Human Zoo

 Human Zoo

 

THERE WAS ONE ISSUE just about all were agreed upon. Everyone hated the bonobos.

‘What do they do all day?’ asked the goat, Florence.

‘Loaf about,’ said Joseph, the turkey.

‘Taking enjoyment in lascivious frottage,’ said Lewis, the peacock.

All the beasts looked to the horse, Clarence, who, knowing that he momentarily occupied a position of great power and authority, took his time before saying, finally:

‘He means “rubbing themselves against each other in an arousing fashion.” Or, if you prefer, shagging.’

Jessica, the aged owl, hooted ambiguously.

‘That’s right: morning, afternoon and evening,’ added the sheepdog, Ainsley.

‘The females as bad as the males,’ said Marie-France, the hen.

‘And in the most improbable configurations of sexual congress,’ interjected Lewis, giving his tail fan a little shake.

Clarence gave his mane a corresponding little shake and when all the beasts except Lewis looked to him for an explanation, he just said, ‘You can guess.’

No one had a reply and so a hush settled on the assembled company. But Jessica, emboldened by her hooting moments before, was itching to say something and couldn’t contain herself:

‘They never work, that’s for sure. You’ll see them hanging around on corners, shuffling about, threatening the elderly and corrupting the young. They’re no good to anyone. We shouldn’t have to deal with them at all. Scum, that’s what they are. Scum!’

Who could top that as a contribution to the conversation?  Jessica seemed to have uttered the last word – until Lewis broke the silence:

‘In addition, it’s said that they ingest psycho-active compounds that both dissolve one’s natural sense of moral abhorrence and encourage the transgression of the good taste and proper behaviour established formally and informally and unerringly held to by all beasts for time out of mind.’

Lewis turned away, shaking his tail fan, and everyone else turned to Clarence, who stroked his front-right hoof on the ground for a moment, paused, gave out a little neigh, paused again, raised his gaze to the skies, shuffled his hoof on the ground again, paused, neighed once more, and said finally:

‘Drugs. And more shagging.’ 

With everyone focused on him, Clarence decided to utter some words of conclusion to the bonobo problem:

‘They’re as bad as, if not worse than humans.’

‘Steady on,’ said Florence. ‘Let’s not get things completely out of proportion. Bonobos are lazy and obsessed with sex. No one can argue with that. They’re a blight on our society, that’s for sure. But their degradation isn’t total, and they do have some sparks of intelligence. Let’s not confuse them with humans.’

Beasts’ conversations about bonobos always veered in this direction and always reached an impasse at this point. Things could get bitter, too, especially if cats or dogs were involved, as they were the most sympathetic of all beasts to humans.

It had been said for a long time that some dogs believe humans have the capacity for loyalty and friendship if given strong and clear direction; and there were cats, it was said, who admire humans’ love of freedom and think their worst excesses could be contained by properly spaced mealtimes and a carefully regulated programme of stroking.

Not long after the casual farmyard conversation of Clarence, Lewis, Florence, Joseph and Marie-France, The Beastly Times started to print stories of an underground group called The Human Liberation Front, an organization that supposedly had training camps in the mountains and was planning on carrying out – or in some reports already had carried out – attacks on zoos, on human flesh markets and butchers.

Now every visit to the zoo carried a sense of dreadful anticipation. If the press was to be believed, the HLF might strike at any point. The organization had even released a statement, pinned to the railings of the capital’s zoo:

‘The Human Liberation Front is not in hiding in the treetops. It is not secluded in the mountains or sequestered in the desert. The HLF is the beast just behind you. He has anger in his heart and ready access to explosive materials.’ 

Graffiti appeared on the walls of public buildings, and even the bronze of Roland, the chimpanzee identified with founding of modern republic, was defaced with the words We are getting closer: HLF.

Zoos could become a thing of the past. Humans would be taken to the mountains and nurtured there by man-loving cats or dogs, or they would live in networks of caves as a part of feline or canine households. Or perhaps the HLF, in its sympathy for humans and hatred of beasts, would just let the men roam without restriction in towns and cities where they would rape and plunder in an orgy of freedom.

But still sometimes, out of their fascination for this reprehensible species, visitors to the zoo would ignore the sign: ‘Please do not feed the animals.’  Surely a clump of grass or a handful of berries couldn’t result in any harm if the humans were safely behind bars?  And all the nonsense about the HLF: surely The Times was just stoking up anxiety in order to sell papers.

