Wild Kingdom, Wild TV

My husband came home from Sam's Club with a surprise for me. No, it wasn't a 4 gallon tub of ice cream or 7 pounds of broccoli, it was the 7-CD set of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom: The Definitive 50 Episode Collection! I am so excited!! I remember Sunday nights when I was growing up was Wild Kingdom night. Marlin Perkins was just as much a part of my childhood as the Brady Bunch was. I think Wild Kingdom definitely contributed to my love of nature and animals and made me want to get outside and discover more. And shows like The Crocodile Hunter and The Kratt Brothers (does anyone remember them from PBS?) reaffirmed my love and want to discover.

Lately though, I haven't used TV to get me to want to get out more. One because I don't watch as much TV now, and two, some of the new shows having to do with nature are, well, interesting, no doubt, but kind of far-fetched and sometimes go a bit overboard. Imagine THAT these days with television!

One show recently stopped our channel flipping in one of our rare sitting-down-watching-tv moments. The guy was hiking through Australia in the desert region with only a canteen and some flint. He was thirsty. Really thirsty. He hadn't been near any source of water in quite awhile and it hadn't rained. So, in desperation, he turned his back on the camera, took out his canteen and...yep, you guessed it- he urinated in his canteen and then DRANK IT! Oh my gosh. Anything he said after that was hard to focus on because he kept taking sips out of that canteen... And all I could think was, why didn't the cameraman that was following him give him a sip out of HIS canteen? That's a little bit TOO wild for me. Give me a hiking trail and a Nalgene bottle and I am good to go. No pun intended.