The Well-Built Pie

Spokesmen for Neuremburg Zoo, Germany, today announced that they would be hand-rearing a polar bear cub abandoned by it’s mother, and not leaving it to have it’s tiny fluffy little head popped off after all.

“We’ve consulted the Zoo Handbook at some length, and it turns out that we’re supposed to look after the animals in the zoo”, said spokesman Helmut Barenschnuffen.

“We were quite surprised, we thought that as cutting-edge conservationists and environmentalists, it was our job to just leave the miserable thing to die while we argued the toss about global warming and beat ourselves into a state of sexual frenzy over pictures of Al Gore.”

When asked if this about-turn in policy was as a result of a realisation that the previous position of “letting nature take its course” was a fucking stupid thing to say, given that the animals are in a zoo, where they are unable to feed themselves , roam freely, or in any other way act naturally, Mr Barenschnuffen produced a box of kittens from under the desk and advised us that they would start getting fed to the tigers if we didn’t drop that line of questioning.

“Sometimes, it is necessary that a single animal must die, for the greater good of securing a place on the conservationist lecture circuit”, he said, before returning to crossing off ugly, non-photogenic animals from the “to be saved” list of endangered species.

The polar bear cub was unavailable for comment, but a professional lip-reader watching footage of the bear reported that his first words after hearing of the reprieve were “This never would have happened to the fucking Meerkats”.