A male voice comes from somewhere OFF-SCREEN.
MALE VOICE (VOICE-OVER)
(filtered through video)
Just for a quick bite to eat, Ally. Pleeease!
ALLY
Oh, here's Rachel! Carry on, Minister.
Rachel takes a seat with the others in front of Ally's desk. A video transmission is underway with MINISTER PROCTOR, 60, moustachioed, the Minister of Conservation in London.
INTERIOR - OFFICE/DEPARTMENT OF RE-INTRODUCTION (SAME TIME)
Proctor scrunches up close to his webcam at his computer. He's a stuffy eco-bureaucrat with a crush on Ally, because he has a smiling portrait of her on his desk.
Ally's face is on his videoscreen, with the others in the BACKGROUND. She is cheerful with everyone, including Proctor, but is uninterested in him even as he coos and sighs at her.
ALLY (VOICE-OVER)
(filtered through video)
So, Minister, what are we letting loose in the world today?
INTERIOR - OFFICE/ALLY GRUBERSTEIN
(Yabby makes noises, imitating each bird as it's announced. Otherwise, he won't be saying very much in the story!)
ALLY
The Red Kite? The Glanville Fritillary? The Great Bustard?
(refers to paper list)
Here's one: The Corncrake!
WALLY
More birds? How bloody boring.
ROGER
Yeah, I wish we were doing the American megafauna.
WALLY
Hmmph, President Gore really knows how to do rewilding big-time!
RACHEL
Ah, yes, the Pleistocene Rewilding: Elephants, cheetahs and so forth.
Again, with each, Yabby imitates the animal.
WALLY
Can we Rewild an extinct worm or something, so Yabby shuts up.
RACHEL
Worms don't make any noise.
Yabby frowns at the ceiling. He's stuck.
ROGER
They simply eat dirt and then blatt it out their bass ends.
Yabby makes some loud apple-chomping noises, followed by blatting fart sounds.
PROCTOR (VOICE-OVER)
Do the Blue Butterfly continuation outside Greenock, why don't you.
WALLY
Aw, all we get to let loose are chirpers and butterflies.
ALLY
Butterflies are very important!
RACHEL
Yes, you know what they say about a butterfly fluttering its wings on one side of the world, Wally!
YABBY
(sounds like Scooby Doo)
Huh?
Butterfly Rewilding
EXTERIOR - STREETS/GLASGOW - DAY
A green pickup truck, with "Propane Powered" on the side and a cage in back, putters through Glasgow's scrubbed city streets past happy, though poor-looking, pedestrians.
Roger and Yabby are seated in the back, with the cage.
(Throughout the story, when out-of-doors, they often pass lines of people picking up garbage, past signs and posters exhorting extreme conservation, scolding wastefulness, etc.)
INTERIOR - PICKUP TRUCK (TRAVELLING)
With Wally at the wheel, Rachel sits at the other window, while Ally is crammed into the middle. Everyone's smiling.
EXTERIOR - LANEWAY/RAVINE - DAY
The truck arrives at a pretty, treed place, with a brook nearby, and birds singing and crickets chirring everywhere.
EXTERIOR - RAVINE/CLEARING (LATER)
For the ceremony, viewing stands have been set up and a speaker's area roped off. It's sparsely-attended, though, maybe a dozen children and senior citizens, already seated.
The Team is dressed in Blue Butterfly t-shirts, and Rachel hands out more of them to the children in the crowd. Ally moves to a microphone as Wally backs the truck up a little.
ALLY
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, today we are reinstating the beautiful, Large Blue Butterfly! Phengaris arion, also known as Maculinea arion and Glaucopsyche arion!
(a boy yawns)
Declared extinct in our United Kingdom decades ago, we in the Central Rewilding and Agricultural Program are most pleased to preside over the Blue's recovery today!
In the truck, Roger and Yabby swivel a cage to the tailgate. Colorful illustrations of butterflies decorate the cage.
ALLY
Very rare indeed, the Large Blue lives in sand dunes and hillsides.
Rachel is at a flipchart, on a tripod, before the crowd. As Ally speaks, we INTERCUT occasionally to colorful posters of the life cycle of a Large Blue Butterfly.
ALLY
Just after it is born as a caterpillar, Blue feeds on marjoram or wild thyme flowers. Then it gets cozy with its special friends.
CHILD IN CROWD
It has friends?
ALLY
Yes! The red ant, of the species Myrmica sabuleti!
Rachel flips to posters of a caterpillar being carried away by a horde of red ants. Magically, the posters begin to animate the rest of the way, following Ally's descriptions!
