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This tale begins with a truck driver who had been tasked with brining a Freightliner up towards the tip of a particularly sharply pointed hill.
It was not evident from the outside, but there was also a metallic contraption contained within, emitting a sort of wild “Clink, Clonk, Clink”ing.
In addition to the metal cage, there was also another living component busy lefting and righting.
Said swagger jagger was Mr.Truckdriver.
In contrast to the scenic sections constantly in motion, there was also a portion who remained unmoving: it was a squad of flies tanning leisurely on the windscreen, drawing their entertainment from that same truck driver.
The insect-based whispers were actually pointedly focused on the driver being too weakly changeable for his job. They noted the operator’s movements to resemble those of an unsteady reed in the process of being continuously displaced and replaced once more by gusts of lakeside wind.
While the flies found this situation quite hilarious overall, they would most probably have found it all the more funnier if they had been gifted with the capacity for sensing the music that was radiating from inside the vehicle. It was true that the suspense-building drum beat of ‘Eye if the Tiger’ was overtaking every nook and cranny of the trolley they were posted upon.
The flies were also missing out on the funniest bit of all that could only be known by peering into the consciousness of the driver himself. It was true that the driver was at this moment busy imaging himself to be Rocky, the sportif achiever who had in his film recently culminated the feat of recaching the peak of those non-descript white steps.
The driver ‘s postulation were suddenly interrupted by a warm excess spilling over into his lap.
“I really need to start gymming again,” he thought.
The thought had barely come and gone when an icy chill passed through his doughy body.
It was the breath of fear, currently stirring within him a strong sense of impending doom.
If asked to describe the feeling, the driver would have explained it to be as if a gas chamber had been erected in his stomach and was now, slowly but surely, being filled to the brim with putrid discoloured gaseous substance.
As the howling intensified and the driver’s hands grew shakier and shakier, it became increasingly laborious for him to maintain his grip.
He sat up and stomped powerfully on the gas.
The job needed to be done, but it would most definitely not hurt to hurry a bit.
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At the top of the hill, the previously non-stationary metal cage was removed from the truck and set down in the central space of the Zoo.
The local community of creatures congregated so close to the foreign thing that sloppy snouts, muzzles and beaks contacted the clear glass that had been erected to exist between the metallic bars. With their incandescent optics laden with lumps of inquisitiveness, the creatures carefully observed as a new resident stepped out from the opening between the metal bars.
What could it be?
A black mamba perhaps?
An alligator?
It was in fact a spot of neon yellow that hopped frightfully out from between the metallic versions of bamboo bars. He was a tiny amphibian version of one of those yellow lines of a ‘no-go’ banner.
The rest of the residents recoiled in disgust.
“Ewww it’s a gold poison frog!! I heard they’re the worst, just muck around and stick their little heads into everybody’s business,” exclaimed the beautiful Gazelle lounging luxuriously in the sun.
“Ughhh yeah she’s right. Back in my old zoo in Madrid, one of these little fuckers poisoned the entire watering-hole! I heard the keepers talking about it claiming that the critter had just been dumb and had wanted to go for swim, but I swear I saw that evil glint in its eye from the second it arrived,” added Giraffe.
“The Tribe has spoken: Frog will be confined to the corner of the outcasts,” announced the Great Ape.
Having recently exited his ridiculously oversized cage, Frog had secretly overheard the prevailing conversation.
He understood the main points that had been made but was not yet fully aware of the repercussions of being thus unable to become a bona fide Tribe member.
“Uhh sooo does that like mean I can’t chill around here or what?” he asked.
The voice of the Great Ape rumbled in return:
“It means that you are confined to the corner of the outcasts!”
This ape dude seemed pretty high strung, so Frog bothered not to ask any more questions. In an attempt to protect his yellow skin from drying up, he slipped quietly away to be comforted by the overhead embrace of the closest and most magnificent shady tree all the while remaining wickedly unaware of his location as being one inhabiting the central most locus in Tribe territory.
It did not take long for Frog to acknowledge that he had been cast out from the frying pan in which he had sizzled for the duration of his journey directly into the fire-pit of rejection.
The fire scorched him nearly immediately as it took almost no time at all before Tribe leader Mr. Monkey employed his retina to view the yellow particle from an aerial perspective.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” exclaimed the violated leader.
