The Satirical Hyena
 

Just in case, because of our reputation 

for side-splitting comedy, you are thinking that 

this might be, it is not going to be a laughing matter. 

Our ancestors, the Cave Hyena disappeared 

over 30,000 years ago, or so they say. 

Far too long anyway for anyone to retrieve any 

DNA from their bone-crushing jaws. And we, their 

spotted descendants, were well on the way 

out long before The Vanishing began to take 

hold. Bolder than you might have thought us to be, 

we were never grave-robbers, in spite of the fact that 

some of your kind used to leave out human 

corpses for us to nibble on. After we were gone, 

you decided to splice us with the just as vulnerable 

African Painted Dog, to found an even less resilient tribe. 

One, however, who you were less afraid of being 

near, one who you no longer felt the need to fear.

The Sewer Shark

In the good old days, I was proud to call 

myself a member of a shiver; a sister, a mother, 

a daughter, or an aunt. But now, I am nothing 

more or less than a solitary shark, 

recreated by yourself from an odd strand 

of DNA, then resurrected into the form of another; 

a clawhammer, a sander, or a saw. I am 

the result of a failed experiment. Scraped 

off the bottom of a petri dish, and flushed down 

some laboratory bog, it is no longer the depths 

of the sea in which I roam, but the sewers 

of your post-apocalyptic urbanisation 

that I am forced to now call home.