Comedian Stephen Colbert's Animal Menagerie
Eagle, Leatherback Turtle, and Spider Named after Comedian Colbert
Aug 28, 2008
Colbert's Creatures
However, a bird, a reptile, and an insect have received the most attention on Comedy Central's popular The Colbert Report. (Remember: both terminal "t's" of the show's title-- perhaps a little pretentiously-- are not pronounced.)
Other Stuff Named for Stephen Colbert
In addition to his animal namesakes Ben and Jerry created an ice cream flavor,” Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream” and a Michigan minor-league hockey team, the Saginaw Spirit mascot, named Steagle Colbeagle the Eagle. Even a short-lived, fan-funded Stephen Colbert Museum and Gift Shop in the rural, depressed eponymous Colbert County was established in rural Alabama.
But it is the animals that have garnished the most attention.
First came a soon-to-be-hatched eagle egg earmarked for Colbert at the San Francisco Zoo. The hatchling turned out to be a male and a doting Colbert affectionately named h is avian offspring “Stephen Jr.”
In time, when ready to be released into the wild, the eagle’s journey became a regular feature on the Report. Ever the beamin Colbert tracked his “son’s” travels with nothing short of paternal pride. “Stephen Jr.” became the first animals to receive some form or variation of the name of the ultra-egotistical, faux-conservative character played by Stephen Colbert.
When the eagle, Stephen Jr., crossed the border into Canada, Colbert revealed his mock-xenophobia toward the U.S’s "neighbors to the north." Although, during his Canada sojourn, allegedly chomped on salmon, Stephen Jr. dead-panned his “son’s" rooting out American’s Viet Nam draft dodgers, providing border patrol (à la eagle Minuteman), and doing his part in preventing “terrorist pigeons” from entering the U.S., the human Stephen’s reaction was ambivalent as he lamented regarding his extended foray into Canada: “Why couldn’t he just have been gay?” That his “son” crossed back into the States by way of Bellingham, Washington and then to St. Helens, Oregon helped restore Colbert patriotic hopes.
Stephen Colbert’s next animal offspring, c/o Conservation International was a female formidable 5.5 foot leatherback turtle named “Stephanie Coburtle,” to whom the human Colbert referred as “the eagle of the sea." He embraced his son's eagle sister adopted sibling with unfettered joy.
The Great Turtle Race was a project to attract attention to the plight of an endangered turtle species. The reptile participants received names for various corporations and institutions paricipating supportive of the project. Although Stephanie (an exception to her other sponsors but hardly to their publicity) participated in a race with ten other leatherbacks, she did not finish first in the turtles’ trek from their nesting grounds in Costa Rica to a final destination in the Galapagos Islands. That she finished a respectable third did not dampen the doting father’s pride and unconditional love for his “daughter.”
Sadly, possibly due to the lack of lasting power of transmitter batteries, being dislodged by male turtles, or the illegal poaching by commercial fisherman a number of the female turtles, including Stephanie, have gone missing. (One wonders why it hasn’t occurred to Colbert to have her picture posted on a milk carton.)
And Along Came the Spider
The most recent addition to Colbert’s animal kingdom is a trapdoor spider found along the California coast last year. Jason Bond, a past guest and a biologist at East Carolina University. When Bond revealed that he named another arachnid Myrmekiaophila neilyounga after a favorite singer Neil Young, Colbert demanded that a trapdoor spider be named after him. In compliance, Bond named another trapdoor spider: Aptostichus stephencolberti. And because Colbert insists that the final “t” in his name is silent, so will the one in the second one of his spider’s surname.
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