"I'VE ALWAYS BEEN GOOD with animals" my contact tells me. "They always seemed to naturally trust me. Then five years ago I discovered I was a Borrower"
Michael (not his real name) uses the insider term "borrower" for Zootelepathy, the ability to communicate with animals, use their senses, and—for the most gifted borrowers—operate their bodies. "Food delivery seemed like a natural career", Michael adds.
The use of Zootelepathy for gig-work deliveries is an open secret in the industry. Insiders have estimated (none would go on record for this article) that as many as forty percent of food deliveries in the Melbourne CBD involve Borrowers (working Zootelepaths consider the street term "Zeets" to be a slur).
"I have three foxes working for me, a pair of peregrine [falcons] and a wedgy", Michael mentions the wedge-tailed eagle, a truly massive Australian bird, the apex predator of the skies, able to lift a family meal. "Only the fattest mice for Denis". Michael's name for his "Wedge" is some obscure sci-fi in-joke.
Dr Alison Strangletorpe of Monash University department of Zoology says that "Zeets have driven mice to near extinction in the urban range, and spiked the price of feed-mice", the term for mice raised for feeding reptiles and other captive small predators. Dr Strangletorpe says that some gig-delivery workers, faced with a mouse shortage, pay their animals with fast-food scraps rather than their natural prey. "A raptor on a Quarter Pounder diet is a tragedy" she opines.