You sure do axolotl questions

The middle aisle of Aldi is outdoing itself.  While going in for some Lurpak-knockoff spread and coming out with a welding mask, a solar powered garden gnome and a tin of tartan paint is but par for the course, I didn't have axolotl-shaped Haribo on my list.  Naturally I had to buy a packet to see what they taste like for the sheer Blipportunity presented to me.

The irony of the joke title is that everyone I've asked about it* pronounces it, of course, like it looks: axe-o-lottle, and not how it should be pronounced: ahsh-uh-lot-tl with a sort of a click of the tongue on the last half a syllable.  It must be said that while we chomp our merry way through yet more rubbery sugar that may as well be gummy teddy bears for all the difference it makes, and while we ooh and aah at the ones in the fish tanks at the zoo, we forget to lament the wild axolotls whose native habitats are now massively threatened.  At least a few quizzical children might ask what an axolotl is, and learn their plight, and a few of the few might even turn to conservation as a career.

While riding home I was saddened to learn of the loss of one of the cygnets at Straiton Pond.  The swan family now is growing up and the five cygnets are nearly rowdy proto-teenagers eagerly casting off their brown baby feathers, but one of their family not so very long ago had to be put down because it had a fishing hook stuck in its neck and its wing was wrapped and trapped in miles of fishing line.  This is why we can't have nice things anymore.

* no-one