The Hardest Working Menu Item on Television

There is plenty of talk around these days regarding this question: which is the most thankless job on a television show or a movie?

We can expect that the makeup artists and costumers come up against a certain amount of artistic ego as they prepare the stars for their turn before the camera, and the stunt doubles would be disappointed if I didn’t mention them right here, and it’s hard to believe that gaffers, or best boys, or swing gang leaders are entirely in control of their own fate, and in truth, probably spend a fair amount of time in getting bossed around.

The writers, now there’s a thankless task, and how they must wince every time the director bellows out, “Get me rewrite!”

But the rigors of these and like jobs pale compared to that of the wildebeest.

All that ever happens to him is that he gets eaten.

I don’t believe that I have ever seen a nature show in which a wildebeest makes an appearance, either starring or simply in a celebrity cameo role, in which he doesn’t get eaten.

To make too big a deal of it would be like pointing out that the water is awfully wet these days, and gravity keeps making objects fall to the ground over and over.

Some things your average nature show viewer has already taken into account, and one of those things is that if a wildebeest makes an appearance he will soon enough make a disappearance.

You pity the poor writer making the encyclopedia entry on our friend the wildebeest as he comes to the section on Natural Enemies. It would likely, it seems, be easier to list those who don’t want to eat the wildebeest; that would save ink and printing costs.

His list of natural enemies is long, and includes lions, tigers, cheetahs, hyenas spotted or otherwise, elephants, hippopotamuses, cobras, crocodiles, zebras, giraffes, and unless somebody tells me different, the African Veldt Prairie Dog.

The only animals that don’t make a habit of eating wildebeests on sight are the Giant Three-Toed Sloth, and certain members of the platypus family, and who’s to say what would happen if the wildebeest came wandering by their home, who’s to say indeed?

The derivation of words is always of interest, and it is said that ‘wildebeest’ is either the invention of the African Zulu tribes or descended from the Saxon side of northern Europe, but the actualities of which has first claim upon the word is of little consequence, since they both translate into ‘entrée,’ or ‘main course,’ or at the outer limits of possible interpretations, ‘the meat dish.’

Not a species that shirks its duties, which it apparently sees as presenting itself to be eaten, our friend the wildebeest regularly steps into situations that a security professional would say nearly screams out “caution!” or “turn back now!” or “use the buddy system!”

That same security professional would advise against much of what your average wildebeest takes as a natural course of action.

“You know those four regions you migrate to year in year out? The Serengeti, the Western Corridor, the Mara Triangle, and the Masai Mara, with these thousands of miles of unprotected travel across plain and river to get you from one place to the other? And you know how most of you get eaten along the way? You know what I say? I say go ahead and stay where you are! Habits are meant to be broken, my friend! Trust me, it’s not so much better in these other places than the old neighborhood you grew up in. It’s perfectly fine here in the winter, a lot of us like the four seasons. You’re like these snowbirds that tear off for Texas each winter. Go ahead and stay up here with your friends! It’s better than being eaten!”

Of course to no avail. These are creatures that once they get an idea into their head, they’re just impossible. Stubborn? The wildebeests? Don’t get me started.

One’s line of work always has an effect on how we look at the world. I happen to think that the ob/gyn has a certain take on things, but so does the undertaker. Not better, not worse…but different.

Same with the wildebeest. I have to think that going off to work each day with the high likelihood of being eaten before the quitting bell sounds would give one a deeply philosophical outlook on things.

I think it would engender, along with Seneca and the great Stoic philosophers, a certain fatalism, and a willingness to live with the harsher realities of life. “If this is life, so be it! I accept the rough with the smooth. It’s all good, man, it’s all good.”

It must seem to him that in this Great Circle of Life we each have our certain jobs to do, some to build, some to sow, some to teach, some to entertain around the campfire of an evening, and some to get eaten.

As he puts on his hat ready to step out the front door though, it wouldn’t surprise me if now and again he pauses and thinks Big Thoughts on the Big Things a little more than most of us do.

Noticing a little hitch in his step his wife might call out after him.

“Everything OK, dear?”

“Oh, my yes, can’t complain, no one would listen if I did!”

“You seem a little, I don’t know, a little this or that.”

“No, perfectly fine.”

“Everything OK at work?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“What do you have going on today?”

“Oh, the usual. Run around like mad and see if I get eaten by a lion.”

“Well, I worry about you; if you come home tonight we can have a nice long talk about it.”

That’s all your average wildebeest of the family man variety needs, and he is out the door in no time with a new spring in his step.

There was a time when nature shows, like Shakespearean tragedies, had most of the bloody stuff happen offstage, with the camera cutting away at just the right instant before the lion actually sank his teeth into the flank of the wildebeest.

You knew what was coming, but the soothing voice of the narrator, or the Charmin commercial that interrupted the lion’s dining experience, took over and gave you, the viewer, a certain distance on the event.

Not so anymore, not so at all.

Today’s daring director, born and reared on grim documentaries and cinematic exposés, wants you to experience the Great Circle of Life in its totality. He has an entire curriculum of education he wishes to impose upon you, and it surely does include the nitty gritty of Life As It Is Lived by the Edible Classes.

I can’t say that there is anything to this reincarnation business, but if so it strikes me that a soul might have a choice as to what he or she wishes to come back as. I picture a list of possible futures, including ants, fireflies, Great American Horn Toads, snails, and the entire range of insects, plant life, and animals.

I would advise the soul to think long and hard about which box he checks, and to come to enough understanding about himself to know if he would really enjoy getting eaten by a lion, or if it is a passing phase. Because that is what you are likely to get if you check off Wildebeest with your #2 pencil.

I do know that if you think of it as declaring a major when they finally make you do so, declaring a major I mean, Wildebeestery lacks the future career potential and earnings power of a lot of other fields, seeing as how you’re likely to get eaten right away, which means you don’t really have enough time to put your money to work for you in an IRA or other retirement account. In this one regard Wildebeestery bears a certain resemblance to Art History, Renaissance Literature, and Comparative Religion majors.