*Part 1 is back story, Part 2 is the list of ways in which my life has been ruined.*
I am an animal lover. I love them all, even the scary and/or weird looking ones. Because of this part that makes up my being, I used to watch shows about animals as a kid. Not now, hence this story.
As I was saying, I used to watch animal shows as a kid. You know, like the nature/animal documentaries and stuff. "Zaboomafoo" was my favorite, but there was one I used to watch before that. It was called "Kratt's Creatures". This was when I was a toddler, I don't know exactly what age, but definitely not old enough to be in school yet, but just old enough to have things scar me for life apparently.
So, one day I'm sitting in the living room watching "Kratt's Creatures", enjoying it as usual, with today's featured animal being sea turtles. Everything was fine, the Kratt brothers are informing me via voiceover of how sea turtles go up on the beach and lay their eggs in the sand, bury them, and return the ocean while the baby turtles develop in the eggs, all that good stuff. (Mind you, there is footage of this whole process being shown, obviously, and I'm just sitting there all fascinated or whatever, and I can't wait to see the cute little baby turtles.)
The next scene is of the baby turtles hatching and crawling out of the sand nest thingy, and they're just the cutest little things I have ever seen in my entire life at that point and I'm just gushing at the sight of them on my screen. Meanwhile, the voiceover is talking about how the hatchlings have to make it across the beach to the ocean where they can rejoin the other sea turtles, and it's all happy, happy, joy, joy for them, right? I mean, there's even some large birds coming to watch the journey! Nature being supportive of other nature! (At least, that's what my young mind must have been assuming because I kept watching and that's where things started to go wrong.)
Maybe the next bit is way more messed up in my mind than it actually was, but I don't know for sure. I just know this is how I remember my first ever traumatic event. All I remember is that the hundreds of baby turtles were still trying to get to the ocean, and I remember seeing these birds hanging around watching. At first. Next thing I know, the birds are flying around, scooping up mouthfuls of these baby turtles and CHOMPING THEM UP. Seriously, they're eating them so violently that you can see them being chewed to pieces, with scraps falling on to the ground in an awful, bloody massacre. Meanwhile, that draws the attention of these saltwater crocodiles, who begin to follow suit, only because they were bigger, they could scoop up more of them at one time! Meanwhile to THAT, nature decides to cheat the survivors by letting the waves from the tide spit the ones that did make it to the ocean back onto the beach.
All I could do was sit there in stunned silence. My little 4 year old brain was still absorbing the gruesome scene, trying to decipher if what I was seeing was real. When it sank in and I understood that the BABIES ARE DYING, I sank into a state of heavy sobbing and crying. My mom rushed in to investigate, and she asked me what was wrong, and all I could do was point at the screen, as I was hiding beneath my blankie. She quickly turned off the tv, and she tried to hold me and comfort me, but nothing could undo the damage and console me.
Next, I remember that for some reason I wanted to talk to my "aunt" (really just my mom's bff) about it, and I told her through another session of tears over the phone about it and that got me calm down a bit. But I didn't watch the show again for a long while.
When I finally wanted to watch the show again, several months later, how about THE SAME DAMN EPISODE came on that day.
WHAT THE HELL does PBS think they're doing?! What do the makers of "Kratt's Creatures" think they're doing, putting this in a CHILDREN'S show, AND showing it more than once?!
Needless to say, I never watched that show again.
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