In 1890, American ornithologist Eugene Schieffelin introduced a few dozen European starlings to Central Park. The starlings rapidly bred and spread across the continent, becoming a ubiquitous invasive species that often outcompetes native bird populations. Eugene didn’t know this would happen, but what did he think he was doing in the first place? Well, the story goes that he loved Shakespeare and was trying to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays to North America. Apparently, this story only emerged decades after Eugene died and we don’t know if it’s really true, but let’s just take the concept and run with it.
Taylor Swift has an extensive discography of over 200 songs from ten albums. Although her music isn’t particularly zoologically focused, her mentions of animals still add up when you get down to counting them all. We could try to speculate about the ecological consequences of releasing all of Taylor Swift’s animals into Central Park. However, it might not be terribly interesting, as many of them already live there anyway. So instead, I propose, let’s put these critters in a “Hunger Games” scenario. They can form alliances with each other to help survive, but there can only be one victor. Here are the competitors (with the titles of the songs that mention them so you can check me on this):
- Crickets (I’m Only Me When I’m With You)
- Horse (Fearless; White Horse; The Archer; mirrorball)
- Firefly (Innocent; Sweet Nothing)
- Dragons (Long Live)
- Moth (Better Than Revenge)
- Butterflies (Everything Has Changed; Clean)
- Vultures (I Know Places)
- Foxes (I Know Places)
- Rabbit (Wonderland; long story short)
- Cat (Wonderland; Gorgeous; Paper Rings; Vigilante Shit; Karma)
- Flamingo (“Slut!”)
- Jaguar (King of My Heart)
- Mouse (Paper Rings)
- Sharks (Cornelia Street)
- Snakes (You Need To Calm Down)
- Wolves (Daylight)
- Dog (the last great american dynasty; evermore)
- Scorpion (mad woman)
- Bear (mad woman)
- Eagles (gold rush)
- Lark (dorothea)
- Spider (Karma)
Now, if we imagine I was somehow able to put all of these guys together in one big arena, here is my very scientific estimation of what would happen:
The moth, who doesn’t even deserve to be there because the original “Better Than Revenge” lyric went harder (my apologies to feminism), is the first to be out of the competition. The fireflies come together to form a shimmering ball of light that the moth is naturally drawn to; the cat takes advantage of the moth’s distraction and is easily able to catch it. However, the alliance between the fireflies and the cat is not long-lived. The fireflies soon fly directly into the spider’s little webs of opacity. But we’ll see that it really was easier in the spider’s firefly-catching days — which is to say, he doesn’t fare all too well either. The same cat that worked with the fireflies was none too happy with their extermination, or alternatively, he doesn’t remember that at all and just wants to catch something else. Either way, the spider’s gone too now.
The flamingo gets to live peacefully at first, wading in clear blue water, but the foxes have other ideas. Not-so-fun fact I learned in my research for this: in May 2022, a fox got into the flamingo exhibit at Smithsonian’s National Zoo and took out twenty-five of them. This honestly seems really excessive to me, but I guess foxes and flamingos don’t usually find themselves living in close quarters, so things can get out of hand when it does happen. Meanwhile, the shark in the water can’t stop, won’t stop moving, as their physiology dictates that they literally have to keep swimming or they die. Because Taylor Swift has not had the foresight to sing about any fish or other marine animals, the shark has nothing to eat and is forced to ditch the whole scene. The eagles are also frustrated by the lack of fish, as well as Taylor’s recent switch to being a Chiefs fan, so they make loud patriotic noises until everyone gets fed up and lets them leave. The scorpion tries to cross the body of water, and it’s like that fable about the frog and the scorpion, except there’s no frog so the scorpion just drowns instantly. The water filled his lungs, he screamed so loud, but no one heard a thing. It’s all over now, all out to sea.
The jaguar (and let me tell you, I really had to pull some strings to get the jaguar here, because the lyric was technically referring to a car and there was a lot of confusion) is on the prowl for prey, and makes quick work of the rabbit. You might think, no one’s going to stop the jaguar, so what’s the point of keeping score? However, we also have wolves and a bear in this arena, and with three different large predators in the confines of this space, there’s bound to be bad blood. The wolves have the advantage of being plural — not just because they naturally live in packs, but they’re the only one of the three animals mentioned as a plural in their song lyric. So, in the battle of carnivores, they’re the ones who will come out victorious and howl into the blood-moonlit night. The key lime green dog, who managed to hide out and blend in with the surroundings, emerges and runs with the wolves and refuses to settle down.
Now, let’s address the dragons. We’re working on a Joe Alwyn budget here, and we’re already in deep debt from obtaining the jaguar, so the best we could do were bearded dragons from Petco. They eat the crickets pretty quickly, so Friday night beneath the stars will need to find a new soundtrack. Unfortunately, the dog has the time of her life fighting dragons and brings them to an untimely end — this is based on a true story that one of my friends experienced and described to me pretty graphically. Meanwhile, the snakes are pretty decent-sized pythons (I know places for those), so they subsist on the occasional rabbit from the rabbit holes and no one tries to mess with them.
In the longer term, I’m going to hope this works like the actual Hunger Games, with people eventually sending food to the animals in the arena so they don’t all just starve in there. As we fast forward to three hundred takeout coffees later, who do we see become the winner? After a month or two or three, one of the cats finally caught the mouse. They got the lark too, inevitably. The butterflies turned to dust that covered the whole arena (most butterfly species, once they’ve reached their adult stage, only live for a few weeks or months). They sent home the horses, because it was getting way too controversial how many horses there should be (all the king’s, or just a one-horse town?). The dog started breeding with the wolves and nobody knew if that was against the rules. Actually, wait, this is our place, we make the rules. We decide to disqualify them for creating a new animal not mentioned by Taylor Swift. At this point, we also realized that the rabbits were being typical rabbits and starting to overpopulate the place, so people had to go in and spay/neuter every single rabbit. This meant the population eventually died off, to be eaten by the vultures. The vultures turned out to be critically endangered California condors and we got in trouble for “kidnapping” them from a zoo or whatever, so we had to let those go too. This is why we can’t have nice things.
At this point, all the fans were still sending in food to the cats, but then they started disappearing. Were the snakes eating them? The process was slow, unfolding over months, because snakes have a low metabolism, but eventually, all the cats vanished. There will be no explanation. There will only be reputation.I lied, there is an explanation. Taylor was pulling the strings the whole time. This was her way of announcing Reputation (Taylor’s Version). She becomes embroiled in controversy for apparently sacrificing cats and all those other animals for the announcement. Ticket prices plummet. I go to her next concert and find out she actually took all the cats out of the arena and brought them home for herself; they were not harmed. All is right with the world.
