Darwin Would Be Proud

Nathan Udy

I was given a pet snake for my 13th birthday. I loved it. Well, as much as you could love an
animal that resembles a disembodied spine wrapped in leather attached to a dismountable
jaw. Snakes are pretty terrifying. And humans have nurtured that fear through thousands of
years of folklore and reports of missing kittens. Giving someone a snake in a film offers the
same exposition as a swastika tattoo, it sends the audience a clear message: that’s the bad
guy. So it makes sense that J.K Rowling and Jesus both make out snakes out to be bad in their
respective books – it’s an easy out, a tried and tested plot point.
Did you know horses kill 3 times as many Australians as snakes? And yet it’s Daryl Braithwaite
we scream at the top of our lungs at 3am in the morning. Maybe it’s the ‘eating animals whole’
thing that makes people uncomfortable. Pet snakes are fed live food every 1-2 weeks, which
was traumatic for a kid to see. To this day I haven’t been able to stomach mice.
Instead of sending me to the pet shop every week to buy snake food, mum decided we’d go
organic, and grow them at home. She set my little sister up with her own mouse farm, under
the proviso that every week one would be ‘donated’ to the cause.
These mice would live the high life: eating, drinking, sexing and spinning on wheels. It was like
‘The bachelor in paradise’ without the contraception. And just like paradise, there would be
regular elimination ceremonies to briefly disrupt the fun. They did as mice do, and reproduced
at an alarming rate (let’s call the babies intruders). While every week one mouse would pack
its bags and say goodbye to its fellow contestants, forever.
My sister wasn’t completely random with her sacrificial choice. In fact, I quickly learned she
had a strict criteria. The original mice we had (let’s call them season 1) were an array of brown,
white, grey, black and gold coloured. The gold, my sister had thought, were exceptionally
pretty.
When it came time to remove the next eliminated mousemate, the gold mice always seemed
to survive. And just like human reality TV, diversity began to dwindle. In a few months, my
sister had genetically engineered an Aryan breed of golden haired mice, as blonde and inbred
as the Lannister’s - with lineage just as complex. An interesting and accidental lesson into
evolutionary selection I can thank my 9-year-old sister for.
Years later when the experiment was over (and Monty the snake was moved to frozen meals),
the pet shop owner would marvel at the designer golden mice being returned to her store.
The tyrannical architect (my sister), now in her early teens, handed over her creation with
only one request. That the mice be sold as pets, not food.