Super Wooper Dooper

Meet Carlo. Carlo is my newest pet. He is an Axolotl and they are originally from Mexico. He’s not from Mexico, he’s from my local pet store, but as soon as they start selling tiny Axolotl sized sombreros and maracas I’ll help him (I think he’s a him) get in touch with his Mexican roots. Axolotl are nearly a type of Salamander except that the larvae fail to change fully into a Salamander so instead they remain underwater with little gills – cute little frilly gills that frame his delightfully gormless face.

You might be wandering why I named him Carlo, and not something from a game.  I was originally going to call him Cloud the 2^nd (my black bunny is Cloud the First, or Cloudus Judas Bunnikins to give him his full name) Well, if you support Chelsea you will probably get the pun. Chelsea Manager Carlo Ancelotti sounds a bit like Axolotl if you talk about them to your sister’s boyfriend and should be bloody honoured that my new pet is ‘punned’ after him.  And I don’t need to name him after a game, he’s already from a game.

When I first saw the Axolotl, I thought it was a Mudkip from Pokémon, I even said to the girl at the World of Water store, ‘OMG it’s a freaking Mudkip!’ She obviously didn’t think I was too much of a raving loony as she let me take the Axolotl home. I did give her some money for him, but she wasn’t just really impressed with my Pokémon knowledge – although she should have been.

After doing much needed research I found out even more awesome stuff about my new friend Carlo Axolotl…One of the most important things I found out about Carlo, over incidental stuff like what food he eats and what conditions he might prefers to live in, was the fact that in Japan they are known as Wooper Loopers. I didn’t have a mudkip at all, but a blumming Wooper! Only difference I could see is that my Carlo has arms!  Though reading on, I found that when they’re in tanks together they eat each other’s arms, but it’s OK – they grow back!

Wooper is a blue amphibious Pokémon and is based on my little Carlo (or someone that looks very like him, except without arms). A Wooper stands upright on its little round feet, and has a large, thick tail. A Wooper also has big branching gills that come out of each side of its head. A Wooper’s head is large compared to its body, its mouth is wide and its eyes are small, round, and black in coloration or in Carlo’s case, yellow eyes because he’s an albino. A bit like the killer monk in ‘The Da Vinci Code’, except he looks a lot more like a huge tadpole.

There are differences, you can’t carry Carlo around in your pocket – he would get squished, and not be able to breathe.  In fact, thinking about having a real life Pokémon makes you realise how cruel the Pokémon trainers are.  With all the stuff I had to go through to buy just one Axylotl, did I have a big enough tank, the right purifiers, the right temperature, the right PH?  It was like a member of the Gestapo who was hell bent on making sure it was only the best for the Axylotl that she had crammed six into a tank! I even had to buy two filters because the first one was too powerful, and Carlo didn’t like it.  So where is the RSPCA person in the Pokémon universe?  That’s why there are so many Nurse Joys – all the poor Pokémon are getting abused!

Maybe that’s why if you have a Wooper in your Pokémon party, you’d have to make sure that you also had an electric Pokémon to power the filter and a flame / ice Pokémon to regulate the temperature of the tank.  And those Pokeballs are rather small, where is the room for the plants, where’s the plastic skull, the tiny Axylotl sombreros and maracas?  Still, when you consider that a Snorlax has to fit in the same place, my tiny cute little Wooper isn’t doing too badly.

I love my little Carlo the Wooper a lot, but he’d be useless in a battle, except against a blood worm, or another Wooper’s foot.  The ability to regrow a foot is very cool in real life, but it takes weeks.  The other ability he has is to look gormless and cute.  Again, good in real life – but not that useful when faced against a Vulpix.  All in all, I’m glad that my little Carlo just gets to swim happily in his tank, and hide in the corner when he’s hungry.  All those poor other Pokémon have to fight each other in a cruel and unusual manner, which if it existed in the real world it would seem very similar to bear baiting or cock fighting!  That’s no life for a little Wooper, and so I’m glad that Carlo is here in the real world, but I get to also play with his virtual version in the Pokeworld when I want to!