- Reaction score
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http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/paul_macinnes/2006/08/post_282.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1835785,00.html
When Barney met Mabel, there was an instant - and fatal - chemical reaction.
On Tuesday night the doberman pinscher guard dog, after six years' blameless service, went berserk: within minutes Mabel, a 1909 German-made Steiff teddy bear once owned by Elvis Presley, more recently the pride and joy of an English aristocrat, lay mortally wounded.
Barney went on to rampage through hundreds of rare teddies, all on loan to Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, and so valuable that the insurers had insisted on a guard dog to protect the premises at night. The aftermath, according to shocked staff, was appalling: shattered limbs, gouged eyes, ears torn off, and pools of sawdust everywhere.
"Up to 100 bears were involved in the massacre," Daniel Medley, general manager of Wookey Hole Caves, said last night. "It was a dreadful scene."
Barney's mortified handler, Greg West, who took 10 minutes to get the dog back under control, said: "I still can't believe what happened. Either there was a rogue scent of some kind on Mabel which switched on Barney's deepest instincts, or it could have been jealousy: I was just stroking Mabel and saying what a nice little bear she was."
Mabel usually lives at Maunsel House, the 13th-century manor house home of Sir Benjamin Slade. Sir Benjamin, who inherited the estate in 1982, recently announced he was conducting a worldwide DNA search to find the closest heir to the estate: so far he has received more than 15,000 claims, including one from a man currently residing in a New Delhi prison. He collects Elvis Presley memorabilia, and bought the bear at a Memphis auction, reportedly for £40,000.
Mr Medley had the unenviable job of phoning him to explain, as well as he could: "It was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. I had a very brief conversation with him, and it's fair to say he was not best pleased. He sent around one of his men this morning to collect the body."
He is anticipating another awkward conversation: dozens of the damaged bears belonged to another private collector, now out of the country on holiday. "I hope she doesn't read about in the papers, or she'll be straight back on the next plane."
Staff were still working last night to restore the display, which is expected to reopen this morning.
The hound dog will not be present.
"We have asked the security firm not to send us that dog again," Mr Medley said. "I really don't want to see anything bigger than a Jack Russell."
Why, after steadfast duty for more than six years, would a guard turn on those he was supposed to protect, tear them to shreds in his lusty mouth and stand amongst their corpses unrepentant? Why? Because the guard is a dog and the victims were teddy bears, valuable collectors' teddy bears, that's why. Barney the doberman pinscher, you are a dog apart.
Not that dogs are generally to be commended. They are dirty and stupid (have you tried to engage one on the Middle East? Don't waste your time) and can fall into a rage seemingly at random. One minute you're waving a nice juicy steak in its face shouting: "This is my dinner! What you got? A bonio?" The next your hand has been bitten off and the steak is an impromptu bandage.
But on this occasion, the dog was right. Teddy bears have their place and that's sitting next to children. I got rid of mine younger than most (I was very mature for 13) but I can understand a brat's need to have something made of soft material to soak up their salty mewlings. Adults don't need a bear for that, they have shirt cuffs. Yet all the assaulted teddies were owned by adults (one individual specimen having cost a Sir Benjamin Slade the meagre sum of £40,000).
So what do adults need a bear for? To cling to the past, for sure, to try and remember a time and an age where things were simpler and everybody went on imaginary adventures with a lump of cloth and stuffing to the end of the back garden. Such sentimentality is deplorable. As an antidote I suggest venerating the modern, and taking a bottle of Garnier Fructis hair conditioner to bed with you each night.
But there is more, and worse. By keeping teddy bears an adult wishes everyone to know that, in some way, they remain fresh and uncomplicated, free from the cynicism that taints so many around them. Like that'll be much help when an armed burglar (no doubt a failed asylum seeker and single mother to 12 children) takes your prized possessions from you in the middle of the night. Once, as a student, I ended up in the bedroom of a girl festooned with any number of stuffed toys. Never have the effects of two litres of supermarket cider worn off more quickly.
Finally and most awful of all, there is anthropomorphism. It's a big word, but an even bigger mistake to interpret the actions of animals as something equivalent to human behaviour. By dressing up fake bears in simulucra of the latest human fashions (I think I saw, amidst the coverage of Barney's misdemeanour, one bear done up in a ursine Roberto Cavalli creation slit to the crotch) we only encourage such beliefs. We harbour the fantasy that when a monkey smiles it's thought of something funny, rather than got something stuck in its teeth, and that if we could only talk to them in their own language we might be able to take a grizzly down the pub and make them get a round in.
