I HOPE Sir David Attenborough never tracks down the Yeti or, to give him (the Yeti, not Sir David) his Sunday name, the Abominable Snowman.
I think the poor creature has never recovered from being christened Abominable, which drove him into the woods and mountains to live a life without television or the internet.
How he — we are assuming it's a he, as he never makes appointments at the hairdresser— survives is a mystery to us. And that's how it should remain.
Sir David, whose life is several open books, has expressed a desire to find the Yeti. Fair enough, if merely to say hello and ask if there's anything it needs ("A television and the internet, please").
But yon Attenborough is a nosy chiel and would probably want to start verbally dissecting the beast to discover its diet and ascertain its views on Manchester United's chances this season (Yeti: "They've never been the same since Giggs retired. So I read in The Yeti Herald and Advertiser, ken?").
But, of course, it's unlikely the beast can speak, otherwise we might have heard it shouting "Help!" or "I'm bored" in a right loud voice from the wilderness.
Poor thing doesn't even have a supermarket. One wonders how it satisfies the craving to eat that undoes us all and leaves little time for philosophy. Being big and strong, he's almost certainly vegetarian, but could probably see berries far enough by now.
Perhaps he'd love a ready meal and a microwave. Who doesn't? But if they found him a flat somewhere he'd probably only be in it a day before the doomph-doomph-doomph music started from next door, or that fat bloke upstairs started doing aerobics on his wooden floor.
The beast would want back to the wilderness in a jiffy. I think it's nice that he keeps himself to himself. At some time, he learned to steer clear of us, which most of us would gladly do if it weren't, unfortunately, us.
But there are always people — perhaps not Attenborough, to be fair — wanting to poke him with sticks. He'd have to go on chat shows or, worse still, find a job, otherwise the mid-market madpapers would label him a welfare scrounger.
Before long, he'd be pining to be where the only chatter comes from the wind in the trees. I wish him many more long, happy years in the wilderness.
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