This piece of alternative truth was written for the weekly photo prompt Unicorn Challenge from Jenne Gray and CE Ayr. Join in the fun with up to 250 words of your own.
Inspired by an article about a former Acting Prime Minister. What a performance. Trigger warning: You might want to skip the bit about a woman waking up to find a mouse chewing on her eyeball.
‘Grandpa, what’s that sculpture in your back garden?’
In answering, Grandpa carefully avoided having to pronounce his grandson’s given name, #tafarian.
‘Oh, that’s a piece I bought many years ago from an artist called Leonardo de Capuccino. He was considered the Rodin of rodents. It commemorates the Great Giant Mouse Plague of 1946.’
‘But how did they get so big, Grandpa?’
‘Science gone wrong, my boy. Spectacularly. They used to be tiny furry creatures that could eat their way through anything. And they did. In plague proportions they brought Australian agriculture to its knees. So scientists invented a poison that killed them by the truckload and they were thought to be extinct. But a few survived and the poison mutated them into giants. Again they bred up in plague proportions until it appeared they would destroy the entire continent.’
Wide-eyed, the boy said ‘What happened then, Grandpa?’
‘Well, the Americans lent us a few H-bombs in exchange for our mortal souls for perpetuity. We nuked the pesky big creatures. The former Garden of Eden that was the inland became a barren desert and the Army bulldozed all the dead ones together to make Ayers Rock.’
‘Oh, Grandpa, Uluru existed for a long time before that!’
‘Boy, your AI humanoid teachers will say anything to cover up our sordid past. I bet they haven’t even told you that Tasmania used to be connected to the mainland and we had to dig a bloody great ditch to keep the Devils out.’
Six Crooked Highways 
So that’s how Ayers Rock came to be! I did wonder.
Great piece of word play, Doug, and my favourite this week is ‘Rodin’ rodents’.
(PS Foolishly, I went to Turbo Celebrity to see if the acting PM actually did say that. The pictures will follow me for the rest of the day!)
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Thanks, Jenne. Some things once seen can’t be unseen. 😉
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I read it once in disbelief. Read again with belief. The third time I decided to join a march or a rally but haven’t made up my mind: For or Against.
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Ah, the great question of Life. 😉
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Advance Australia Fair?
Hmm, maybe not, according to this!
Your usual fun-filled faction, Doug.
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Thanks, CE.
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Hmmm. You are either brilliant or demented. I’m undecided.
Either way, you’re a fun guy (fungi?) and that’s delightful.
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Many thanks. If you are a betting woman, put your money on the second option. 😉
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I am and I will!
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In the multiverse…no one can hear you scream. Or nibble that errant cheese and cracker that’s settled in the back 40 of grandpa’s yard.
Mind-blowing per usual, Doug!
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Many thanks, Liz, much appreciated.
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I don’t know what to say, except that I was born in the year of the Great Giant Mouse Plague which could explain a lot!
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Probably everything, Keith. 🙂
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A big pestilential plague? Drat.
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