Snakes hunt mice

David attenborough’s voice crackled through the radio “Snakes hunt mice because nobody has ever bread a rabbit small enough.”

He slurs the vowels as if sandwiches had something to do with snakes. They don’t, he means bred. The scientist chuckles to himself at his superiority. “Silly David, silly David, all of them, his teachers, his colleagues, they said he was mad, an idiot, a fool. NOONE TINKERS WITH NATURE they cried.” Well ok he acknowledges, they didn’t say that, he made that part up. He knows this, he knows…but the delusion feels nicer, it’s a better fit.  He’s the misunderstood scientist, the mad genius, yes that was him. When the newspaper crews come they’ll call him a madman, oh yes but little do they realise he dictates, “LITTLE DO THEY REALISE” he cries into his webcam, his video journal collating smoothly. He pauses for dramatic effect, arms flourished, his white lab coat spotless….”I AM THEIR SAVIOUR!”

Whilst it was true rabbits were too big for most snakes to devour, Eregus Von Liesenstein neglected to understand basic ecological principles. His research led him to believe introducing a targeted retrophage into the rabbit population would cause a dominant genetic shift into minituarisation, reducing the size of your average rabbit, which is kind of like your average bear, but not as smart. Unfortunate Eregus was also not as smart as your average bear…

“AND LO”, Eregus cries into his $20 Logitech cam, “God said unto man you may eat from all tree but the tree of knowledge, for God feared that man might become like the devil, proud and sinful…but man ate and became as wise as the devil himself…and in our sins we have constructed such beauty…Such beauty”…he repeats for emphasis, he’s practised this part of the speech many times, he hopes it still looks spontaneous for when they make his True lives documentary. “Beauty we now model ourselves, a genetic code we now tinker with, we now control…are we not Gods? Are scientists not gods among men?” And with that he turns the camera, shaking in his hand towards a cage, an oddly quiet cage…he removes the cover with a flourish,

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE WORLD I GIVE YOU….Miniature rabbi…wait…where are the others…shit does that one have blood on it’s fur…those hungry eyes…Oh god…what is it DOING?!”

As every school child knows, that journal records the first known outbreak of hyper mutated violence as a result of human tinkering with the genetic makeup of animals. Scientists later on discovered an innate set of genetic triggers designed to cause madness, aggression and ultimately, death in creatures DNA which we believe, could only be planted there deliberately. Now we know tinkering with the genome has grave consequences but think back to these early floundering men with their imperfect knowledge.

As the samples of this single experiment escaped, along with a taste of human flesh, and reproduced unfortunately like bunnies the extinction event of mice around the world was inevitable. The hunger for flesh and the certain ability to infiltrate and attack all of the smaller rodent burrows causes a dramatic shift in global ecological balance that nearly wiped out various other predators.

This, ladies and gentlemen is the period we historians like to refer to as “Genome extinction era 1 as mice, many small rodents and many of the predators, including snakes that depended on them lost their food source. Although we prefer to call it, the revenge of the bunny. Any questions?”

A hand shoots up from Time(present) Magazine, a young brunette, not even 50 yet…”Yes Miss”

“Don’t you think “the rabbits strike back” is a better title?”