“I uhhhh, I was just trying to find a shady spot to rest my skin for a bit,” replied Frog.
“Well too bad. Don’t you see this ‘TRIBE MEMBERS ONLY’ sign that’s been hung up around this tree and that watering hole over there?” scolded the hairy two-legged.
“Oh uuuhh sorry I’m new here,” said Frog, still standing in the heat of the sun and observing with great distress as his miraculously colourful outer layer tightened into an unwavering orbit of wicked dryness.
Panic seeped straight through his three chambered heart, spilling out into his systematic vascular bends.
Frog felt naked, as if he had just been coated in wondrous, silky shaving cream and had now been pushed to forcefully remove this from himself, leaving him exposed, bald, bear and above all totally pathetic. This startled him into awareness, and brought the fight-or-flight response into full fledged fast-paced action.
On the left of the enclosure Frog spied a small group, congregating around another smaller, shittier watering hole. The members of this second squad were gathered under the only other prominent tree that was stood to festooning the space. Admittedly, this second barkladen magnificence was not quite as high and mighty as the first, but with its wider and softer trunk and its willowy branches hung as low as possible, it gave off a much friendlier vibe. The frog believed this pleasant appearance to be maintained due to the reaching branches seeming to salute the under-soot of the soil. There was no other way a malicious tree could have appeared this amicable.
It was also no detriment to the attractiveness of the tree that surrounding it there was a small, far less menacing group encircling its outer bounds.
“Definitely better than the elitist assholes I just encountered,” thought Frog.
It was time to make some friends.
An opening line was required.
Frog knew his initial remark to need to bestow the power of making him sound cool and slightly aloof. A secondary goal of this utterance would be to mislead this other squad into believing that he still had the option of choosing between them or the Tribe.
But oh, what was this?
Frog’s eyes seized a slight hop within the grassy bush. It had been a leap by an organism with a lower and in some way more feminine spring than his own.
“A foxy frogess?!” he thought, “Guess my first impression’s just gonna need to pack that extra punch.”
Just as Frog had nearly entered the surrounding personal halos of those in this either group and had come to the conculsion of employing “What’s popping b” over “Oh hello, what’s a pretty lady like you doing by the watering hole all by herself,” it dawned on him that the culminations of cells he was busy proceeding towards were in the midst of a heated debate. A cacophony of angry feathers, scales and fur and whatever else animals are made of was presented to him on the silver platter of confusion.
As he drew even closer, he saw that there was actually no amphibian lady to be found at all and figured out that the feminine springing action he had seen had merely been the product of a spastically excitable female chinchilla.
The second point of sadness was that the rest of the animals were much too deep into the realms of debate to recognise his arrival. Frog knew himself to be currently ignored due to his lacking size, but suppressed this idea as he would have most liked to believe otherwise. He was honestly quite sensitive about issues pertaining to his (lack of) height and even the budding of this idea hit him in the heart.
“Look, if we wanna start running some sort of ‘Animal Farm’ type shizzle, then we need to get everyone involved,” croaked Turtle.
“Yes in my country when we defeated the Russians in the Winter War, we used a clever technique by planning our attack to begin at the end of November so we would have better capacity for approach…” began Bear.
“Shut up about your damn country for just half a second and at least try to help,” snapped Chinchilla, who had at this point morphed into a zealous ball of dusty fluff.
“How are we supposed to get everyone involved if the rest of them hate us?” noted Scorpion.
“Yea…like you guys can go if you wanna…but I could maybe hold the fort here if that’s ok with everyone …’ interjected Parrot.
“Indeed, do you not recall the final scenes of ‘Animal Farm’? After the humans had been conquered, Napoleon and Snowball were just as bad as those they had looked to rid themselves of. This only just goes to show that defeating the humans is highly unlikely to solve all our other problems, such as our inherent greed and competitiveness,” replied Bear.
“I agree with Bear, I think it’s unlikely that the use of violence will allow us to achieve the desired result. I believe this tactic will only result in more heartache than gain,” claimed Scorpion.
Turtle appeared as if he had eaten something sour, so everybody knew he was about to say something:
“Well I have another suggestion. My previous owner listened to a particular audio book known as ‘Art of Warfare’. I think it would be amazing to use the ideas presented here as sorts of non-violent weapons. So even if we do not end up over taking the humans in a violent way, it may be worth familiarising ourselves with what we are up against.”
