They don’t make nature shows like they used to. They make them way better.
But good old Marlin Perkins did the very best he could with the tools of the time. Sixty years ago, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom aired Sundays on NBC and I didn’t miss an episode. I was one of those kids that couldn’t get enough of animals. And I didn’t have a pet. I hounded my dad and badgered my mom for one, but they were dogged and I remained skunked. I might’ve gotten another stuffed animal out of it.
I had a strong aversion to animal cruelty, and animals do a lot of it to each other. So I’m not sure how I managed to get through Wild Kingdom. These were dark ages, darlings. There was no such thing as a trigger warning. And it came complete with dramatic musical accompaniment.
Still, you could pretty much see what was coming for yourself. I recently rewatched an episode about wild cats. Marlin Perkins, a very dapper gent, explained how he set up his tripod in puma territory and waited for the puma to emerge from her cave. Oh look! She has kittens! Oh no! Here comes a marmot!
Well. The marmot bounds off but is no match for the cat. [The string section swells.] Trapped, that big fatty stands up on its hind legs and faces off with the cougar. And I will be damned if it doesn’t get a good bite in, too. That was one hell of a marmot—no doubt a legend among Rodentia. But on the second pounce, there’s nothing but a dust cloud and a crunching sound and then the marmot dangles like a dishrag all the way to where the kittens are. It was horrible to watch today. I don’t know how I handled it when I was ten. I mean, I flat-out sobbed when the boys (of course, the boys) dropped Daddy Long-Legs through the electric fan or stuck firefly abdomens on their foreheads.
However, at this point the viewer can clearly see the advancing whiskers of the Mutual of Omaha advertisement nosing around the corner. Because just as the mother puma takes care of her kittens, Mutual of Omaha will take care of your family. Mutual of Omaha no doubt sells life insurance also, but Marlin Perkins will never say “Just as the marmot family has prepared for the grisly demise of their punctured and shredded patriarch, Mutual of Omaha…”
Marlin Perkins also had some captive cats in his studio and tried to demonstrate something by juggling an adolescent tiger—it was like trying to herd mercury— but the cat was having none of it, and he ended up calling for handsome young Jim in his crisp safari shirt to bring out a more biddable beast. Handsome young Jim comes in with a slightly smaller jungle cat on his shoulder and a rigid look to his neck.
Modern nature shows will show you a coordinated ballet of insect nose hairs magnified a billion times or the slow-motion feather-furling of a hawk flying into a hole the size of a wallet. They’re snapping cameras on crane heads and wombat butts. Soon enough we’ll be seeing the time-lapse digestion of a whole rat from inside a snake. Danger exists in the wild at every turn and modern nature shows will show you close-up facial expressions of animals down to every scale and scute and follicle. You don’t have to wonder what that marmot is thinking. You’re zoomed in a foot away from a rippling in the ruff indicating existential dread, a sudden drop in the whiskers for each of the eight naked pups waiting in her den, and the flash of her entire short life in her eyes. Sarah McLachlan is singing in the background, and you have to switch to the Great British Baking Show if you’re going to get any sleep.
I remember watching an episode of 20/20 with my mom when I was a teen. It concerned how humans torture animals in the name of Science and Agriculture via people with hidden cameras recording these things secretly. The first clip was rabbits, in restraint and with eyes propped open, being swabbed on the eyeballs with various chemicals (hair dyes, cleaning products, etc.) in order to see what the effects would be so that they could print it on the warning label. But it was the next bit that really got to me. Baby chicks were put on a conveyor belt. The “perfect” ones would go on to be egg layers. Any that were “substandard” (e.g. if they were dark in color, which would yield brown eggs and not perfect white ones, or if they were male) would be put into a barrel, which they called “the masher.” I still vividly remember a black chick being singled out, trying to escape the human grabbing at it and go join the other chicks at the end of the conveyor belt. It was dropped into the barrel. I cried and screamed to my mom, “turn it off! I can’t watch this anymore!” I’m sure the report went on to ever more heinous behavior.
I still tear up at this memory.
I do too. And yet, you do not want to know what I did to lab mice.
I often wonder if black-and-white television helped us disassociate from some of the more grisely and cruel things we witnessed as children. After all, it wasn’t *completely real*, because it was in B/W and not in color. I dunno. But my parents forbade us from watching The Three Stooges because they thought we would emulate their coarse slapstick humor and bad manners…..
Ed, they were completely justified, because you are just about the most polite person I know.
Who did you know who dismembered fire flies? One puts them in a jar (with holes punched in the cap) and keeps them in your room at night.
Yeah, we always try that once! They blink once or twice and then pout the rest of the night. I don’t know, the neighborhood boys discovered if you pinch off the abdomen and stick it on your forehead, it stays lit for a minute. Bleah. Boys.
My cousin Joey did that once in front of me. I was horrified!
I always remember how Marlin would send poor Jim in to wrestle with an alligator or some such lethal beast while Marlin would calmly narrate the events from a safe vantage point. You go get ’em, Jim!
It’s possible Jim wasn’t paid quite enough.
I am AMAZED to learn that that was sixty years ago!
You’d think we’d get used to that by now.
I have a friend who likes to preface her (email) change in thoughts with, “Meanwhile: upstream, Jim…”
I howled when I read that! Too bad it only works for folks of a certain age (of which I am a member.)
Wild Kingdom, according to Wiki, “has been revived several times on different networks and platforms.” We recently watched the latest incarnation. The biologist was smart and cute but just didn’t have Marlin Perkins’ je ne sai quoi (a phrase I use when I don’t know what else to day).
Which is pretty much what that phrase means!
I have a photo I love that Bill took of me with the kids when we were tiny. We three are gazing stage right, watching an early David Attenborough nature show. We called him “Crazy Dave,” and we all still do to this day, forty-some years later. Nature shows used to be our chosen relief from the dog-eat-dog heavies of Masterpiece Theater, but now I quail at Crazy Dave. Orcas will play frisbee with penguins or baby seals; Brown-Headed Cowbirds will gaslight a Bluebird family; there’ll be dead toddler Mountain Gorillas ravaged by poachers. I can’t handle Crazy Dave anymore. All that dedication to brutal reality and a closing guilt trip from some conservation group. Give me a genteel British murder mystery with a side of closely observed surgery any evening. I’ve grown just too tenderhearted in my dotage for anything heavier than Granchester.
I like everything about this comment.
I loved MoAs Wild Kingdom too. For years, we’d pretend that Marlin Perkins was narrating our family hikes and other outdoor adventures whenever we encountered wildlife. “Just like the mother bear protects her cubs, Mutual of Omaha protects your family…” Love it!
It just goes to show how effective that dumb phrase was that I still have good feelings about Mutual of Omaha.
Fortunately, what we did with cadavers and our running commentary were not recorded at OHSU back then, or I hope to hell not.
Marlin Perkins was a either Sat or Sun thing we watched way back in the early 60’s, memory of it has been taped over by Masterpiece Theater.
Nice post, as always.
There is never a time when a dog appears earlt on in a movie that my husband and I don’t turn to each other and say, “Nuthin’ better happen to that dog!!”
early
I remember MoO very well. It was our regular Sunday evening fare. I have always been a huge animal lover but obviously I was less sensitive then than I am now. I read all the “Lad a Dog” and other dog books by Albert Payson Terhune and sometimes the dogs died (I remember Lad’s mate, Lady, was hit and killed by a car, which Terhune angrily termed “the Juggernaut” because he hated these newfangled vehicles that didn’t know enough to stop for a dog in the road. Somehow I kept reading them anyway, whereas nowadays I would avoid any book or movie where the dog dies.