I am not a big animal fan, but my 7-year-old is the biggest. Her favorite television channel is Animal Planet. She can sit there and watch it for hours. She can’t decide if she wants to become a Veterinarian or the next Steve Irwin. Either way, I know she will be great at what she does because she has a true heart for animals of all kinds. So one night I couldn’t find anything to watch on television. Much of it is garbage nowadays. Then my daughter saw a show called Meerkat Manor, which was on Animal Planet. It wasn’t my idea of a great show, but there wasn’t anything else on so we headed over to it. After only 1 episode I was hooked. This had to be the most addicting soap opera and it involved animals.
Meerkat Manor is the story of the Whiskers Meerkat family. It is led by the dominant female (Flower) and the dominant male (Zaphod). They have plenty of kids, as it seems they can have several litters per year. They live in the Kalahari Desert. There is a rival gang called the Zappa gang and a sneaky Meerkat called Houdini that likes to get in to all kind of trouble.
I couldn’t imagine how the lives of Meerkats could be very exciting to watch. After viewing 1 hour of this show (2 half our episodes), I learned how. So much can go on in just one week’s time. The dominant female got seduced by the rival gang’s Houdini, the little baby Len got eaten by a hawk, the baby’s twin Squiggy was born with a deformed leg, Carlos got an infection from a cut on his face that he received during a fight and died, and there was so little rain food was becoming scarce.
This animal soap opera had just as much romance, drama, sibling rivalry, and humor as a regular daytime soap opera has. This story line is made easy to follow and you do get to recognize which Meerkat is which. In fact I learned that you can visit the Animal Planet website to view each of the Meerkat family characters. You can even play some interactive Meerkat games while you are there.
You bet I will be watching this show again next week. I can’t wait to see what happened to Flower because at the end of the episode she was missing. The new episodes begin Friday at 8:30pm ET/PT. If you watch the show and find yourself taking a real interest in meerkats you can check out the following website to find a zoo near you that has plenty of meerkats: http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/meerkat/meerkat.html.
