People generally don't give local news anchors the proper amount of credit for having what it takes to go on the air every night to cover whatever happens to be taking people's interests by storm, be it sports, crime or...that dude who lived as a goat. It was that last one that gave CTV Winnipeg News Anchor Maralee Caruso a verbal run for her money as she could not make it through the one-minute feature without breaking into hysterics multiple times. It's fantastic.
I'm able to watch a lot of these local news blooper videos and, while finding them amusing, I don't often go beyond a smile or a minimal chuckle. But oh boy, Maralee Caruso's giggles in this video are more contagious than whatever goat disease Londoner Thomas Thwaites could have picked up while living as one of the four-legged animals. It almost instantly became a game of "Will She Make It Through The Next Three Words Without Laughing?" And the answer was always, "Nope." (For another animal-related news video that will have you in stitches, check this one out.)
I love how she just keeps trying to get the story out rather than giving it up and passing the torch to one of her co-anchors. By the end of it, though, they were just as laugh-riddled as she was, so I guess no one was meant to get a serious and straight-faced version of GoatMan's story from CTV Winnipeg.
Really, it's impossible to shine any negative light on Caruso for losing it in the middle of the story, regardless of her being live on the air. This is a truly ridiculous topic. For those unaware, I can get these facts out without laughing at my keyboard. Thomas Thwaites left his normal life behind to live in Switzerland as a goat, complete with his self-made leg prosthetics and an artificial stomach. Rather than this just being the goals of a madman, Thwaites did this all with a grant to study goat psychology and both the fake legs and stomach were made with the help of university staff and a clinic, so none of it was just slapped together, either. Science!
As was the point of the news brief, Thwaites was one of the co-winners of this year's parody-driven Ig Nobel Prize in Biology for his GoatMan efforts. (The other winner was Charles Foster, who lived as a badger, otter, deer fox and bird.) I'm pretty sure there's no chance anyone will be getting Maralee Caruso to do any announcing or presenting for an Ig Nobel event, but I'd be all for it.
Isn't it nice to see a news story that leaves people laughing? Especially when it's the anchors themselves. Let's try to make more day-to-day laughter for ourselves, shall we? Now where is my goat helmet?
