Writing in Maclean’s, Barbara Amiel finds that tabloid TV and shock culture have made their way onto the nature programs of Animal Planet.

When we were dog-less in Manhattan, I had to make do with the Animal Planet channel on the bathroom-mirror TV. Which is how I came to realize that human beings are doomed. A portentous narrator explained that mankind is outnumbered by hundreds of billions of birds, poised like marauding hawks to attack us (not to mention killer swans). Packs of feral hogs are spreading all over America. As for Florida, where I am a part-time resident, we face the Gambian pouched rat, which according to the program Killer Aliens is “the size of an average house cat. It carries deadly diseases that could potentially cripple the population of south Florida.” That’s not counting another 400 non-native species of wildlife, including killer snakes, that are colonizing the Everglades and strangling babies. “We are at the crossroads of interspecies chaos,” intoned a zoologist, whose name I can’t give you since the Kleenex I was using as notepaper while in the bath ran out of space after I scribbled the quote on it.

But what really did me in was the Monsters Inside Us program.

Heaven knows, we’ve all got enough on our minds without worrying about flies that lay eggs inside you via a quick trip into your nose or a scratch on your foot. How many times have you had a fly up the nose? Well, perhaps not so many, but I am a regular in that department due to the prevalence of flies in these subtropical climes and childhood remonstrations to breathe through your nose—unlike the nursery-rhyme old lady who didn’t and thereby swallowed a fly. When the wrong fly detours nasally, you get a revolting movement under your skin as egg turns into maggot burrowing into your flesh.

There were close-ups of the infected foot of a young girl—as pretty and nice as anyone with maggots under their skin can be, which isn’t exactly the Estée Lauder prom-perfect look. After that program came Confessions: Animal Hoarding, in which people like me who want to rescue the entire animal world turn into nutcases marooned among dozens of howling animals while friends cry quietly over the beloved one’s departure from sanity.

When did the Animal Channel turn into a sensationalistic animal National Enquirer?

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In Maclean‘s Barbara Amiel offers a defense of Sarah Ferguson, caught in a newspaper sting trying to sell access to former husband Prince Andrew.

Having now been seen on worldwide television scooping up an alleged $40,000, Sarah Ferguson is in muck. Mazher Mahmood, a specialist in entrapment journalism, whose earlier stings included Prince Andrew’s sister-in-law the countess of Wessex, passed himself off again as a wealthy businessman keen on making a royal connection. His down payment was on Sarah’s alleged asking price of $750,000. (Sorry about the repetition. We know it’s alleged and that the duchess has apologized for her alleged crime but allegedly it’s the rule around here to keep repeating it.)

Sarah Ferguson would retort that the very reason she was with a relative stranger (in this story all things are relative including its value) in a Mayfair flat last week—poorly furnished I thought for a Mayfair flat and a dead giveaway really that it was a set-up—with a bottle of wine and News of the World reporter Mazher Mahmood, was her children. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and HRH princesses need lotsa frocks. Sarah’s $22,500 annual divorce allowance from Prince Andrew can’t buy very many dresses even with discounts and comps, not to mention that with Sarah’s fluctuating weight, they can’t really share outfits.

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In Maclean’s, Barbara Amiel shares the challenges of growing old gracefully.

Being an old woman is no plum assignment, and all of the 88-year-old Betty White’s swearing on her guest spot last weekend for Saturday Night Live can’t change that. Men have always enjoyed better shelf lives…

There is, however, no getting around how ghastly this time is. (If you are under 60 stop reading here, should you have bothered to get here, because being young or what’s now sociologically classified as “young elderly,” you will not yet have experienced the following humiliations.) Being called “dear” by policemen and all members of the male sex who used to call you “darling”; trying not to mumble your words, one of those weird sensations like pins and needles. I open my mouth wider and wider as I ar-tic-u-late while trying to avoid looking anatine, because my mouth muscles seem to have stuck and it’s not Botox. I’ve self-diagnosed with Google’s help and decided I have a condition called dysarthria, which has to do with aging that causes “abnormal sequencing of the muscle movements required for producing speech sounds.” Everyone around you seems to be speaking at fast-forward speed. Coordination is equally bizarre. Why I am sent medicine in bottles and containers I can’t possibly open without putting them in the door jamb? And on days when you tart up and go out, the benefits are arguable.

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