“That sounds scary, maybe we should just let it go and allow things to continue as they are already happening,” added Parrot, his voice racked most notably racked with terrible trembles.
“No, we must act!” yelled Bear, growling and stomping his paw into the dirt.
Frog still quite candidly had his mind on the springy, albeit unamphibian beauty that he had predicted to become his object of affection. Was she really giving him the eye or was he just seeing things?
“The Question remains: how will we get the other animals on our side?” remarked Scorpion.
“We only have one option. We must present them with the evidence,” replied Turtle.
“Please, I believe that if we use the same techniques as the Finnish on the Russians, we could toss ‘Molotov Cocktails’ over the heads of our opponents to force them to comply with our wants,” Bear suggested.
Everybody sighed and Turtle cut him off:
“You will be kicked off this operation if you refuse to adhere to our unobtrusive approaches,” he announced, directing this comment in a streamlined fashion towards Bear.
“Maybe it would be better to employ some intellect to win them over?” inquired Scorpion.
“Yeah, lets hit em with the stats!” suggested Turtle.
It took much convincing and many feeble attempts to get everybody organized and ready to act.
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The sounds of heavy pounds of paws, hooves and the slippery slidings of scales fostered an air of unreality that crafted the hazy mirage of fantasy hovering over the animals as they tread towards their own end.
In what seemed not to be too many moments, they had made it.
From the outset of their arrival, Tribe could sense an idea budding in the collective intelligence of the group that had just made an appearance.
The non-Tribe crew had come at a perfect time. It was the hour of mid-day congregation for the others animals, around the period that humans would most probably call ‘lunch’. For those readers who are not residents of a zoo nor familiar with this human conception of ‘lunch’, this era comprises a pocket of patience during which animals consume the most part of their daily nutrition and discuss other social relevant happenings.
As the others marched, suspense built unceasingly onwards.
Once they had actually reached the other’s point of culmination, all resolve dissipated from the crowd and the animals were as silent as could be.
“Uh oh,” remarked Turtle.
It was true, they had caught themselves in a situation that was most unfriendly.
The Tribe is googling them with more scare and meanness than had ever before been bundled into any zoo-confined group.
There could be no knowing the true enemy if the battle had been lost before a unified army of animals had been brought together.
At the moment when all hope seemed bygone, Frog bubbled up an unexpected bit of talent to bring them all into a statement forging a pathway of communicative trust between the two parties:
‘Within the musty jungle,
live creatures never before seen,
kept keen and mean,
by endless feasts,
of wonderful cuisine.
Fluttering wings strike leaves,
a million droplets fall,
down,
down,
down,
past watchful glimmering globes,
to the kingdom of another.’
Following this outburst, silenced reigned in the tyranny of Apedom.
Tribe leader Monkey was the first from either side to react.
“Damn those are some sick bars, how can we get involved?” he asked.
“Wait, you have misunderstood us! The poem isn’t the point! We have another much more crucial and relevant proposition which we must tackle all together, Tribe members and others!” shouted Turtle.
At this, Monkey and his Tribe crew lost interest and were about to go back to their chummy gossiping.
“NO, LISTEN. PLEASE, THIS IS IMPORTANT,” emphasised Parrot.
Each and every set of eyes in the Tribe swivelled their attention towards the shyer of the battalion of losers.
“We need to ask the humans to help us care for our own mental well-being,” announced Turtle.
The Tribe gasped.
It took each witness a moment to recuperate, after which a very good question was asked:
“How will you do this?” worried Tiger, nervously licking his whiskers.
“We will get a two legged motile being to steal a smartphone. Am I correct in assuming that at least some of us know how to employ human language? I believe that we may collectively succeed in typing out our desired text,” explained Turtle.
“That’s a horrible idea, never gonna work,” complained Snake, “I worked with an Istanbul-based charmer once and tried to explain to him that we would be running a much more lucrative business if we were to transfer our start-up over by a few alleyways. He took no notice of me and only began banging his head on the wall complaining: ‘Aysel get a grip!’ To my unforeseeable fortune, he then discarded me into a trash. I was picked up by TARO and shipped here. So based on that experience, I believe it would be ill advised to endeavour to create an avenue of intelligent communication between us and the humans,” he continued.
“See, I told you, this is absolute bullshit. We should’ve just used the Molotov Cocktails on these dudes,” murmured Bear to Turtle.