Well you can't and they wouldn't. That said, looking at that Barney photo again he does look right pleased with himself. Good boy!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1835785,00.html
When Barney met Mabel, there was an instant - and fatal - chemical reaction.
On Tuesday night the doberman pinscher guard dog, after six years' blameless service, went berserk: within minutes Mabel, a 1909 German-made Steiff teddy bear once owned by Elvis Presley, more recently the pride and joy of an English aristocrat, lay mortally wounded.
Barney went on to rampage through hundreds of rare teddies, all on loan to Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, and so valuable that the insurers had insisted on a guard dog to protect the premises at night. The aftermath, according to shocked staff, was appalling: shattered limbs, gouged eyes, ears torn off, and pools of sawdust everywhere.
"Up to 100 bears were involved in the massacre," Daniel Medley, general manager of Wookey Hole Caves, said last night. "It was a dreadful scene."
Barney's mortified handler, Greg West, who took 10 minutes to get the dog back under control, said: "I still can't believe what happened. Either there was a rogue scent of some kind on Mabel which switched on Barney's deepest instincts, or it could have been jealousy: I was just stroking Mabel and saying what a nice little bear she was."
Mabel usually lives at Maunsel House, the 13th-century manor house home of Sir Benjamin Slade. Sir Benjamin, who inherited the estate in 1982, recently announced he was conducting a worldwide DNA search to find the closest heir to the estate: so far he has received more than 15,000 claims, including one from a man currently residing in a New Delhi prison. He collects Elvis Presley memorabilia, and bought the bear at a Memphis auction, reportedly for £40,000.
Mr Medley had the unenviable job of phoning him to explain, as well as he could: "It was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. I had a very brief conversation with him, and it's fair to say he was not best pleased. He sent around one of his men this morning to collect the body."
He is anticipating another awkward conversation: dozens of the damaged bears belonged to another private collector, now out of the country on holiday. "I hope she doesn't read about in the papers, or she'll be straight back on the next plane."
Staff were still working last night to restore the display, which is expected to reopen this morning.
The hound dog will not be present.
"We have asked the security firm not to send us that dog again," Mr Medley said. "I really don't want to see anything bigger than a Jack Russell."
Why, after steadfast duty for more than six years, would a guard turn on those he was supposed to protect, tear them to shreds in his lusty mouth and stand amongst their corpses unrepentant? Why? Because the guard is a dog and the victims were teddy bears, valuable collectors' teddy bears, that's why. Barney the doberman pinscher, you are a dog apart.
Not that dogs are generally to be commended. They are dirty and stupid (have you tried to engage one on the Middle East? Don't waste your time) and can fall into a rage seemingly at random. One minute you're waving a nice juicy steak in its face shouting: "This is my dinner! What you got? A bonio?" The next your hand has been bitten off and the steak is an impromptu bandage.
But on this occasion, the dog was right. Teddy bears have their place and that's sitting next to children. I got rid of mine younger than most (I was very mature for 13) but I can understand a brat's need to have something made of soft material to soak up their salty mewlings. Adults don't need a bear for that, they have shirt cuffs. Yet all the assaulted teddies were owned by adults (one individual specimen having cost a Sir Benjamin Slade the meagre sum of £40,000).
So what do adults need a bear for? To cling to the past, for sure, to try and remember a time and an age where things were simpler and everybody went on imaginary adventures with a lump of cloth and stuffing to the end of the back garden. Such sentimentality is deplorable. As an antidote I suggest venerating the modern, and taking a bottle of Garnier Fructis hair conditioner to bed with you each night.
But there is more, and worse. By keeping teddy bears an adult wishes everyone to know that, in some way, they remain fresh and uncomplicated, free from the cynicism that taints so many around them. Like that'll be much help when an armed burglar (no doubt a failed asylum seeker and single mother to 12 children) takes your prized possessions from you in the middle of the night. Once, as a student, I ended up in the bedroom of a girl festooned with any number of stuffed toys. Never have the effects of two litres of supermarket cider worn off more quickly.
Finally and most awful of all, there is anthropomorphism. It's a big word, but an even bigger mistake to interpret the actions of animals as something equivalent to human behaviour. By dressing up fake bears in simulucra of the latest human fashions (I think I saw, amidst the coverage of Barney's misdemeanour, one bear done up in a ursine Roberto Cavalli creation slit to the crotch) we only encourage such beliefs. We harbour the fantasy that when a monkey smiles it's thought of something funny, rather than got something stuck in its teeth, and that if we could only talk to them in their own language we might be able to take a grizzly down the pub and make them get a round in.
Well you can't and they wouldn't. That said, looking at that Barney photo again he does look right pleased with himself. Good boy!
