Baby Animals & Their Fuzzy Friends

“Classical music accompanies video of furry, fuzzy and feathered friends at the farm, zoo and home. These animal antics will delight both the young and the young-at-heart.”

Being of completely sound mind and body last night, I turned on the TV a few minutes before Martha Stewart’s Apprentice. There were commercials on all the channels I usually watch and I turned to the guide. And there it was on the OC PBS station: Baby Animals and Their Fuzzy Friends. “Surely, this is not a real show. Surely, it’s a mistake. Surely, I must have eaten some bad pork and this is a hallucination.” I think. But I click over, and on my screen are teenaged gorillas frolicking. Obviously I’m disappointed, I hate monkey looking things, and they weren’t really babies, but I guess they were fuzzy. I keep watching anyway. The song ends, and up comes a green title screen, it says what we’ll see next (Farm Animals) and the name of the classical song they’ll be playing. Then we see polar bears, penguins, kittens, “four dogs and a cat,” and finally “dinner and a bath.” I make sure to call my family into the room to confirm that baby animals and friends are indeed on the TV.

Unlike every other PBS show in existence, this one doesn’t send you to pbs.org or something to buy a copy of the program. But, Amazon has it, of course (someone actually bought a copy between when I looked it up last night, and now). It can be yours for only $15, 27 minutes of pure, unadulterated animal cuteness, with ugly gorillas thrown in. It might have to be mine.

I should mention this is not a nature program. All of these animals were either on a farm or, in a house (kittens) or at the zoo. It seems this quality piece of cinema was made, or sponsored, or something by KQED, SF’s PBS station. It seems likely that it was shot at the SF zoo. I’ve been to the SF zoo, but I can’t confirm. I think I was too busy being really amused by the mating meerkats, I didn't pay too much attention to the surroundings. I’m sure some intern was doing some editing one day, found some old footage, a few controlled substances were had, and the rest is history. Cute history!

My favorite part is the footage of the zookeeper throwing penguins into the water. It looks fun!

I have to say I’m very disappointed with the blogsphere’s coverage of this important piece of work. Only one live journal was found through the google blog search. And I’m not going to link to it because one of the commenter’s avatars is a picture of unicorn, um, mating. Although the post is pretty good and takes them to task for including a non-African antelope in their “African animals” montage. And then there’s this girl, who is lucky enough to have her tivo recognize the value of Baby Animals & Their Fuzzy Friends. As soon as I post this, I’m going to get ready for the deluge of rabid baby animal fans looking for a blog post. It’s no boingboing, but it’s something.

Programming note for Tom and Zack: Near the bottom of the programming guide (only 1 away from Baby Animals and their Fuzzy Friends) is a listing for Guns, Germs and Steel. Check your local listings.