Cute Today, Killer Tomorrow

Baby animals are adorable. Even the baby animals that grow up to be rampaging beasts that will tear your limbs asunder and start devouring your still living guts before your heart stops beating. I am sure there are several political metaphors to be made there. Have fun with them.

That being said, I must say that Warner Brothers was way off in their depiction of the Tasmanian devil. Yes, that is a baby Tasmanian devil pictured above, or to the side, or wherever this layout decides to place the accompanying picture. That one is probably about 6 or seen months old. Warner Brothers missed the very distinctive white patches on the chest and above the tail, and made Taz brown instead of black. I can understand the lightening of the fur to brown to better display the facial tics that the cartoon Taz is known for, but the white patches should have stayed.

While the rampaging temper depicted in the cartoons is more or less true to life, Tasmanian devils are more likely to feed on carrion than hunt their own prey. They only grow to be about 2 feet long and the largest ones tip the scale a bit shy of 30 pounds, so they are not much of a threat to large animals. They will munch on rabbits and other small animals, but don't pose too much of a threat to humans.

Yes, I understand I am being unreasonable to expect anthropomorphized cartoon versions of animals to be accurate depictions of the creatures that inspired them, but I am not asking for a full-out National Geographic documentary here. I think losing the white chest patch is like trying to depict Bugs Bunny with short ears. I am perfectly fine with them having Road Runner stop to chow down whenever he sees a pile of birdseed on the road, even though real life roadrunners are generally more carnivorous, eating bugs, small rodents and rattlesnakes. It adds a sense of whimsy and humor to the cartoons, but some distinct visual characteristics should be kept.

Since I got onto this rant about Warner Brothers cartoons, here's an interesting fact I learned a couple of weeks ago. Henery Hawk, (yes, that is spelled correctly), the little chicken hawk, was created before Foghorn Leghorn. I had always assumed that Henery was created as a foil for the big rooster, but it turns out that it was actually the other way around.

Well, enough learning for one day. Go out and have some fun. I'll try to get back to regular blog posting again.