Good For
A Laugh
I love a good laugh.
It is one of God's greatest inventions
Psalm 2:4 begins
-
"He who sits in the
heavens laughs."
The following short
stories are offered for your enjoyment. I
hope they cause you
to laugh, especially if you need a laugh.
Jambie
About
a year before I began my career with the zoo, a legend died. His
name was Jambie. He was a large adult male orangutan. I never
met the fellow, but his delightful episodes were told and retold, as all
great tales should be. You see, Jambie was an incurable practical
joker. His specialty was water jokes.
Over the
years, Jambie learned the art of trading. He would throw food that
he didn't care for out of the cage in hopes that someone would give him
something he really liked. What happened most of the time was that
a person would retrieve the castaway food and throw it back to Jambie.
Jambie was a bit frustrated that no trade was effected, so at some point
he conceived a plan to humiliate the naive zoo patrons who were missing
the point.
Now it
may be helpful for you to know that Jambie could hold half a gallon of
water in his cavernous mouth. To entice the inept traders, he learned
to drop his trading to them close to the wire cage. When the patron
would bend over the guardrail to fetch the food, Jambie would climb quickly
to a position above the person and spew on-half gallon of liquid all over
his or her back.
He learned
the art of positioning for other purposes also. He would grind up
his monkey biscuits and sprinkle them just outside his cage.....but within
the reach of his monstrous hand. From the base of his palm to the
tip of his fingers it measured fifteen inches. He would lay his hand
down near the crumbs and wait with patience for the peacock's hen
and her chicks to come close to the bait. With a sudden sweep of
his hand he had new and animated toys. He
would
bring them into his cage and play with
them for
hours.
The Weekend Authority
I have
listened to hundreds of zoo patrons say some incredible things about the
animals, but
none more
incredible than what Henry told Mildred about the beisa oryx. A beisa
oryx is an African antelope. It is one of the larger members of the
family, standing about three and one-half feet
high at
the shoulder. Its slender horns curve gracefully another two feet
above the head. It is a combination of sublte gray, brown, black
and white - a strikingly beautiful creature.
Henry
studied the orxy for several seconds. You could tell he was impressed.
By the look of his clothing and the sound of accent, my guess was that
he was visiting from Arkansas. I couldn't be sure, but he was surely
from somewhere in the Deep South. His voice caught my attention.
I was inside a barn taling to an animal keeper about a medication he would
be giving one of the
animals
when Henry began to lecture his family on what he had learned from reading
the zoo signs. I peeked out the door and saw Henry surrounded by his three
little boys. They were all dressed in overalls and wore no shirts.
Mildred, his wife, stood where I would have stood if my family were dressed
that way in Southern California - about twenty feet away.
"Hey Mildred,"
he hollered, "you won't believe this! This here orxy has a gestation
period of 267 days. That is a mighty long time to digest your food."
"What
does the mean daddy?" ventured one of
his cherubs.
"Billy
Joe, it means that what the animal eats today won't be eliminated until
next February."
Then he
sighed and said, "Isn't that amazing?"
It was
mid-July.
Now You See It....Now
You Don't...Now You Do!
It was
clearly entered into the daily log;
"Six puppies
born to Mr. and Mrs. Coyote." Everybody thought they were cute.
But Charlie their keeper, found these irresistible. As soon as their
mother began to take periodic breaks from them, Charlie would slip
in to tame them. They responded quickly to his affection.
One little
female was a standout. She was gentle, affectionate, and would stay
with Charlie longer than all the rest. Cahrlie became very attatched
to her and was soon locking all the others out
with mom
so that he could play with his little beloved. Before long,
he decided that this pup was far too special to grow up in a zoo.
He made the decision to take her home and slipped her out in his lunch
pail.
Not too
many days passed before the senior keeper noticed that there were five
puppies
rather
than six. He approached Charlie to see if he knew what might have
happened to the
missing
puppy. Charlie told Al that he never remembered there being six.
Al must have counted one twice. Al was nobody's fool, but he decided
to buy the story for a couple of reasons. First, the coyotes had
no real value, and second, their future in the zoo world was very uncertain.
If Charlie had swiped it, it was sure to be loved and well cared for.
Charlie
lived in an apartment building with his wife, Cindy. She fell in
love with the pup as soon as she saw it and agreed they should keep it.
They had a sterling relationship with their landlady and she reluctantly
gave them permisssion to care for it. They convinced her that it
was simply a mongrel dog, but as the puppy grew their landlady grew skeptical.
She would periodically ask,
"That
isn't a wolf is it?"
"No, it's
just a terrier shephard mix," said Charlie and Cindy.
Well,
the landlady became more and more focused on the puppy's origin.
Charlie and Cindy could see the growing concern on her face, and they knew
in their hearts that they were going to have to give back the puppy or
surely the chance of getting caught for stealing. They had no friends
who wanted a coyote, so Charlie decided he
would
return her to the zoo. He drove his car directly to her exhibit and
returned the coyote
pup to
the cage. It was very early, and no one witnessed the glad reunion.
Although she had been away nearly six months, she was well-received by
her family and readjusted to zoo life quite nicely.
It wasn't
until Charlie's day off that anything out of the ordinary was noticed.
His relief keeper came to Al, the senior keeper, and said, "You have to
come and see this. Al I can't believe it."
Al followed
the relief keeper to the coyote exhibit and stepped inside the cage.
He was immediately approached by a tame, teenaged coyote that llicked his
hands and whined for attention.
"I've
never seen anything like this in my life," said the dumbfounded keeper.
"Neither
have I," replied Al, as he stroked his chin thoughtfully.
Al never
pursued the subject with Charlie, so far as I know, but he did mention
to Charlie that he'd better take a course in basic maths, so he could keep
an accurate record of his string. Keepers speculated about how a
coyote became tame
over night.
Author ~ Gary Richmond
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