A Critical Analysis Of Invasive Species In Australia, As Explored Through My Share House
Please Admire My Harvard Style Referencing
To distil the history of the introduction of invasive species in Australia, I will be analysing it through the lens of my share house — an almost mirror of the original introduction, and a perfect side-by-side comparison of it’s ongoing, detrimental and inconvenient impacts.
If you know me from my previous essays, ‘How To Tell If Your Share House Is Eating You’ and ‘Mein Share House,’ you’ll know that I take these kinds of essays very seriously!
It is no surprise that the term ‘invasive’ has some negative connotations. Valid connotations! For one, when we think of of the term ‘invasive,’ we think of the military. Invasive manoeuvres, tactics — invading! Our first thoughts of the subject are rarely drawn to the topic of “invasive species’ as seen through the lens of a share house” — however this comparison does exist, primarily because I needed a subject for my essay and a follow up to my popular work, ‘Mein Share House.’
Invasive species were originally introduced to Australia as pets, for sport, or as livestock and pack animals. Similarly, in my share house, invasive species have also been introduced because well I guess they could be. To be honest it was “more so an inherited thing we’re having to pick up the slack of,” (our landlords, 2023).
“Introducing pests to mitigate the spread of other pests is a brain dead move opted by the Australian Regulatory Commission (ARC) a number of years’ ago,” (John Maybe, 2001). It was such a brain dead move in fact that it was the perfect excuse for my share house to “give it a crack,” (Someone Else To Blame, 2013).
In a Fitzroy dwelling, there was a mildly inconvenient mouse epidemic. A visual annoyance more than anything else.
Not a big deal.
Easily solvable.
Laziness won.
The collective inhabitants of my share house held a vote on a cool Wednesday evening and re-wrote their history with the same carelessness they’ve lived their lives with for for so long. Much like the ARC, the inhabitants chose, collectively albeit [no one else to blame but ourselves], to introduce a small feline population to quell the growing numbers of mice. This was a two-fold process of introduction:
- Purchasing/borrowing cats, and
- Enticing local cats into the house by leaving doors open and catnip in various corners (leaving doors open willy-nilly wasn’t unusual for the house, this was pretty much business as usual).
Cut to the present, and although the cats are fulfilling their purpose of controlling the mouse population (of which we’ve seen a .67 % drop, Australian Bureau of Statistics), they’re quite psychopathic — leaving the bloodied corpses of Stuart Little and Ratatouille splayed haphazardly like a Jackson Pollock.
Bernadette Barklay-Sanchez had this to say: “I walked past the house not two days’ ago and the bodies were everywhere. They’d clearly introduced a cat population to their residence to control a localised mice infestation. The results are proving ineffective. It really reminded me of that time the ARC introduced Cane Toads to supress beetle growth — swing and a miss!” (Barklay-Sanchez, Yesterday).
When one species dwindles, another thrives, and so, to the dismay of the six occupants, there is now an undying infestation of various feline inhabitants. Tabby’s, British Shorthair’s and Siamese are the most common, yet there have been Manx and Calico sightings.
Although friendly in demeanour, and certainly an interesting talking point when guests are over, the attitudes of the cats is one of disrespect — prancing through the property with a severe sense of ownership and entitlement that they’ve not earned. I’d hardly call a .67% drop in mice numbers a job well done.
Similarly to the ARC, my share house introduced a population to the residence for the purposes of sport. Let’s really get into the nitty gritty here with some unfounded evidence. Much like the fox was introduced for hunting purposes a hundred or so years ago (look it up, et al., 1994), so too was a species introduced into a semi-large share house in Melbourne. The impacts both mirror each other, and represent an ongoing period of struggle for the locals.
In the not too distant past, two goldfish embryos were hocked into a glass bowl. The hocker had had a boring day at work and needed to change something drastic in their life — hence the embryo purchase and the following hock. It was a call for help if I’d ever seen it.
As the story goes, the goldfish mummy and the goldfish daddy held their fins so tightly a whole army of goldfish were birthed. Things were really getting out of hand, and measures to mitigate the growth were taken with the speed in which the house usually took when addressing a problem, “sometime tomorrow.”
In order to control the population, fishing and fishery operations needed to be established within the premises walls — a measly attempt to control numbers, however a reinforcing notion of invasive species being used for sport. To this day, frozen fish fingers are stacking up in the freezer, with other resources being bought in — the entire downstairs room is now one large cold store. There are plans to partner with Sushi Train.
For a share house that seeks convenience, we truly do revel in inconvenience.
In summation, summary and conclusion, my share house resembles much of early Australian agricultural processes. Feline and fish aside, it is the recklessness of the house that is the most apt comparison to the early invasive species’. At the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves — was it really worth it? I’ll answer that here too — no, no it wasn’t.
