Wildlife Lies on the Internet

The power of the internet amazes me. For instance, I can sit at my computer and write general thoughts about my wife’s menstrual cycle and hear from people all over the country about it. For the record, there’s still no firm answer to what’s happening there. She’s so confident that she’s not expecting that she won’t consider testing herself, at least for a while. Maybe it’s just unthinkable, who knows? But, I digress.
The amount of bad information that is passed around the world in the blink of an eye is mind-boggling. A lot of it is harmless, I suppose. Take this amazing photo of a python trying to escape from a game preserve after ingesting an antelope. It can’t pass through or under this fence. It’s not important why the snake can’t get out, although some might think it’s important that it can’t escape. There are several internet explanations of these photos. The one I got involved an Australian rancher mysteriously losing sheep until he put up an electric fence.
It’s amazing that someone just made up a story to go along with the photos, and now millions of people accept it as fact.
Locally, some goofballs found photos on the internet of an alligator swimming with a deer in its mouth. They sent it around to some people who were planning summer fun at a nearby lake and said that’s where the pictures were taken. The photos were shared so many times in Shreveport that it created quite a stir. So much was made of these, in fact, that one local television station did a story about the photos. So, a practical joke becomes news. That’s the internet world, I guess.
The lesson to learn here is: never believe what people send to you on your e-mail. Have fun with it, but before you send it around and create a panic, at least make a stab at making sure it’s true.

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