The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre; that pays homage to those sweet little fishes that individually don’t amount to a full meal but collectively can cause a tummy upset over the overall state of the once great and noble craft of journalism in this country.
The bitter, washed-up, old hacks who compile this column love nothing better than to get to the bottom of a good story … and a yarn on Nine News Brisbane’s 6pm bulletin on Monday sparked many hours of frenzied research and the associated heavy drinking that goes with it.
The mission: to find out whether carpet pythons really do love surfing or are indeed stressed out by it.
Newsreader Andrew Lofthouse (at top) introduced the segment about a chap called Igor with this: “A pet snake with a love of surfing has come back to bite its Gold Coast owner.
That’s Igor above, enjoying his 15 seconds of fame that cost him a $2322 fine from wildlife officers for breaching his permit to own Shiva. As Lofthouse explained, the permit only allowed Shiva to be out of the house for a visit to the vet. Those officers considered that Shiva could have been stressed out by being made to surf, or alternatively, could have scared the public.
The officers have a valid point. You can imagine Shiva’s embarrassment about not even having the ability to hang one, let alone five!
But as mentioned above, what piqued Mediocre Bytes interest was the basis clash of opinions: did Shiva indeed have a love of surfing as Lofthouse was so adamant to point out from the get-go, and if that’s the case, does Igor have a case to challenge this “whopping” fine seeing Shiva was having the time of his life out there in the surf, even though he couldn’t wave at anybody?
Then again, pythons do love hot weather so maybe surfing at this time of the year with winter only just past us could make Igor’s pet python …. wait for it …. shiva!
Mediocre Bytes decided to leave Igor alone – one 15-second bout of fame is enough for anybody, really – so we contacted Australia Zoo up the Sunny Coast’s way and asked to speak to their senior herpetologist, one fluent in carpet python, to indeed talk to one of their reptilian residents and settle once and for all whether that particular snake variety does indeed love surfing.
They hung up on us.
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