Another poor choice

Opinions vary, of course, but I think some really bad choices were made this week. And I’m not talking about the elections.

While most of us were focused on how the balloting was going, the overall winner of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards was selected. It wasn’t any of the photos I featured last week. And it wasn’t one of the others I liked. It was the fox diving into the snow:

“A tough day at the office” by Angela Bohlke was named Winner of the Nikon Creatures of the Land category as well as Overall Winner.

While the scene may have been curious and new for both the photographer and the judges, it might just as well have been a clip from an old video more than three years old that I published last December. The Discovery Channel video, narrated by Tom Selleck, explains exactly how this scene comes about — “A red fox pinpoints field mice buried deep beneath the snow, using his sensitive hearing and the magnetic field of the North Pole to plot his trajectory.” Then he does a leaping nosedive into the snow to catch it. If he’s done his homework, he’ll be successful nearly 75% of the time.

You can see all the winners on the contest website.