Dr. Ingledew Botterill
Eyesterday reacted with concern to reports that a group of orangutans in the rainforests of Borneo has started Residents in the island’s southern town of Pelaihari, one of the last remaining strongholds of the endangered apes, noticed what appeared to be a construction site among trees early last week.
NVIRONMENTALISTS
Locals reported seeing the orange-coloured simians felling large trees and stripping them of their branches in order use them as beams in a primitive drilling rig.
plant
“It happened so quickly,” said local farmer Eric Chia. “One minute the apes were lounging round in the canopy, masturbating and throwing their shit at each other as usual, the next they’d built a working shale gas extraction plant.”
Mobile phone footage taken by Chia shows the hairy primates
FRACKING.
By our Science Correspondent releasing a high pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals into a hole before capturing the emerging gas in a palm leaf gasometer.
“I can’t pretend this isn’t a setback,” said Greenpeace President Jonathan Porritt. “Just when we were starting to realise the extent of the challenge posed by climate breakdown, these bloody monkeys go and do this.”
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But BBC naturalist and national treasure Sir David Attenborough thought that discovering the orang-utans could learn to frack added to our knowledge of them.
“At first I thought this must be the mimicking behaviour for which the great apes are renowned,” he told BBC Wildlife magazine. “But it seems that fracking has never taken place in Borneo, so they must have come up with the idea themselves. So that’s great,” he added.
Energy suppliers around the world wasted no time in contacting the simian frackers, hoping to cut a deal on any newly-extracted gas.
bonham
“It’s a total no-brainer,” said Texan billionaire Hyram T Funkbucket. “This is a whole new front in the energy market and we want in, big time. We’re going to pay them in bananas.”
“Shale gas, extracted by endangered animals, the very animals who live in the rainforest? Hot dang! It don’t get more ethical than that,” he added, whilst wearing an enormous Stetson hat and chomping down on a fat Cuban cigar.