Revisiting Planet Earth

When I was chatting to David on the phone at the weekend he told me that he and his friends were planning a gathering in his flat on Sunday evening to watch the first in the new David Attenborough television series: Planet Earth 2. I found it very heartwarming and wholesome that these young science students were eagerly anticipating the new series from the venerable broadcaster. So this evening I decided to watch it too. I am never particularly drawn to watch nature programmes for some reason, but when I do watch them I become absolutely fascinated. David Attenborough, aged 90 and sensibly wearing a warm blue down jacket, introduced the programme from a balloon two miles high in the air near Mont Blanc. This week's episode was about wildlife on all sorts of remote and dangerous islands. And indeed it was amazing. There were sex-starved sloths, Komodo dragons wrestling, lemurs leaping, iguanas swimming underwater, and penguins leaping off cliffs to find food. The highlight had to be the terrifying racer snakes chasing baby iguanas across the gritty sand on a volcanic island - it was like something out of a horror movie!