ALLY (VOICE-OVER)
The red ants take the caterpillar back to their nest. Then guess what? The ants let the caterpillar hibernate right there. Not only that, the caterpillar gets to eat some of the spare ant eggs and larvae!
The animation shows a cut-away of an anthill, with a chamber containing the caterpillar and lots of red ants. There are coos from the kids in the crowd, OFF-SCREEN.
ALLY (VOICE-OVER)
Isn't that strange and wonderful? It's what's called a symbiotic relationship. Anyway, you have to be good friends to let that happen!
The animation shows the caterpillar forming a chrysalis, suspended up on the ceiling of the anthill chamber.
ALLY (VOICE-OVER)
Well, then the caterpillar builds a chrysalis around itself and goes to sleep, turning into the Large Blue Butterfly! During this time, the red ants even defend the Blue from predators, till the Blue is ready to fly away. My, my, thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Red Ant!
Red ants swarm protectively outside the anthill as a robin pecks nearby.
Returning momentarily to Ally's audience, young kids suck their thumbs and older gentlemen snore, bobbing their heads.
Back to the animation, it shows the chrysalis bursting open and a wet butterfly drops out. The ants carry it up and out of the anthill, where it gradually flutters and flies away.
ALLY (VOICE-OVER)
So, the beautiful butterfly now flitters and flutters, bothering no one at all, looking gentle and lovely, laying her eggs on the buds of marjoram. When her caterpillar babies are born, they eat the flower till they're ready to find some red ant friends, and the whole process starts up all over again!
The animation continues of a beautiful butterfly eating a leaf, laying eggs, and tiny caterpillars being born. Down below the Marjoram plant, red ants scurry and assemble.
RETURN TO SCENE
RACHEL
Professor, isn't it true that when the caterpillar lives with the red ants, they stroke the caterpillar with their antenna, making it produce drops of honeydew that the ants can eat?!
Suddenly some of the children go alert, and very amazed.
CHILD IN CROWD
But the caterpillar is so much bigger than the ants, and how do they know they're friendly anyway?
ALLY
How do they get along so well? Sometimes they don't. If too many caterpillars are brought down to the ant nest, sometimes the ants have to eat some of them. "Try again next year," they say! And now...
Ally leads the eyes of all the spectators to the truck.
Roger oversees Yabby trying to open the cage. It sticks. He pulls hard, snaps his fingers.
YABBY
Ouch! Hoot-hoot-hoooot!
ROGER
Here, let me.
Roger tugs, and when the cage opens his elbow flies up and bumps Yabby in the nose, to tiny giggles from the crowd.
Then out fly several beautiful Large
Blue Butterflies. There's gentle applause and a few whistles OFF-SCREEN.
ALLY
There they go! Lovely, lovely! Oh, I love you, little butterflies!
RACHEL/WALLY
Live Long and prosper, Blue!
CLOSE-UP - A HAPPY BUTTERFLY, FEROCIOUSLY BEATING ITS WINGS
EXTERIOR - C.R.A.P. BUILDING (LATER)
The pickup pulls into a laneway and heads to a parking spot.
INTERIOR - OFFICE/ALLY GRUBERSTEIN - DAY
Proctor is back on video, with the Team standing about.
PROCTOR (VOICE-OVER)
(filtered through video)
Did the Blue Butterfly go okay?
ALLY
Yes, yes.
RACHEL
The team wants to do something more prominent, Minister.
WALLY
Bigger!
ROGER
Something that has teeth!
INTERIOR - OFFICE/MINISTER PROCTOR (SAME TIME)
Proctor sifts through some files on the desk before him.
PROCTOR
Well, they're doing a wild boar re-introduction up north of you, that you can observe.
ALLY (VOICE-OVER)
(filtered through video)
Oh, excellent! Sus scrofa! Of the Artiodactyla order!
PROCTOR
(leans back, satisfied)
But for this you owe me a bovril at the pub, Ally.
ALLY (VOICE-OVER)
Someday, Minister. Someday!
PROCTOR
Oh, I'll wear you down eventually, my lovely.
INTERIOR - OFFICE/ALLY GRUBERSTEIN (SAME TIME)
On the video Proctor snorts and giggles boyishly, excitedly.
Wally, Roger and Yabby snicker, as Ally and Rachel roll their eyes and shake their heads.
Evey and Harry and Butt-Action Inc.
INTERIOR - MACGILLVRAY HOUSE/LIVINGROOM - DAY
Harry and Evey are sitting on the couch, reading newspapers.
