This is quite an old story now but I just heard about it today on a re-run of the BBC Radio Show "The Museum of Curiosity". I have pieced it together from various contemporary sources although there is quite an inconsistency and contradiction in the various accounts on record.
In 2005 a Dutch television show
produced by the Endemol Company set in motion a chain of 4,155,476 dominoes in a Guinness Verified World Record.
Everything should have been fairly straight forward but the organisers conceded that the event was overshadowed
by the earlier shooting of an errant sparrow.
The sparrow was
killed by an exterminator with an air rifle just four days before the record
attempt following its entry into the venue where rehearsals were under way and the accidental knocking down of some 23,000 dominoes.
The
killing was seen by many as an overreaction purely in the commercial interests
of a bit of pointless entertainment and angered animal rights and bird protection groups.
Critically the house sparrow, though commonly seen, is classified as an endangered species
in the Netherlands. Its population has halved in the past 20 years to less than
1 million breeding pairs, due to human encroachment on its territory and other climate and environmental influences.
The show’s creator referring to the dead bird, said “We all feel terrible about what
happened,”
More
than 5,000 people signed a Condolence Register on an impromptu Web site set up
to honour the bird.
“I just wish we
could channel all this energy that went into one dead sparrow into saving the
species,” said the head of the Dutch Bird Protection agency in an appeal for calm.
The
sad event at the domino record was not the end of the affair. There had been an
attempt to catch the Sparrow (passer domesticus) in a humane way using sticks
and nets before resorting to the violent means to avoid disruption to the television
schedules.
Shortly afterwards an animal rights agency took the bird’s killer to
Court and he was fined 200 Euros.
There continued to be a public outcry with populist
support and even to this day the shooter is still receiving threats to his
life.
Above all the poor sparrow,although losing its life in such an unnecessary
way, has had the last word.
The avian hero has pride of place in the Natural History Museum
in Rotterdam as a stuffed exhibit under the theme of dead animals with a
backstory.
Yes, it is mounted on a box of dominoes.
* from the English Nursery Rhyme "Who killed Cock Robin ?........"I, said the Sparrow"
No comments:
Post a Comment