Welcome Back

I stared at the unfamiliar face on my screen in some confusion.

"Who the hell are you and how did you manage to contact me?"

"I'm your Tasmanian correspondent you idiot," she snapped.

The note of irritation in her voice was familiar if nothing else.

"Oh yes, I didn't realise I still had one."

"I've been on holiday."

"Was that it?  I just assumed your appeal was unsuccessful."

"It was but I was sentenced to time served and a promise not to release the videos I have of the judge.  Thanks for the videos by the way."

"You're welcome, do you have any stories for me?"

"Nope."

"So why are you calling?"

"I'm calling to tell you to get that pack of east European sociopaths to stop messing about with my house.  I came back from a six day bushwalk to find my eldest daughters bedroom had been converted into a satellite tracking station and there was a clutch of huge green eggs incubating in the attic!  Oh yes and apparently I'm now sharing my house with three Moldavian sex workers."

"According to their visa documents they're au-pairs."

"Really, who on earth is going to get them to look after children.  I left my daughters alone with them for not more than six or seven hours and when I got back they could disassemble an AK-47 and make a vodka distillery out of used car parts."

"Useful life skills," I suggested.

"Yes but I wanted to teach them myself."

I apologised profusely and promised to speak with my tech support but pointed out that they were rather busy at the moment.

"They're working hard on this coronavirus outbreak.  It's nowhere near as virulent as they thought and they can't figure out what went wrong."

After a few choice words about my decision to get technical assistance from a bunch of over achieving plague rats my correspondent calmed down and offered to sell me a seahorse.  Yes, I did say seahorse.  Apparently in between walking over half of Tasmania my correspondent found time to grab her cousin and drop in on a seahorse farm.  Yes, I did say seahorse farm.  This is apparently where the discerning customer can purchase their free range seahorses and take part in seahorse breeding programmes. 

I'm not entirely sure when exactly someone decided that raising seahorses was a viable economic activity but it turns out to have been rather successful.  Particularly since they're selling the seahorses at $35 a pop.  A weedy dragon will set you back $1500.  They started off targeting the food market but now sell mainly to aquariums.

I'm not exactly sure how you breed seahorses but I suspect a lot of it has to do with simply grabbing a couple of each sex and leaving them alone in a tank with some Barry White playing through the speakers.  Seahorses are getting scarce but since most of them get eaten approximately three seconds after birth all you really need to be neck deep in seahorses is to provide a breeding venue that's a little less predator intensive.  My correspondent is now the proud owner of fifty seven seahorses and has made a deposit on a weedy dragon. 

The seahorses will make a nice entrée for dinner tonight.  Apparently the main course will be omelette.