Saturday, March 21, 2009

Note to Diego, Wonder Pets: Sometimes it’s OK to let animals die


With a 3-year-old daughter and 5 ½-year-old son at home, I have to endure a lot of children’s television programming.
After hours of watching “Dora the Explorer,” “Backyardigans” and other kid-vid, you can’t help but get resentful and start looking at the flaws in these shows.
There’s a trend in some kid-vid shows (“Go, Diego, Go!” and “Wonder Pets”) where characters who rescue animals are actually interfering with nature’s way.
Diego and the Wonder Pets often get distress calls from cute animals in the wild who are being threatened by their natural predators. The heroes will dash off to help these creatures avoid pumas, hawks and other predators.
Their response reminds me of a town I lived in where citizens were up in arms over the fact that snapping turtles were eating the baby ducks in a particular pond. Hey folks, that’s what snapping turtles do. That’s nature. Just because baby ducks are cute and snapping turtles are ugly doesn’t mean you should interfere with nature’s way.
Maybe Diego should start an episode with three animals of the same species that need to get home and end the show happy that one survived to make it.
Also, would it kill Diego and the Wonder Pets to save a human every now and then?
They’re probably like PETA protestors stepping over homeless people when picketing for animal rights. Diego would say, “Human in trouble? Not my thing, amigo. He can fend for himself; I’ve got a butterfly to rescue.”

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