The photo of two mice ‘boxing’ at a London subway recently went viral and won the LUMIX People’s Choice Award held by the Natural History of Museum (NHM).
The perfectly timed picture has gone viral, with many calling the picture cute. However, the reason behind the ‘sweet’ photo was not actually so nice. Pictured by Sam Rowley, these two mice were actually ‘boxing’ over the last crumb of food they found at the floor of the subway station.
“The winner of this year’s LUMIX UK #WPYPeoplesChoice Award is Sam Rowley, with his well-timed portrait of two mice scrapping over food on a London Underground station platform,” described the photo caption for winning piece.
The winner of this year’s @LumixUK #WPYPeoplesChoice Award @NHM_WPY is Sam Rowley, with his well-timed portrait of two mice scrapping over food on a London Underground station platform. pic.twitter.com/5oOuxXxNVA
— Natural History Museum (@NHM_London) February 12, 2020
And though it seems like Sam had been at the right place at the right time to catch the picture, the photographer admitted that he actually spent weeks just trying to get the perfect photo.
“I went down there for a week every night and this was the shot that I was after. I wanted to show the desperation of life down there. This picture shows the desperation of two poor mice fighting over the tiniest morsel of crumbs that they could find,” Sam shared.
“It was a strange week, lots of comments by the passersby at 2 am. You can imagine the people down there at that time. They were squabbling as well.”
He would lie down on the platform to take photos from the height of the mice – until he finally got the perfect picture. The resulting photo is quite impressive!
But netizens had a good laugh as they made alterations to the photos. Some people drew comparisons for the subway mice and the two mice in the classic cartoon “Tom and Jerry” – Jerry and mouse cousin Nibbles.
Close enough pic.twitter.com/OKkXehW11X
— Vikas Yadav (@fullonvikas) February 12, 2020
One added lightsabers to the mice while others simply made jokes about the picture.
— Andy Bowers (@evilpez4) February 12, 2020
What’s a Lightsaber?
A lightsaber is a fictional energy sword that contains plasma and could cut through a lot of things, including metal. It is used in the Star Wars movie franchise.