Last night we were lying in bed watching one of my new favorite nature shows, and can I just say that I think I now watch more nature-related shows than I do reality shows, and I don’t think I’m prepared to accept what this means about me and my character. That maybe my priorities are in order? Eww?

My most favorite ones are about wild animals who have been abandoned by their mothers and the humans who adopt and raise them to be the majestic animals they were meant to be. I always cry no matter how it ends, and I think I’ve finally figured out what I want to do with my life. I want to adopt a baby hippo, and she would be more than welcome to sleep in my bed.

Last night’s show followed wild caribou herds as they crossed the Arctic tundra and the packs of wolves who hunted them. I learned more than I thought there was to know about caribou in less than an hour, and before almost every commercial the narrator always came back to this specific point about their migratory nature: caribou must always be moving OR THEY’LL DIE. And then they’d show a caribou falling off the roof of a 12-story building. Not really, but you wouldn’t know this given the drama in the narrator’s voice, like he was about to reach into the chest of a young calf, rip out its heart, and then smear it on my face SO I WOULD UNDERSTAND.

Jon does not share my passion for these shows. In fact, he barely tolerates them because I cannot stop talking about THE ANIMALS! after I’m done watching, and last night as he was trying to troubleshoot some lingering bugs on the redesign I kept pausing the show to make sure he understood the gravity of the caribou’s plight. “Jon,” I’d say. “The caribou cannot ever stand still. IF THEY STOP MOVING THEY’LL DIE. HOW CAN YOU JUST SIT THERE.”

“I get it,” he finally said after more than a half-hour of my outbursts. “The caribou are living in the New York City of the wilderness. NOW SHUT UP.”