On the T.V. is another annoying conservation interview.
CLOSE-UP - TELEVISION SCREEN
ANNOUNCER (VOICE-OVER)
(filtered over T.V.)
... desertification in California should proceed! It if wants to be a desert, let it be! Who says Mankind should -
RETURN TO Evey changing the channel. She stares for a moment.
EVEY
Harry, look at this! Weren't you going to buy shares in this?
Harry looks over his newspaper.
CLOSE-UP - TELEVISION SCREEN
MARKET REPORTER (VOICE-OVER)
(filtered over T.V.)
Butt-Action Inc. earned fifteen billion pounds for its I.P.O. on the exchange today.
Video shows a vast pile of cigarette butts. CUT TO scenes of mattresses, fireproof insulation and teddy bear stuffing.
EVEY (OFF-SCREEN)
They're the ones that take the trillions of butts that enter the environment each year and recycles them into spongy household items.
HARRY (OFF-SCREEN)
U-huh. I bought fifty shares.
Now a gorgeous female model spreads out on a mattress, but she wears a facemask to cover up the nicotine stench.
Boar Rewilding at Charlie's Farm
EXTERIOR - FARMHOUSE/WOODLANDS - DAY
On to another Rewilding!
This time, we're in a lovely pasture, with a tiny, perfect vegetable and flower farm on one side, roped off from a pathway beside a field of tall grasses and woodlands beyond.
Our gang, this time dressed in Wild Boar t-shirts, mingle in a crowd as a different rewilding group performs the ceremony work from a big flatbed truck across the way.
Beside the truck is a huge cage managed by Games Keepers. A picture of an ugly wild boar decorates the side of the cage.
The farmer, CHARLIE RATH, 30, leans his elbows on his fence.
Rachel hands the last of her t-shirts to some kids in the crowd when she does a double-take at the handsome farmer, Charlie, grimly watching the ceremony.
She grabs some pamphlets and another t-shirt from Ally and sidles over to Charlie.
RACHEL
Hello, I'm Rachel Wallington, with the Central Rewilding and Agricultural Program! Isn't this exciting, today?
No response, at first, before he offers a weak handshake.
CHARLIE
Charlie Rath.
At a lectern set up on the flatbed, the other rewilder leader, BRADWICH, 55, pokes at the microphone.
BRADWICH
Testing. Testing.
Everyone snaps to attention.
His face has deep lines and he doesn't at all look as cheerful about the job as Ally did. He begins pronouncing a dry, sour edict over the public address system.
BRADWICH
Ladies and gentlemen?
(waves to cage below him)
The Wild Boar. Stand your guard and inhale its awful fragrance at your peril. It's one of nature's ugliest creatures and something you'd not want to meet in any nightmare.
The cage bounces. Loud grunting noises come from inside. Everyone in the crowd goes silent and still.
BRADWICH
Dirty and foul, this relative to the common farm pig freely interbreeds with them, reckless as they are. No wonder they were driven to extinction by hunters.
Ally frowns, and Wally checks an agenda in his hand for some sort of error. Roger and Yabby are frozen, jaws dropped.
TO THE FARM
Rachel, beside Charlie, has lost her smile.
CHARLIE
You work with these people?
RACHEL
Oh, no, we normally release birds and butterflies. We're just here to watch...
TO THE PODIUM/CROWD AREA
BRADWICH
However, the Department of Re-Introduction, in its wisdom, believes we need more of these putrid creatures to destroy our vegetation and homesteads -
A child in its mother's arms starts to cry.
BRADWICH
(looking to the crier)
And make off to its lair with our children!
MOTHER
Oh, my God!
She covers her child's ears with her hands.
TO THE FARM
Rachel is just about to offer Charlie a boar t-shirt when:
CHARLIE
I don't like this idea of a boar being released. Even that guy talking -
She retracts the t-shirt and tries to hide it.
RACHEL
Oh, rest assured, the Department of Re-Introduction has everything under control. These animals...
Charlie's not listening. She tries to distract him, as Bradwich drones on, in the BACKGROUND. She points to his quaint flower beds.
RACHEL (CON'T)
My compliments on your absolutely lovely little farm, Mr. Rath. Your wife does such a wonderful job -
CHARLIE
Widowed. Last year.
Rachel's eyes flutter at her gaucheness - and her good luck! She smiles, then loses it, then recovers, but stammers.
RACHEL
Oh, I mean, well, you - you've done such a - the flowers are beautiful!
CHARLIE
Well, she took care of it for years. I just water them and till the soil now.