The Urban Beagle

As far as I am aware, my mother used to be

forced to spend most of her time indoors, smoking

cigarettes with a number of her friends, whilst my father

was either being beaten senseless, or chasing foxes 

across the disappearing English countryside.

I, it seems, am the result of both their disparate

existences, and the entanglement of their DNA. I must

say, however, that I still enjoy the whiff of the odd cigar,

and have also been known to go a little ape at the sight

of a bedraggled fox attempting to manoeuvre

his, or her, way, across the busy streets of East 16.

The Duck-Billed Platypus

Even our original origins were already shrouded 

in myth. How, after a conference of the animals, 

a duck and a rat hooked up, and the outcome of 

their trans-species love-in just happened to be us. 

Nobody ever really believed that that was true. 

And, nowadays, it seems even more improbable. 

Take a strand of Mallard, entangle it with a spiral 

of Water and, Bob's your uncle, we are reborn. 

The only problem is that most of our natural 

habitat has gone. Now, most of us have to hang 

out in the middle of some man-made pond in 

the centre of the city; while the even more 

unfortunate of us have become one of the most 

fashionable of family pets, and will live the rest 

of our sad lives at the bottom of some ridiculous 

water feature in someone else's backyard.