The internet's most important animals are having a rough fucking time of it this week

By William Hughes  |  April 27, 2018 | 10:05pm
Aux Features Important animals on the internet
The internet's most important animals are having a rough fucking time of it this week

There are many, many animals on the internet each week, but you are busy and can only click on so much. And yet it’s hard to go into the weekend thinking: Could I have done better? Were there animals that deserved my internet traffic that did not receive it? In this important recurring feature, we recap some of the most important animals from the internet that you may have missed.

In a perfect world, being an animal would be a one-way ticket to a life of luxury, because animals are good, and good things should be rewarded and cherished But, alas, we do not live in such a world, which means that sometimes we here at The A.V. Club’s Most Important Animals Desk are forced to report on good boys and girls in varying states of despair.

Sometimes it’s the simple stuff, like this cat, owned by Brandon Salinas, who took the classic feline vs. computer war a little too far:

(Luckily, both the cat and the computer are reportedly fine, and also luckily, Salinas later posted a loop of the fall itself for us to mesmerize ourselves with.)

Other stories are a lot more fraught, like this footage that’s been making the rounds this week, of a guy doing his best to revive a prairie dog he found drowning in a pool. Circulated of late by The Dodo—but apparently shot back in 2014, according to this news report—the video shows pool repairman Rick Gruber gently coaxing the little rodent back to life, saying incredibly sweet stuff like, “C’mon, little guy, you can’t die.” (Jeez.)

At least that story has a happy ending. Less so for this National Geographic piece (warning: unpleasant photos in that link), detailing a super-depressing discovery made in Madagascar this week, where an overwhelming stench led authorities to discover a two-story house in which suspected animal smugglers were housing more than 10,000 endangered radiated tortoises. The animals have now been rescued and trucked to a private wildlife rehabilitation facility, but most of them were dehydrated and week, and more than 600 died after being found. Three suspects have been arrested; they were reportedly discovered in the middle of burying a load of tortoise corpses in their yard, and sound like really fucking pieces of work.

(A little peek behind-the-scenes here: These weekly animal roundups are largely compiled by our Internet Culture Editor, Clayton Purdom, who grabs links throughout the week and emails them to the rest of the news team. Clayton does amazing work, but we have to admit that we were sincerely not expecting the story he’d labeled “shitload of tortoises” to be quite such a stone-cold bummer.)

And while we could go further in this vein—here’s a link to a blessedly video-free article on A.I.-directed cockroach super farms in China—it might be a good idea to redirect our focus to more minor animal problems, like what to order at the deli:

Or the trials and tribulations of standing up for oneself:

Because otherwise, this ostensibly cute animal piece is just going to end in bizarre, semi-poetic descriptions of what it sounds like when you’re in a room with thousands upon thousands of fresh-farmed cockroaches.

Hold your breath and (you) only hear a rustling sound. Whenever flashlights swept, the cockroaches fled. Wherever the beam landed, there was a sound like wind blowing through leaves.

It was just like standing in the depths of a bamboo forest in late autumn. The cool breeze blows, and the leaves rustle.

Well, fuck.

 
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