Meet the Good Animals of the Olympics Golf Course

GOLF: It's bad. It's a colossal waste of water, it's boring, everyone seems vaguely awful, and you can't even see the ball. The only redeeming part is the extraordinary pleasure you get from watching people wilt under pressure and choke on national television. But if these Olympics have taught us anything, it's that you could get that exact same good feeling from any number of target-oriented sports such as archery, trap shooting, and bocce ball.

Golf is SO vile and dull that Christopher Hanewinkel, a sports photographer for USA Today, went to the Olympic course on Tuesday and turned his lens away from the profanity of Bubba Watson's very existence and into the lives of the wildlife who had made the course their makeshift home. They are noble beasts, living apart from the madness and chaos of the game, taking their pleasures from sun in the sky and grass in their bellies, from the gentle touch of their lover, the singing of simple songs. Take a minute and join me as we explore their beautiful journeys across that most vile of human blighting:

The two gentlemen of the sand trap, relaxing after a productive evening of mousing. Our man on the left is looking at the camera dead center, aware and scared of the unknown. But don't worry, my man, because this big fat dude on the right sees it, too, and he knows it's no big deal. You can hear him through the frame: "Coo-coo! Coo-coo-coo-hoot!" ("Don't worry, Vladmir! This man means us no harm!") "Coo-croo, coo-croo-croo-hoot!" ("Once we though these black boxes could take our mice from us!") "Hoo-hoot-croo-coo-hoo-croo-croo!" ("But we have evolved beyond these superstitions!")

And so Vladimir turns away, to look at the sun and bask in its warmth and power. In these moments he feels so small in the universe, like an impossible being. Do owls believe in God?

Capybaras: the world's largest rodent, or the world's smallest bear? Here on the course we have come face to face with Prospero, grim and beaten, seeing the world with a hardened, cynical glare, beaten down and just trying to live the last bit of his life with dignity and grace. A scar across his face tells us of his life of violence.

Prospero heaves his body across the dormant grass. We observe the contrast between the optimism of the Olympic logo—a happy face slapped onto an event that is in reality a complicated mess of joy and despair, maleficence and unity—with our grim soldier, torn up by nature and desperate for the merest scrap of food.

Prospero will walk forever across these dusty plains, unaware of the Olympics. Survival is his only sport, and the gold medal is living to miserably strive for another day. We weep.

Our tears form a pond, and Prospero swims in it. For a second, we sense in him something resembling pleasure, but then we catch his eyes once more and are discouraged. There is nothing we can do to bring joy to nature. All we can do is create pain, or allow it to be on its own.