Things that crack me up #46
Is this cute or disturbing?
Image description: A color photo posted to Flickr by geekmama76 of a sign on a restroom at a wildlife park in Perth, Australia. It's a 3-D sign, I believe. It's of a creature, like a groundhog (or a badger?), with a bandage around it's head and it's hind legs and back half resting in a tiny little silver wheelchair.
This is obviously an original piece of signage art. What I find disturbing -- or hilarious? -- is that it looks like a stuffed animal -- an actual animal, dead, but stuffed -- attached to the disabled access restroom door.
12 comments:
What's the scale? It looks far too small to be a real (or simulated-real) wombat. Those things are hefty.
I wonder if it's someone's misguided attempt to make the sign accessibly tactile? ;)
lauredhel: I don't know from wombats, but I think this creature is fairly small -- big chubby squirrel sized.
Penny: *shudder*
Oh, I know from wombats, and that's a wombat. A cute widdle teeny wombat. *tickle*
While I like Penny's hopeful explanation, taxidermy icks me out profoundly. And a dead baby wombat is completely sad.
I really doubt that it's taxidermy, it's way, way too small, and not the right colour (unless it's a species I'm not familiar with). Wombats are about a metre long; about the size of a very chunky Labrador, only shorter. And they're a sort of grey-brown, not beige. If this was "real", they would have had to steal a tiny baby wombat out of a pouch for taxidermy purposes.
I read this as a toy type wombat, not a stuffed dead one.
Thank you, lauredhel! I was really quite distressed.
I have always thought wombats were adorable, but when I saw a recent TV documentary about people rescuing, raising, rehabbing and releasing orphaned baby marsupials in, I think, Tasmania, I totally lost all trace of dignity and fell completely in love.
Oh, look: This is the place, Trowunna.
I never thought my own blog would compel me to read up on wombats, but I have now and they are totally adorable -- at least the baby pictured at Sara's link is.
I'm still curious what the sign's creator was thinking. Is there a little narrative behind the creature's wheelchair and head bandage? And why, God, WHY, would you nail even a fake creature to a restroom door?
It does say it's a wildlife park - I'm guessing the other doors are marked by wee critters as well?
Puggles (baby echidnas) are the ones that get me. Look at this, just look! http://www.peewee-mafia.com/web_pages/spook_the_puggle.html
It's a difficult choice between echidnas and numbats, though, and numbats are my sentimental favourite, being both local and critically endangered.
Sorry, Kay. :) But now that I'm calm and have stopped going "squee! squee!" over all the adorable marsupials, what I want to know is whether this sign actually tells you, a wheelchair user, in one glance that this is an accessible restroom. I do think it's cute, and that it makes sense in the context of the animal park. But is this just so cutesy/artsy that it no longer functions as an internationally recognizable symbol?
I suppose it does work in the sense that, "Hey, cute little Dude is in a wheelchair!" and I've been conditioned by Wheelchair Guy signs (international access symbol) to see a wheelchair in any kind of signage and think "Yay, I have not been forgotten!"
Or I might wander in thinking to find a pet hospital.
Given that it's a REAL animal, I vote "disturbing."
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