One,
the leader perhaps, decided it should and begun to angle its neck
downwards. Its big face loomed towards the window. The dog sensing
something was happening grumbled. Shush, Badger. You'll give yourself
away. The giraffe discovered we weren't very interesting; not all
that different from all the other humans he'd seen. Maybe he gave the
others a signal to that effect because the group began to amble away
and enabled us to move off, to the lions who were fat with food and
having a snooze in the overgrown grass.
The
monkeys from earlier we'd just survived. We were shaken, the car had
some minor damage. The video made of that outing has lots of high
pitched speaking and some language unsuitable for children. And all
because of monkeys. Who were everywhere, and determined to make a
closer inspection of any cars and their occupants. We escaped
lightly, but not before voices had been raised and turned shriller,
particularly mine which was more of a whine, an annoying whine. I
wish video cameras were never invented! For even my remembrance of
watching this back makes me cringe so that I reiterate with my
parents: Shut up! Yes, tensions grew high on that family trip. A trip
that was supposed to be novel, a treat, pleasurable was anything but.
And
after the monkeys, well, anything was considered likely to happen.
Would the lions claw our tyres? Would the car be rocked? I can't
remember the exact year this was - the late 1980s? - without
reviewing the video, but it sounds Jurassic Park-like, a very tame
English version of it, since the bigger animals, especially those
known in the wild to be ferocious, didn't bat an eyelid to our
presence in their park territory. This was their normal.
It
wasn't however mine. My brain circuits were going bananas. My senses
were alert to the unusual, to danger, and primed for unforeseen
thrills and spectacles. The car doors were locked from the inside and
the seat wiggling was just containable, but the fireworks going off
inside our heads weren't. Eyes and ears. Eyes and ears. Would you
look at that? What was that?! Where?! There was nothing else to do
but follow the road and creep along, section by section, and feign
fear, feign enjoyment.
The
real and make-believe emotions combined, with the real fear that a
dog with white badger-like markings would be found in the passenger
foot-well. The dog could not, would not, be separated from its
family. He was too elderly for that. A sleepy farting animal. No, he
would be quiet and would be hidden. There was no decision, the risk
would be taken, but still the chance of him being discovered sent the
adrenaline up a notch before we'd even entered and were essentially
trapped in the park, in the car, with wild beasts.
I
knew that this was not a zoo. Creatures were enclosed but free. There
were no cages, as such, with bars, just perimeter fences around
habitats which half-heartedly replicated the landscapes such beasts
might be accustomed to. As for the weather, well, they had to make
do, just as any man, woman and child on British soil. But really it
was only marginally better than a zoo. It was an animal drive-thru
with a lunch stop and a souvenir shop; an attraction not all that
different from a theme park, just with animals in place of the rides.
Our
fear, anyhow, was misplaced, for nothing tried to eat us and the dog,
though he grumbled once or twice, went undetected. By its end I had
ascertained and accepted that giraffes and monkeys and lions were
facts; they did not just exist in picture books, but I was
disappointed not to have seen Roald Dahl's window washing team.
Picture credit: The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me, Quentin Blake
Written November 2019.
