The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Mere Suburbia

June 17th, 2006

I have two somewhat unrelated topics for today’s blog entry: (1) the new Animal Planet “reality” show “Meerkat Manor” and (2) the even stranger territorial behavior of fellow residents in our townhome association.

First of all, the meerkats. As much as I love animals—actually, because I love animals—I’m becoming increasingly intolerant of animal documentaries. They seem to be becoming even more anthropomorphic than they used to be, and they thrive on stuffing their programs with as many threats as possible to their cute little protagonists’ existence. Mink and I have already discussed the pornographic titillation involved in animal documentaries, but “Meerkat Manor” is honestly one of the worst I’ve seen.

Narrated by Sean “I wish I could act” Astin, the half-hour episodes always end on a cliff-hanger involving the near-death of some meerkat or another. Will Shakespeare survive his deadly puff adder bite? Well, now that Shakespeare made it through the night, will he starve to death? Will Flower, the dominant female of the clan, be so upset that her daughters had litters of pups (without her permission) that she will kill her own grand-meerkats? You get the idea.

You’d think that the people who watch soap operas wouldn’t be the same people who watch nature shows. But maybe I’m wrong. In “Meerkat Manor,” despite the fact that the footage is taken from a scientific study by Cambridge University, the script constantly assigns human characteristics to its meerkat subjects: (I paraphrase) “The courageous Shakespeare, left behind at the burrow, is watched over by his caring sister Mozart. These two have a very close bond. Mozart’s presence is probably the only thing keeping Shakespeare going at this point.” As if they know that.

Anyway, I’m obviously guilty of a fair amount of anthropomorphizing on a daily basis. I, however, am not making a documentary, so I’m excused. But it’s strange to me that the documentarians think audiences will only be interested in animals if we’re constantly told how much they’re like us. I can see some appeal there, but part of the reason I’m so fascinated by animals is that they’re also very different.

Animals, for example, have a biological advantage to marking and defending their territory, as the meerkat family in “Meerkat Manor” does. Humans do not. And yet certain members of our townhome association are intent upon making sure that children from outside this complex can’t play here. Twice Porpoise has heard a man who lives here (we’ll call him Mr. Defender of the Complex) tell a kid—who, as far as we could tell, was doing no harm—that he couldn’t play in the area in front of our row of townhouses unless he were specifically invited. And get this: he said it was because “those are the rules.” What rules? Where?

Well, yesterday was the second time the child got this lecture, and apparently he went home and told his parents what had happened. Then his mom came over to talk to Mr. Defender of the Complex, and apparently that didn’t work, because the kid’s father soon appeared. Things seem to have escalated, because at one point, Porpoise looked out and saw that there was a policeman arbitrating the dispute, as Mr. Defender waved around a deed, voicing the phrase “private property” quite a few times.

Sheesh. I’ve rarely been so embarrassed to live somewhere. Don’t get me wrong—I love our house, and I certainly never imagined I’d be a homeowner this early in my life. It does sometimes strike me as strange that the house I live in now, with two people and a cat, is larger than the house I grew up in, with three people, two dogs, two cats, and a hamster. But, since Porpoise and I both work primarily from home, and since we’re both independent, persnickety individuals, the extra space helps us out immensely. I just feel guilty at times about having so much private property.

I thought the whole townhome association might actually be a bit of a remedy for that: you know, a sort of communal living. But it’s hard to live communally with people who seem to only care about leaves, mulch, and keeping “those” kids off our property. Especially when they keep “forgetting” to tell us about association meetings.

I saw Mr. Defender pacing the rear perimeter of the complex this morning. After watching the meerkat documentary, I could swear that he was marking his territory. Maybe if I think about my fellow townhome residents as meerkats, I’ll be more charitable towards them.

I should end the post on that cute note, but I’ll just add a little but more, since I recently saw a Lauren Winner article about the spiritual consequences of living in suburbia. The books Winner reviews seem too mild for my taste: I want to see a whole-hearted condemnation of the lifestyle in which I to some degree partake. Ron Sider’s classic Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger is more the harsh scolding I crave. But I’ve always been better at judgment than at actually helping people change. It’s my tendency to further retreat into the privacy of our house—yes, I recognize the irony—rather than to confront my neighbors’ ideas about private property.

Some battles aren’t worth the energy, and this may be one of them. I don’t know yet. We’ll see. And, in the meantime, I won’t be watching any more of “Meerkat Manor.”

Entry Filed under: Books, Uncategorized