Aliens and poisinous beasties.

In Which: Our Hero Sidesteps The Important Issues Of Natural Disasters In Favour Of Pretending-He-Knows-About-Natural-History.

The year took off to a disasterous start for the poor communities around Port Au Prince in Haiti: I believe the death toll is now over 200,000.

As horrific as it all is, I have no intention of adding to the swathe of well-wishes and call to alms, if you'll excuse the pun; I just want to briefly mention something unique to Haiti that I was reminded of by the country's prominence in our media.

The Haitian Solenedon is the world's only venomous mammal, bless it, a small nosey little thing with unkempt nails used to dig for insects. Functionally extinct, it exists in the mountains in the south, its numbers ever decreasing. Mercifully it will have been completely unaffected by the earthquake, continuing its pioneering work tarnishing the cuddly reputation of the mammalian family with its murderous toxicity.

In looking the little bugger up, I stumbled upon the following groundbreaking news:



It transpires it was in fact a very rare hairless sloth, obviously less likely than an alien invader, but you know, sometimes the truth is much more fantastical than CNN would have us believe.