The Sabretooth Tiger's Fearsome Reputation c.33 million BC - AD 2007

The Sabretooth Tiger's Fearsome Reputation, which once struck fear into the heart of mammoths, Ug the Hunter and the easily-excited readers of fantasy fiction, has tragically bitten the dust with the discovery by Australian scientists that the mighty feline's Simpsons-like overbite was about as frightening as a "raw prawn's granny" and its powerful jaws "couldn't crush a wet Pom".

The Reputation first reared its ugly head and flashed its supposedly-mighty gnashers 33 million years ago on what was to become the North American continent. It roamed the grasslands and pine forests bragging loudly about its powerful jaws and claiming to make its living by ripping apart bison, deer, elk, mammoths, mastodons and hunter-gatherer orthodontists with its Herculean jaws ... when it actually knocked them over with a paw and slashed their throats with its weedy but mighty sharp canines while they were busy searching through their wallets for the number of a personal injury lawyer.

As the Ice Age encroached upon the North American continent, the tigers' natural prey began to freeze to death faster than British pensioners in January. Soon, only the woolly mammoth survived to shiver, not only from the cold, but in mortal fear of the sabretooth's big-mouthed boasts. But as the mammoth rarely ventured far from its living room, preferring to spend the millennia-long winters knitting itself another warm layer (unfortunately from its own wool) - it too was soon extinct - and the starving sabretooth was reduced to leafing through the brochures for dental remodelling and howling "ice headache!" when it clamped down on a passing glacier.

Yet even with the demise of Smilodon fatalis⁽¹⁾ itself, The Reputation lived on in the imagination of Homo sapiens, who often woke screaming in the middle of the night terrified by images of the great beast snapping at his pillow, only to find that their one-size-fits all supermarket dentures had been knocked off the bedside cabinet by the cat. Thus it was that scientists at McHenry University were moved to end once and for all the Top Trumps debate which had raged back and forth in the Uni bar for decades ("Your sabretooth versus my marsupial lion") - their tests proving that, at about 1,000 Newtons (the force required to crush 1000 Cox's Pippins), the sabretooth tiger's bite was only about a third as powerful as the modern panther and infinitely weaker than an average Osmond's. With the news that its miaow was much worse than its bite The Reputation put its jaws together in a sulky pout and bragged no more.

The Sabretooth Tiger's Fearsome Reputation will be buried at the church of the Bleeding Janet Street-Porter. The service will be conducted by the Very Reverend Snagglepuss and there will will be some wailing and much gnashing of oversized teeth.

The Sabretooth Tiger's Fearsome Reputation is survived by the Fearsome Reputation of Bad English Teeth.

⁽¹⁾ literally "Esther Rantzen".

British Garden Songbirds c. 1650-2007

Bleary-eyed residents across the UK are celebrating this week, following the news that British Garden Songbirds have whistled their last thanks to a mild European winter and a bumper countryside fruit crop leading to the end of cheery chaffinches, bubbly blackbirds and wide-awake wrens visiting UK gardens and waking you at bleedin’ dawn with their chorus.

British Garden Songbirds were hatched about the time of the first British garden when Capability Brown encouraged a family of starstruck thrushes to go into show business – creating the first song thrush. It would whistle merrily at dawn to protect its territory, attract a mate and severely annoy the owners of Capability Brown’s new garden until they finally settled their bill in full, or fell, dazed from lack of sleep, into the haha.

With the growth in popularity of gardening, soon the Victorian working classes were able to enjoy the beauty of The Songbirds’ renditions of music hall ditties – with the added benefit of being woken early enough to spend a good 12 hours a day up a chimney or getting their tired limbs caught in a mechanical loom.

As trades unions and socialists won new freedoms for the working man and woman, people were able to spend more time in their gardens and allotments, especially as they now had a gap of several hours to fill between being woken at sun-up by a robin crooning Itsy-Bitsy Teenie-Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini and the start of the day’s work at nine or ten o’clock.

Despite desperate attempts by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to convince homeowners that The Songbirds were a wonderful addition to any British garden and that standing at the kitchen window with a pair of binoculars and a book of British birds was an exciting way to kill a few hours on a Sunday morning, relations between homeowners and Songbirds began to sour – especially when The Songbirds went electric in the 60s. Soon British gardens were awash with moptop warblers (both garden and willow) belting out And Your Bird Can Sing at ear-splitting volume.

The relentless ambitions of many songbirds to make it to the toppermost of the poppermost through their open-air performances reached its nadir in the early 90s with the release of British Garden Songbird’s debut album, Swingalong-a-Dimmock – and the backlash began in earnest.

Fatigued and jaded gardeners began to encourage robins to perch jauntily on the handle of their shovel whilst they whistled a medley of Andrew Lloyd-Webber tunes – all the while, the jazz-hands robin oblivious to the fact that the gardener was using said shovel to dig a six-foot-deep bird-shaped grave.

Salvation arrived as an unexpected benefit of global warming, as an unseasonably warm winter lured The Songbirds away from the limelight of the British Garden into the obscurity of the British countryside. After several hundred years, British gardens fell silent and a nation went back to sleep.

British Garden Songbirds will be buried in a silent ceremony at St Oddie’s Church of the Annoyingly Dull Twitcher. They are survived (for now) by Bill Oddie.

Those Who Knew Them: Steve Irwin 1962-2006

Welcome to the first in an occasional series, in which we at As A Dodo throw our columns open to the family, friends and acquaintances of the recently deceased. For the first in the series, we approached someone who worked for many years with the famous Australian naturalist Steve Irwin, his old sparring partner Mr Bruce Crocodile.

'Jeez mate, Steve Irwin, what can you say? I know a lot of people across the whole ruddy world are gonna miss old Stevie. A lot of people. Not quite so many animals mind you. Take me for instance, there I was one arvo lying around in a creek up near Kookamularatawatimadingo waiting for a couple of tourists to decide to have a skinny dip (I hate to get sidetracked, but I love it when that happens: "I say, Davina, have you seen this funny log? - It looks just like a crocodile", "Yes it does, doesn't it Anthony? Anthony? I say Anthony, where are you?", "Awwwlllfggfggsgdfgs get it off me, oh Christ get it off my rawlf arrgle, crunch" - it's great, mate, and tasty too). Anyway, there I was in the creek minding my own bizzo, next thing you know there's some sunbleached ocker with a noose around my gob, pointing me at a ruddy camera and telling everyone about my mating habits. I ask you, how would he have liked it if I'd done that to him? Not that I reckon he got round to doing much mating himself - not with shorts that tight.

Fair do's, I admit I had a bit of a grudge against old Steve from that day on. Especially when he upped and stuck me in his ruddy zoo. He looked after us pretty well though. Sure there was always the risk he'd try and stick a finger up your freckle to make you smile for the camera, but the accomodation was pretty decent and the tucker was ace. Once he even offered me his baby. Fair play to him: he might have spent the last ten years giving me the raw prawn but serving up your firstborn as a mid-morning belt-loosener makes up for most things in my book. The bugger of it was the press was there, so he had to take the little ankle biter away before I even got a taste.

Anyway, Steve Irwin. Decent bloke. And anyone who denies it doesn't know Christmas from Bourke Street. At least he got off his fat date and did something with his life - even if that something was buggering around with animals who just wanted a quiet life and the odd pommie tourist to snack on. Go on, raise a tinny to him. And if you're ever down here in Oz, come over to the zoo and look me up, I won't bite ... honest.'