Hangzhou Zoo in China has been accused of dressing up humans in furry costumes and passing them off as sun bears. The zoo has denied this of course. The very idea of a Chinese state-run anything carrying out any sort of deception is as ludicrous as the very idea of a human pretending to be a bear. It turns out that the idea that humans were pretending to be bears was baloney.
What a shame. It’s a brilliant idea, if not an entirely original one. A zoo in Egypt was rumbled for the innovative ploy of painting stripes on a donkey and calling it a zebra. Another one, in China, claimed that a Tibetan mastiff dog was a lion. The lion was exposed as a dog after a zoo visitor heard it barking. Barking is about right.
I can’t think why anyone objected. Or was surprised. Asia is where you go to buy knock-offs. In Thailand, I was once told by a persistent purveyor of patently fake Prada bags they were “same, same. But different”.
It occurs to me that there is a good idea in all of this nonsense just waiting to be pinched. The Lush Places Petting Zoo – my money-spinning scheme – is, sigh, still under construction six years on. It is mostly under construction in my mind. Still, every idea involves a light-bulb moment, and I have had one. If you took your specs off and squinted in the right way at a black sheep, say, it could just about pass for a black bear. Same, same. But different.
I could dress up the sheep as other exotic animals and charge people top dollar to come and pet them. My sheep, Elizabeth Jane, could, with a modicum of artistic licence and the aforementioned squinting, do a reasonable impersonation of a hippo. She’s certainly fat enough. Also, because both of her ears have been cut in half due to cancerous growths, she already looks rather fetchingly hippo-ish in the ear department. She has, as have all of our sheep and as have we, been too well acquainted with mud for months. So she is already as muddy as any happy hippo would be.
A giraffe would be an excitement. Greg’s sheep, Xanthe, would make a fairly convincing giraffe. She’s very tall for a sheep. She has a long neck and a funny tassel-like tail. She can already clamber up trees to get at leaves. With the aid of stilts, and two long pairs of giraffe-patterned socks, she could just about double as one.
All of this will demand some effort and quite a bit of time. The trouble is that I don’t have quite a bit of time. I don’t have any time. City folk think we country folk just swan about smelling the roses and playing with cute lambs.
I spend all my time cleaning up animal shit and being told off by shitty animals. The sheep shout at me every time I venture out to smell the roses. They are cross because I have been late giving them their breakfast trays of sheep nuts. The chickens grizzle at me from sunrise to sunset. They want more sunflower seeds and sultanas. And it is obviously my fault that it is raining. Again. Chickens hate rain. Chickens hate everything. Except digging up my seedlings. They particularly hate laying eggs, which is supposed to be the only reason for their existence.
The cats complain. They are all former wild cats. But are they grateful for the five-star food and shelter provided? Like hell they are. They have formed a cat union. Their protest involves a cacophony. A caterwauling. They are demanding better food and more of it. They shout at me all day long. Nobody give them a megaphone.
Gotta go. The giraffe requires feeding.
