Armand, Marius & Xolux
ph. Lucas Charrier
Female or male? Armand and Marius, share their living room with an axolotl Yogi and maggot eater. Armand chose Xolux at the pet shop with the butterflies in his stomach, and it's with great joy that the two roommates occupy themselves with feeding him.
Xolux, the Man ?
(Armand) “My name is Armand, I'm 23 years old. I've been living with my best friend, Marius Perraud, for 6 months. We're studying art, I'm working with images.”
(Marius) “My name is Marius, so I'm sharing a flat with Armand. We're in the same school at Duperré, I'm studying at the fashion department.”
(A+M) “The Axolotl? We call it XOLUX, simply because it's the brand name of the aquarium. We had a hard time finding a name for him.... He has his own aquarium, he embodies his world. We used to call him "the man", but we didn't know his gender yet. To remedy this, we put two small pieces of paper, one on his left and one on his right, so that he could choose his gender. He chose the male, even though we were later informed that it was indeed a female!”
Butterflies in the stomach
(A) “The story is quite simple, it started last September. Marius often expressed the wish to have an axolotl in the flat and I thought the idea was quite funny. His birthday came around and that was the perfect opportunity to get one. So I went to a pet shop called "La Jungle Tropicale", near Place d'Italie. A man was in charge of presenting us the different varieties of axolotls. Xolux was my favourite, something happened. The axolotls are in the back room, so the salesman brought them to us in a small plastic box one by one. After the fourth one, Xolux arrived, it was crystal clear, I had butterflies in my stomach and I decided to take it. It was the only white one in the pet shop, it had black eyes, red veins and gills.”
A central place
(A) “At first Xolux was a bit shy, he stayed at the bottom of the aquarium all day. Now he swims, he ventures out and when Marius puts his finger in the water Xolux comes to nibble it. This has become his favourite activity of the day. There is the maggot throwing which is quite entertaining, he gobbles them little by little, you can see the maggots moving in his mouth.
He has taken a central place in the living room, and in our lives. He brings a good atmosphere. We see him watching us cross the room at the edge of the window. Sometimes he does yoga sessions, levitating on the stones of his aquarium, a bit like in The Lion King. Lately we have discovered that he has been passing gas, as his body floats on the surface.”
A landscaping job
(A+M) “We were especially interested in having an Axolotl because it doesn't require much maintenance; we can leave for holiday easily, and if we go away for a longer time, we can put him in the fridge in a small basin and he hibernates. Besides, it's a very fascinating animal. It's studied in laboratories for its regenerative abilities. It's a bit of a superhero, it doesn't fit into any of the classic animal categories, it's like something out of Star Wars. We bought him some small fish and beautiful plants but he decided to eat all the fish and destroy all the plants. His aquarium became a desert, despite our landscaping work, wandering around Truffaut for hours.”
An axolotl can under certain conditions transform from an aquatic to a terrestrial state.
(A+M) “It has conflicted our relationship a little bit. We do not want it to become terrestrial, not only because it would be very ugly but also because its life expectancy would be only 5 years. In general, if the axolotl stays in the water, it has a life expectancy of about 15 years. There are legends that it can live up to 50 years.”
Rikiki and the duck
(A) “I had two hamsters, and unlike the axolotl, they were very fragile, very sensitive. I liked to put my hamster in his plastic ball and let him walk around the house. I think he was happy. After a year, he got sick, which made me very sad. I even went to my science teacher to ask her how I could save him. Finally, the hamster, Rikiki, died and we buried him in the garden.”
(M) “My parents had a chicken coop with two ducks, one of which was my duck. But one morning my parents told me that he had flown away, except that the same day we ate duck. A few years later, they confirmed that my duck had not flown away…”
