The Wedding Show Wild & Weird

# Wormy fish-killers

# Convoys of caterpillars

-# Super-clever brainless slime

-Ugh!

# Bunny rabbit swarms Wedding storms

# And pigs that swim at dinner time

# Tornadoes of fire Starfish going haywire

-# Algae balls from space!

-What?!

# Prairie dogs that chat Birds going splat

# And fish slapping in your face

# They're wild and weird, wild and weird

# Really, really wild and really, really weird

# They're wild and weird, wild and weird

# They're really, really wild

# They're really, really wild and weird. #

It's romance all the way on today's show,

as we find out just how far a porcupine will go to find true love,

prospecting for gold from an unlikely source,

and how a desert and a storm aren't a marriage made in heaven.

No, no, no!

Naomi, I need your help!

You called? Oh, my goodness, what have you done to the place?!

I'm in a right pickle here, I really need your help.

OK, calm down, what's the problem?

OK, I'm best man at my friend's wedding,

I'm flying out to America later today and I'm not packed,

I don't know what I'm doing, I haven't got a thing to wear.

Evidently!

Well, I was thinking, because you're a wedding planner extraordinaire...

Obviously referring to my role on the highly-acclaimed CBBC series

Marrying Mum And Dad, yes.

Well, I was thinking that maybe you could help me.

-Of course. Come and sit down.

-OK.

I love weddings. You know, the glitz, the glamour,

the razzmatazz, the hairdos. Oh, it's magical.

OK, well, start off by telling me about the happy couple.

How did they meet?

Normal stuff, really. I mean, boy meets girl,

boy falls in love with girl, boy asks girl to marry him. Classic.

You know, there are other ways

couples can find true love, you know.

-Really?

-Mm-hm. Allow me.

Meet Dorit, an Indian crested porcupine,

residing here at Israel's Ramat Gan zoo.

Aw, so cute!

She was abandoned as a baby,

so has been hand-reared by the staff at the zoo.

So sad!

We got really, really attached to her.

We know her since she was just a cute little tiny baby.

They raised her here at the wildlife hospital,

so we all got to chip in and bottle-feed her

and get really, really attached to her,

and see her grow into this beautiful, beautiful porcupine.

So beautiful!

You know, you really are going to have to pull yourself together

-or we're never going to get through this.

-Sorry.

Anyway, for almost a decade, Dorit lived a quiet life.

HE BLOWS HIS NOSE NOISILY I said she lived a quiet life!

I'm sorry again.

However, in 2015, some strange sightings

started to concern her keepers.

I came to the exhibit to see Dorit, to feed her, to clean the yard.

And a special day, one special day,

I came here and I saw the poop,

instead of being inside the exhibit,

it was outside.

And I thought to myself,

"One of the keepers was very lazy yesterday."

Eurgh!

What?

Well, the keeper could have used the toilet like a normal person!

It wasn't the keeper's poop, it was the porcupine's!

Oh, I see.

-Honestly!

-Yeah.

I came in another day

and I saw again the poop was outside of the exhibit.

Then, a couple of weeks later,

just as the mysterious poo was starting to become

a bit of an issue, an alarm went up.

A call from the primate department came.

"Your porcupine's out on the loose.

"We see her, she's right here. She's escaped."

No!

We rushed to Dorit's enclosure and there she was,

just being her happy old Dorit self.

So, was Dorit in two places at once?

It's a good question. It's time to get to the bottom of this mystery.

-Mmm.

-Ooh, how exciting, I love a good mystery!

# Girls on film... #

We decided to put a camera trap

because they're nocturnal, they're mostly active at night,

and we wanted to see what was going on.

We realised when we looked at the footage

that there's a male porcupine that comes in every night

for the past month to visit her.

So Dorit had a secret lover!

Oh, don't start that again!

He's not just defecating next to her,

he's actually interacting with her through the bars.

They touch noses, they sniff each other.

It's most likely that he smelt her

and came all the way into the zoo to meet her,

which is quite exciting.

Ah, how sweet!

Boy meets girl, boy poos on girl's doorstep, romance blossoms.

-SHE SIGHS

-Yeah. It's pretty sweet.

Apart from the pooing bit. That is gross.

Well, Tim, you can't be scared of poo if you're the ring-bearer.

-What are you talking about?

-Well, let me explain.

-You have got the rings, haven't you?

-Er, yeah.

Ah.

-What do you think?

-Are they gold rings?

Yeah, 100%.

Er, well, then I wouldn't do that if I were you.

-It's real gold.

-I know, that's the problem.

The gold used to make them could have come from a source

anything but romantic.

# Sniff, sniff, ooh-pa-pa-do... #

There's an old saying -

where there's muck, there's money.

Such is the allure of manure

that scientists have recently worked out how to turn solid waste

into pure drinkable water.

They've even managed to collect the gases it gives off

and use them to power our transport too.

But one scientist currently thinks that we're missing out

on our waste's greatest potential.

Everyone in society gets rid of things down the drain every day.

They are flushing away millions of dollars.

So, Paul has come up with

one of the weirdest get-rich-quick schemes ever invented.

And it involves gold.

We thought we could go out and prospect for gold and silver

in unique places, and it turns out one of these unique places

to prospect for gold and silver is poo.

Seriously, are you kidding?!

And you knew this when I was...?

You knew! Ugh...

I really hate you sometimes.

We took pictures of the waste water solids

using high-powered microscopes

and we found little particles of gold and silver

in what are called sewage sludges at wastewater treatment plants.

For a city of a million people,

every year there's about 13 million worth

of precious metals,

and most of that value is actually in gold and silver.

