What Animal Scares Jeff Corwin the Most?
Shark Week is an annual Discovery Channel tradition, and the network celebrated the institution’s twentieth anniversary with a big Pier 60 party the other night. “We don’t do toaster week or ostrich week,” Discovery host Mike Rowe commented, although “twice as many people died from ostriches as from sharks, 250 died from toasters, and only eight died from sharks. (Somehow we don’t think “Toaster Week” would deliver the same ratings.) We ran into Animal Planet star Jeff Corwin at the party — who famously had a terrifying run-in with an angry elephant — and we asked him about sharks and other scary animals.
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You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Protest
The annual shark tournament at Star Island Yacht Club in Montauk started today, and the Humane Society was prepared. In a campaign dubbed an “anti-sportfishing jihad” by one angler, the group, not content to protect innocent puppies and kittens, is now defending the fierce predators. “It’s not the killing,” said their rep, John Grandy. “It’s the spectacle, the orgy of death that is represented by hauling these magnificent animals up. The message is that sharks don’t matter. Their suffering doesn’t count.” The society hired a plane with a banner reading End the cruel shark tournament now! and has plans for a protest, but the fishermen aren’t biting.
