Italy

Following Theo's world tour last year comes an excursion to the land of pizza, pasta, panini and all other food that begins with P - Italy.

Mmmm.

Reviewer Max was sent from the confines of the busy Animal Reviews HQ out to the snowy wilderness of the Dolomite mountains in Northern Italy on a mission to spot animals and preach the gospel of animal reviewing to Italy. This is his special report...

Now, I have visited the land of leaning towers before and on previous trips I've seen some pretty good animals, like the time I spent a week in southern Italy catching and pickling scorpions. I've also heard some good animal stories, like the one about the reason why people are scared of Tarantulas. This is because in Italy both black widow spiders and Tarantulas lived in the same fields. So when people got bitten by the highly venomous black widow which is very small in size they didn't see the spider but they did sometimes see Tarantulas which are big and blamed it on them.

All this you would think would add up to a promising animal spotting excursion. This however turned out not to be the case. My Journey started off as many do in the airport waiting for my flying boat to take off. I took this time to do some promotional work in the departure lounge as it seemed like the perfect location to find new and exotic would-be reviewers.

This man was asked kindly to pose with an
Animal Reviews promotional sticker.

At gunpoint.

Having spent the entire flight without seeing even a single migrating goose, we landed in Bergamo to transfer to our automobile to travel up into the mountains. This short 3 hour journey provided me with the first of not many animal sightings of my excursion. Whilst carefully surveying the scenery for beasts I spotted frolicking in the middle of a grassy round two happy looking brown rabbits. Quite what they where doing situating their warren in the middle of a very busy road I am not sure. Perhaps they like the bustle of busy traffic and the safety of knowing no would-be hunters would be stalking them whilst trying to dodge on-coming traffic. Clever little blighters.

Having arrived at my destination deep in the Dolomites I proceeded in setting up base camp in a hotel and bedding down for the night safe in the knowledge that at least on day one I had seen one animal. Day two came and went with no sightings but with plenty of evidence of animal movements thanks to the various different animal tracks left in snow by playful alpine animals. These tracks filled me with a sense of expectation and hopefulness which were to prove pointless. Days three, four, five and six flew by and I hadn't seen a single wild beast since my rabbit encounter except hundreds of funny little dogs that accompanied by their fur toting owners would scamper and skid across the snow and ice.

Evidence of Italy's bang up to date
animal rights policies.

By day seven I thought my chances where pretty slim of seeing anything and I was about to give up when all of a sudden whilst travelling on ski lift I decided to look down and saw before me something I had never seen before. There below me I saw a squirrel. I know what you are thinking - it's only a squirrel - and you would be right it was only a squirrel, but the difference with this one was that it was a black squirrel. I've never seen a black squirrel before let alone a black squirrel joyfully jumping in and out of the snow like a little olympic high jumper. This squirrel (unlike it's surley cousin the grey squirrel) seemed so happy and care-free and generally more approachable, so perhaps squirrels like the snow as much as any one else.

Feeling happy at this sighting I reached the top of the mountain, got of the lift and saw a load of crows hovering on the thermals in the air, a second sighting in a few minutes. Excellent. I don't really see the point of crows, as like ravens they just loiter around looking sinister, like they're constantly watching you.

This aside at least it was my third sighting which is better than nothing.

After returning to base camp in the evening I decided to celebrate my excursion by going to the local "Centro Attratzione" entertainment arcade to play some games which included one of the best animal based computer games ever "Jumbo Safari". This involves driving around the planes of Africa hunting big game in a jeep using a lasso to catch the animals. It was amazing!

If you look carefully at the chair travelling in front, you may
just be able to make out a sealion on her holidays.

It was now time to leave the mountains and head home. I had a great excursion and did a lot of useful promotion work but I only saw 3 different animals in the wild which lets face it is not that good.

To make up for this here is a list of all the animals I ate whilst I was away:

• Cow
• Pig
• Duck
• Rabbit
• Deer
• Calf
• Chicken
• Guinea Foul

Over and out,
Max.