-INDISTINCT SPEECH FROM PHONE

-13 million.

£8 million.

-I know!

-Who is it?

-It's Gendal. It's my best mate.

-He's on the lookout for a new job.

-Oh.

Where is it? A water treatment facility.

Yeah, sewage plant.

-DISCONNECT TONE

-Er...

Faulty line... I think.

The amount of gold in the solids coming out of

these wastewater treatment plants is about the same as what, you know,

mining companies will blow up mountains for

in terms of the amount of gold content of rock

that they'll go and mine - it's that same ore content.

And rather then saving this mineral-rich muck,

we're currently just dumping it.

Each of those dump trucks contain more than enough gold

to make a gold ring.

So what you're telling me is

the one gold ring that binds the happy couple together

-could have been found in a...

-TOILET FLUSHES

-Sorry, what were you saying again?

-Doesn't matter.

Where did you say you were going for this wedding?

-The States, America.

-America?

-Mmm.

-Whereabouts in America?

-Arizona.

-Arizona?!

-Yeah, why?

-Oh, no reason.

Naomi!

OK, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Phoenix, Arizona.

Something strange is building out in the desert.

A few grains of sand.

Not just a few.

Winds are strengthening.

This is certainly not a nice day for a white wedding.

-What was that?!

-That was an immense cloud of sand,

a super-sized dust storm.

-No way!

-Way.

So, what starts that off, then?

That's a good question.

It'd be nice if there was an answer to that que...

Be patient.

THUNDER CRASHES Does that answer your question?

Cool!

Out here in the desert, when thunderstorms form,

they just drop the rain straight out of the bottom,

and that has a profound effect.

A demo, methinks.

Wait here, I'm off to the lab.

Just sprinkle some sand.

Lovely.

Pick up the blue blowy device.

Right, now, during a thunderstorm,

strong downdraughts of cold air

are created which hit

the dry desert floor and spread out,

kicking the dust high up into the air,

creating an imposing wall.

It looks lovely in slow-mo, don't you think?

-Clear?

-As mud, or sand.

We need an expert.

Mmm, any ideas?

Er, yeah, the one-and-only Mike Olbinski.

That is a great idea.

-Let me get his musical intro sorted.

-Oh, yeah.

OK, hit it.

# Mr Sandman, bring me a dream. #

Nice try, Tim, but he's not a sand expert,

he's a storm chaser.

Oh, well, then...

OK.

# Thunderbolt and lightning

# Very, very frightening me... #

-Better?

-Perfect!

-Yeah.

It's almost like a bomb exploded.

The dust will start rolling away from the storm.

And then a lot of times, that air that's rolling out

will actually kick up more storms above it.

And those storms will build up and they'll drop downdraughts as well,

and they kind of end up creating this huge wall of dust.

So, pretty quickly, a few grains of sand can be whipped up

into a swirling, spiralling wall of dust,

sweeping across the desert floor,

engulfing everything in its way.

MUSIC: Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen

The biggest ones that I've seen have been a mile tall and 100 miles wide

and have winds packing around 60mph.

Once it hits, visibility can be reduced to near-zero

in a couple of minutes.

# Any way the wind blows. #

Ah.

So, what's all this got to do with the wedding?

Well, meet Jenny and Gus Luna.

-Nice couple.

-Mmm, that's before.

Before what?

I'll let them tell the story.

SHE PLAYS THE WEDDING MARCH

The day of the wedding itself was relatively calm.

The weather itself was really great, it was bright and sunny.

I was standing out there looking for the future bride,

future wife, coming in. That was an awesome sight to see.

What could possibly go wrong?

SHE PLAYS A SINISTER TUNE

-Er, can you press play, please, Tim?

-Er, yeah.

We are here this afternoon to share with Gustavo and Jennifer

a most important moment in their lives.

A good, solid ten minutes in, everything was going fine.

-SHE LAUGHS

-And then, uh,

I remember looking at Jenny and I remember looking up.

My jaw dropped.

My eyes got big.

I look at Jenny, Jenny's looking at me with this scared face.

I couldn't help it, I had to turn around to look,

to be like, what is he looking at?

What they saw was an immense wall of dust coming straight towards them.

We just... Pretty much just hold on tight.

-I'm going to make this quick, OK?

-Let's...

We should just end it and let's get out of here.

I can't see them, they can't see us.

Sure enough, the judge kind of skipped a lot of things

and went to, "I pronounce you husband and wife."

And we kissed.

-No, no, no!

-SCREAMING

I present to you Mr and Mrs Gustavo Luna.

Thank you.

You know, you look back at it now and you can laugh at it, but...

-Cos it's nobody's fault.

-Yeah, definitely.

You know, you can't control the weather.

Surely one of the weirdest weddings ever witnessed!

You know, I'd really reconsider your role

as a wedding guidance counsellor.

-Er, planner.

-Whatever!

If there's one thing this has taught me,

it's that weddings aren't magical,

they are just stressful beyond belief.

-So are you not going now?

-No way!

-Well, I'll have your ticket. Brilliant!

-What for?

Well, I love weddings.

And you never know, I might catch the bouquet and marry Mr Right.

Hang on a minute, what about all the dust clouds?

Oh, those? Well, they don't even happen at this time of year.

-Oh, what?!

-Now, what on Earth am I going to wear?

Er... Maybe not pink.

See you next time.

# I'm glad I crashed the wedding. #

# They're wild and weird, wild and weird

# Really, really wild and really, really weird

# They're wild and weird, wild and weird

# They're really, really wild

# They're really, really wild and weird

# Wild and weird! #