” which, let’s be honest, sounds appalling.
If you’re inclined towards reading redeeming stories of love and affection, check out what Diary would have called the Tale of Simon Rabbit, but the RSPCA has unaccountably called something else, here. Not only will it likely warm the cockles of your heart, it also features one of the best/worst puns this column has ever seen in a charity press release and, frankly, that covers a lot of ground: ‘Rabbits looking for hoppy endings’.
‘Hoppy endings’ is truly, gloriously, simply, bad.
As there are still a few days left of Rabbit Appreciation Week, why not pop down your local RSPCA centre and rehome your very own rabbit. Hop to it!
A tern for the worse
The National Trust has been pretty quiet of late, at least when it comes to serving up humorous, charity sector-related press releases. Indeed, the last time the NT graced the pages of this column was, around Easter time, when it inadvertently annoyed Theresa May, and quite a lot of the rest of the Anglican Church.
Avid readers of this column will remember that the NT dropped the word ‘Easter’ from its annual Easter Egg Hunt. Although, of course, it didn’t really. It still said Easter on the branding and actually mentions Easter more often on its website than does the Church of England.
Nonetheless, the furore was such that Prime Minister Theresa May took some time out of a visit to Saudi Arabia (to sell weapons, by the way) to criticise it for “airbrushing” Christianity out of Easter.
Anyway, the NT’s back baby, and this time it’s all about a tern nesting above a perspex toilet.
“Desperate birdwatchers visiting the Farne Islands’ toilets face an unexpected tern – with a rare bird nesting just inches overhead,” reads the NT statement. “An Arctic tern, which will have arrived on the remote Northumberland islands from the Antarctic in May, is incubating two eggs in the grooves of the toilet’s clear corrugated plastic roof.”
The toilet tern has been dubbed by NT rangers ‘Lulu’ – read it out loud and you'll get it – and apparently sees the grooves in the plastic of the outhouse roof as a fantastic place to lay her eggs.
Jen Clark, a ranger with the NT explained: “Terns like to scrape out a cup shape for their nest”, before, continuing “it might be potty, but the staff are loving it. That block has three toilets in a row, but everyone’s using the two that have the best view of the tern”.
Well, ain’t that a tern up for the books?!
V is for... vandalising private property?
In the hubbub of election eve a few weeks ago (and, yes, Diary said it’d give politics a rest this week but, you’ll like this) a certain betting company decided it’d be a good idea to erect an approximately 110-foot high structure of Theresa May, dressed in a Union Jack skirt, flipping a V sign off in the direction of France above the white cliffs of Dover.
Hey does anybody know what they're doing with the giant Theresa May on the White Cliffs of Dover flicking the Vs? Keen to track it down pic.twitter.com/2N5HkG5C2k
— Oobah Butler (@Oobahs) June 9, 2017
The story, much like the effigy and indeed the Conservative majority, came down within a day or so of going up. However, having missed it at the time, it would be remiss of Diary not to mention it now.
Indeed it was our friends above, the National Trust, who (along with a number of residents living in the effigy’s towering shadow) bought down Theresa. The structure that is, not the Tory party leader. She did that herself.
So, it seems this 110 foot high Theresa May, is for turning.
Unlike the bird in the story above. That's for terning.
Related Articles
