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The Bilious Bratacca

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Please stay on the clearly marked path, people, there are reasons it is there.  There are areas in here that are in daily use and are highly mutagenic.  Actually Madam, I think you'll find that little Joey had those oversized ears when he came in.  I'm sure there will be CCTV footage of it by the time we finish the tour.

Now, in this case here, we find the last three specimens of the Bilious Bratacca, which died out altogether in the early Bronze Age.  As you can see: they are roughly the size of the palm of my hand, have three triangularly-oriented wings of a pleasant turquoise shade, enough legs to intimidate a centipede, and a long and thick proboscis.  No madam, it is not modelled on some part of your husband's anatomy.  It was left over from the elephants, I believe.

The Bilious Brattaca was a prototype of the common housefly, and they were very numerous to begin with, buzzing around everywhere and generally amusing me with their antics.  They were natural pranksters and really very imaginative.  I am quite sure that if they had survived they would be used by humans today instead of television sets, theatre, and all those other annoying forms of entertainment you insist on producing.

Unfortunately, they discovered how to ferment fruit into alcohol, and soon spent almost all of their time drunk.  This didn't stop them reproducing, quite the opposite: with all the drunken sex they were having their population increased rapidly.  They didn't hold their alcohol well though, and vomited all over the place.  Other species had to quickly invent the umbrella as showers of Bratacca vomit became frequent.  It was also a lovely turquoise colour though, so I was inclined to let them be.

Then they showed the upstart humans how to ferment fruit into alcohol, and that did upset me.  In a fit of pique, I tweaked their biochemistry so that they digested the alcohol very slowly and gave off a sweet, attractive smell to humans when they'd drunk a stomach-full.  Soon the bilious brattaca were being caught by humans everywhere and squeezed for their delicious alcohol.  It was, I thought, a fitting punishment.

No madam, I don't have anything against humans.  Well, no more than any other sentient being.  You might want to watch Joey a little more closely, and yes, before you ask, he did have three arms when he came in.  The CCTV footage will bear me out.

This way, this way, and stay inside the marked path please....

The End
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Eloosive A tour of fictional creatures made extinct by Natural Selection. Keep in mind that Natural Selection cannot kill anything off directly, only by making changes and allowing nature to run its course.

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