Following the success of test tube babies, cloned sheep and genetically modified tomatoes, I await the arrival of customised pets with bated breath.
Who would want an ordinary pet arrived at by the old-fashioned method of breeding, when, with a little tinkering, a customised pet, exactly tailored to your requirements, could be your 21st century huggle of choice?
For the unfit owner, tearfully cramming his fifth burger after a wigging from the vet for having an overweight pooch, what could be better than a slugador? Impossible to overfeed, consuming only vegetables and troublesome plants in the garden, this Labrador/slug cross will fetch any sticks you can be bothered to throw, very slowly, and then eat them. Faithful, in fact impossible to get rid of, all the slugador asks is a giant plant pot in the bath and endless food. Get a slugador and avoid composting entirely. Now available with long wet ears.
For someone you don’t like I’d recommend the gift of a parrot-in-law. Endlessly, though never originally, opinionated and tirelessly critical of everything, this squawking hybrid can cause a rift in the most devoted couple in under five years, if it lives that long. Ideal wedding present for an ex.
You can sit on it, you can fall off it, you can ride it, you can hang the washing on it, you can tow it behind the car in a special box, yes, it’s a clothes horse. Several breeds are available, all skittish, difficult and requiring vast amounts of patience and understanding. Comes with a variety of owner’s outlandish outfits, ideal for anyone who looks good in trousers cut like a wagon wheel, also handy for those wishing to disguise naturally enormous knees. Perfect for anyone boring enough to project wardrobe malfunction as a manifestation of personality, especially if they don’t mind the breeze through fray holes in strategic areas.
The batslicer, test tube clone of an egg slicer and a Pipistrelle, can decimate the pigeon population of a suitable urban area. No training is required, for it is purely by instinct that the batslicer is drawn to fly up to pigeon’s nests, hard boil the eggs and then slice them. An affectionate batslicer will hold out its wire wings so that its owner can play them like harps while singing fractured choruses from hits of the Sixties and afterwards hang itself upside down in the pan cupboard and squeak quietly off to sleep.
For the really intrepid pet owner, how about a pythanker? This cross between a banker and a python is a slippery customer who’ll take over your house and have you out on the street before you can say ‘overdraft’. Nevertheless, many people are motivated to keep one by the vast number of valuable skins which the pythanker grows. Off-shore accounts, gilt-edged investments, you name it, they produce it and if you can keep one for a year, the luxurious slough of bonuses is astounding. Just don’t wrap it round you in a chilly spell, or feed it your savings. This pet has endless neck but prising the fangs apart to peer deep inside would be more of a mistake than I can tell you.
And finally, gingerbread rabbits. Buy a pair and never be without biscuits again.
