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Earth Tongue (Photo: FIRST)
Earth Tongue (Photo: FIRST)

Pop CultureAugust 25, 2021

How Earth Tongue ended up with a pair of axolotls named after them

Earth Tongue (Photo: FIRST)
Earth Tongue (Photo: FIRST)

Earth Tongue tell us about axolotl experiences, the horror of Matilda, a cigarette-smoking ghost and more in this week’s episode of FIRST.

What do National Party MP Simon Bridges and the drummer from Wellington psych-fuzz duo Earth Tongue have in common? Apart from playing the drums, probably not a lot. In fact, maybe just one other thing: they both had a pet axolotl.

In his episode of FIRST, Bridges confessed to accidentally killing his pet axolotl Aristotle by feeding him a big sliver of meat. Earth Tongue’s Ezra Symons’ first pet was also an axolotl named Charlie McDoovidson, and met a similar fate after being left in the sunlight. Who knew axolotls were such a common pet, and so difficult to keep alive?

This is not where the band’s axolotl connection ends. Symons and Earth Tongue guitarist Gussie Larkin also had a pair of the creatures named after them by a punter who saw them perform at Splore. “He was in festival mode, this guy, shall we say,” Symons explains. “He came up to us afterwards and he was like, ‘when you introduced yourselves I just had this realisation. I now know what to call my two pet axolotls: Gussie and Ezra.’ I was like, “I give them my blessing’.”

“Put them in the corner; don’t put them in the sun.”

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This episode of FIRST was made with the support of NZ On Air.

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