If you missed this past week’s strips, you won’t be too far out of the loop. Mark started his pretense of filming the Rex Scorpius Show in the Tiger Touch Center, without knowing how to even run a video camera. But then trouble appeared when Mark got sidetracked by Tess taking a baby lion cub out of a holding pen to demonstrate its calming influence. This resulted in Mark holding an internal discussion with himself on the mistreatment of lion cubs and whether he should get involved. That took up most of the week.

Mark’s concern conflicted with Tess and Rex, who wanted Mark to film Rex holding a cub. Mark didn’t want to, thinking it would be exploitive, rather than evidentiary (for the undercover exposé). Mark offered up a weak excuse about not having enough battery life to film Rex holding a cub, but strangely enough, he said there was enough battery life left to get location shots of the Touch Center!

How Rex and Tess will respond to this transparent lie is something we’ll have to wait for Monday to discover. Anyway, if your newspaper doesn’t carry the Sunday Mark Trail…

Unlike the daily strips, there does seem to be a larger reader acceptance and even appreciation for Rivera’s Sunday nature strips. Rivera might even agree. I’ve read that she enjoys doing them the most; possibly because she has an affinity for nature and animals. I’m betting it’s also due to the fact that the drawing space allowed is much bigger than what is mandated for the dailies.

And following her habit, Rivera once again focuses on an animal that is popular in the state/location that is the basis of the current Mark Trail story. Once again, an animal is endangered by urbanization and farming. Mark makes a fair point about the horny toad eating harvester ants, but for that to matter, a farmer would need hundreds, if not thousands, of those creatures. That would not likely be possible or practical.