Or so they thought. And they should have thought again.

An attack did come, but the HLF refused to take responsibility. A supposed statement from the group was printed in the Times. It read simply, 'End the confinement. 200 men and women liberated. HLF.'

This was dismissed as a fake on the evening news by Gustave, the Professor of Literature. With great canine gravity, the elderly St Bernard said that the language was 'lacking in the characteristic poise and vigour of the style used by the HLF in its communiqués.'

No one disagreed with the Times, though, when it said that the world would never be the same again.

In the assembly, anti-authoritarian gibbons and right-wing gorillas almost came to blows over the question of what security measures should be imposed. Eventually, in an elegant compromise evidencing the native intelligence that separates beasts from men, it was agreed that while security checks would be limited as far as possible, a curfew would be established. For their own safety, all beasts were to be back in their dwelling places by sunset.

It was determined, too, and with the assembly unanimous in this matter, that zoos should carry out exemplary punishments amongst their human populations. The dominant male of each enclosure was to be reproved – birds pecking his eyes and snakes biting his heels each time he carried out his favourite activity of scratching his genitals and sniffing his fingers. This disciplinary measure would hopefully discourage any prospect of future mutinies.

Days passed. Nights passed.

Each day, lynxes and eagles would descend from the skies and mountains in order to be asked about sightings of the escapees. Each day, the cats and birds had to report that they had seen nothing. During the long evenings of the curfew, excited beasts feverishly gleaned the Internet for news. But none came. There was never any real news about the escaped humans. Nor even any decent commentary.

There was no place for Gustave in the media now. Because of his research interest in the language of terror, he came to be widely seen as a supporter of the HLF.  No one listened when he said that his curiosity extended only to texts and their contexts and that authors and their lives were of precisely no interest to him.

Now newspaper articles focused on the supposedly growing numbers of human sympathizers, and blogs and podcasts on how the HLF was an inevitable result of moral permissiveness and how beasts, it was clear, simply needed to return to older and more established ways of ordering their lives.

And if you turned on the television during this time, all you could view were emotionally supercharged chat shows. On these, a succession of celebrities – prominent among them was Bobbi-Jo, the reindeer better known for her mushroom addiction than her brief and lamentable stint as a soap actress - spoke stutteringly of how the escape was a reminder that what was really important was not having a presence in the media but being with one’s family.

When Clarence, Lewis, Florence, Joseph and Marie-France now met, which was rare, as the fear over-running the republic now meant that they were afraid to go out much even in the daylight hours, they felt embarrassed that they could have whiled away their time talking about how dreadful were the bonobos, who now seemed quite harmless.

Weeks passed, and then months - still no news of the escapees. The only logical conclusion, all agreed, was that the HLF had spirited them away far from the reach of the state. The only matter for debate now was whether or not they would live peaceably in their new lands (wherever they were) or if they would return to attack.

The answer came one evening during the curfew. Those living near the zoo heard a dreadful howling and screeching, together with low, perverse rumblings. The remaining humans, it seemed, were carrying out some kind of dreadful rite, perhaps because they knew their fellows were gone, lost to them forever.

The infernal noises rose in volume throughout the night.

And in the morning, there they were: all of them, all two hundred. Standing outside the gates of the zoo, tears running down their cheeks and shaking and wailing, the escapees were rattling the bars and pounding their bodies against the entrance.

Without ceasing their terrible moan, some would retreat for fifteen or twenty paces before running towards the bars and throwing themselves at them. Others were crouching or lying, with a look of what seemed to be utter helplessness in their eyes. Their hair matted with blood, these too bawled their parts in the chorus of despair, and, after a while, grabbed hold of the bars again and grunted repeatedly. Some of the desperate company jumped up and down, stamping in pools of their own urine before knocking their heads against the gate.

Letting out what sounded like a demented war cry, the most desperate of the humans tried, and, having neither the requisite intelligence, strength or dexterity, inevitably failed to scale the entrance. Their failure was no matter to them: they tried again, learnt nothing, failed again.

Now everything was clear.

The rancorous debate in the assembly, the security checks, the restrictions on movement, the moral panic stoked up by the press, the fear that had kept honest beasts from their sleep had all been quite unnecessary. Everyone could return to the ordinary, dull and reassuring courses of their lives, and, if they so desired, could make idle chatter again about the bonobos.

The wretched band of escaped men and women wanted nothing more than to return to the zoo.