At the Zoo

by

Neil van Gorder

 

I really love animals. I steal the spots off animals. Cows, cheetahs, Dalmatians. My favorite animal to steal the spots off would have to be...the giraffe. I don't steal stripes. No zebras, tigers, or kangaroos for me. I go to the zoo. I always ask the giraffes for their spots first. Then they say to me " No, you can't have my giraffe spots." Then I pull my gun out. But then it strikes me kind of funny that a giraffe just spoke to me. But then I think that maybe it's because I have a giraffe costume on. And I wonder if having a giraffe costume on helps me understand giraffe speak. Then I shoot the giraffe. And everyone looking into the giraffe area says " Hey! Look! A giraffe just stood up on his hind legs and shot another giraffe." I suppose most people don't see that when they go to a zoo. And I suppose that most people don't see one giraffe drag another giraffe's body through the zoo and out to a car in the parking lot where the live giraffe ties the dead giraffe to the top of his Honda Civic. Then the live giraffe gets into the driver seat of the car and drives off. I only think this because everybody's saying, "Look! There's a giraffe tying another giraffe to the top of a car."

 

I really love animals. I have a black lab. I like to put giraffe spots on him. Scotch tape is a great adhesive for giraffe spots. I like to take him down to the park and tell everybody that he's a rare miniature black giraffe as I throw Frisbees for him to catch. Most people don't believe me and they say that he's a dog with giraffe spots taped on him. But not everybody thinks this. Case in point: Dirty, Dirty Dale, the local homeless man at the park. He says he knows a giraffe when he sees one. He says that's because when he was in World War II he painted giraffes on the sides of tanks in Africa so they could fool the "Desert Fox" Erwin Rommel of the Nazis into thinking that the tanks weren't really tanks but giraffes. I told him that's right. It's all about appearances and fooling other people into making them think that you're something you're really not. Dirty Dale says he does that all time. He says when people feed the pigeons popcorn in the park he tapes the newspapers that he sleeps on to his arms and bobs his head like he's a pigeon so that people throw him popcorn too. It's real fun watching Dirty Dale compete for popcorn.

 

I really love animals. I have a tape with whales singing on it and that's really neat that whales can get into the recording studio and make music too. But giraffes could probably sing better than whales but I guess they just don't make microphone stands that are that tall. I've seen giraffe's tongues. It's like a small pink South American continent in their mouths. Salvador Dali use to paint burning giraffes. I know why. Giraffes on fire are fun. And fun is fun. Golly!

I really love animals.