“No, I have a better suggestion,” piped Lizard, “I was once owned by a hacker man who knew how to code. I like to believe that it was during this period also able to pick up some skills myself. If I were to be granted access to a computer, I could…”
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The event that ensued from this one-off, Frog-inspired discussion became known in the local Media as ‘ANIMALS CAN TALK!’.
The initial portion of the story has been told in the past-tense as it indeed did happen an unspecified amount of time ago, but the meeting of the animals and the people is actually now occurring in the realm of the present.
But before the now is brought to our attention, let us backtrack once last time to understand how the animals managed to find themselves in this position of possible bargaining.
The message crafted by the animals had actually not been as easy one to send at all, as it required the animals getting their paws on a some electronic gear to assist in the process.
During the first attempt to achieve such as device the recruited helpers had been the sparrows, who were in reality alien to the ‘Wild Animals Section’ but who were still in quite close acquaintance with the creatures who resided thus.
The first attempt had been centered around an iPhone 4g, swiped from the hands of a father of a family busy taking a photo of his happy children to send to his estranged wife back in Tasmania. The animals had all collectively pored over this screen-fixed batton but unfortunately success had been impended due to the letters on the device being too small and unrecognisable from the perspective of the Lizard, the head of the operation who really needed to get his vision checked.
The Iphone now stays at the bottom of the bottom of the watering hole, where Lizard and co. had tossed it in a furious bout following the realisation that it could not be adequately utilised to further their required needs.
Plan B had been a Silver Macbook Air.
This time it had been the stealth of the Sloth that had brought this device into the hands of the rest of the animals.
Or it had really not just been the doing of the Sloth, but he had been the one to view the device to be possessed by the burnt-out buisnessman who was sat at a picnic tables drinking a carton of apple and cranberry juice.
In (relatively) hurried movements, Sloth had sent down an Eucalyptus Message that had been carried via the crickets to ground-level. The news had then been transferred to the Ape who had passed down the message to Lizard and to the rest of the animals working on the operation.
It did not take long for the network of understanding to pass to the Zoo’s exterior, where the head of the Hamsters that had been in the newly appointed Marsupial Exhibit (which had been erected in the Zoo’s President’s bored, stingy and penniless situation) that was now located in the Children’s Yard that so happened to be in the vicinity of where the businessman was seated.
The hamsters had by extension sent the message to the stray cats who had built their nests in the unlikely crevices of the zoo.
A yellow stripy cat, the name of which we are not currently aware, had been the one to slip that Macbook from the desk while its owner had been busy visiting the toilet.
It was now that the dream conceived in the collective intelligence of the animals was becoming a reality.
But don’t get me wrong. Even from this stage forwards it had taken many, many communications to come to an agreement with the humans.
Finally, it was decided. There would be a conference on the 21st of April, held in that same zoo and hosted by the Alan Turing Institute.
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Today is the 21st of April, and we are now following the broadcast of the unfolding events. It is more intense than any sports event we have witnessed as it is hosted solely on the basis of a tug of war of wills.
The animals and the humans are separated solely by a chunky see-through plexiglass, the scratched surface of which each time are busy locking pupiled irises.
The debate is soon to begin.
Animals versus humans versus animals.
Cameras zoom in on the crucial representatives from both factions.
Turtle is wearing a super suit. Gazelle is sporting her long elegant evening attire.
The confusion in the eyes of the human onlookers is utterly inexplicable. It is most beautiful to observe how the morning light reflects off the brinks of their crinkled and bony noses.
The debate is soon to begin.
It is starting now.
“We have allowed the animals to begin the debate but putting forth the same issue which they have brought us together to discuss,” states the announcer.
Turtle rises from his rock. His neck looks like E.T.’s as he deligently cranes it up towards the netted covering of the microphone. His wrinkles condense into a warped apparition that momentarily disfigures and brings his down to the level of a lifeless lump.
“You humans, you must understand that we also suffer from the same kinds of inner dealings that we know ravage the likes of you. In would like to see some sort of organisation set up to help us deal with such situations,” explains Turtle.
The surprise of the diplomat representing the human kind on the other side of the plexiglass cannot even be hidden by the stiff darkness of his fancy suit.
“I have become to know this through our correspondences and would like to be better aware of the types of situation from which you suffering so we may better assist you in their reparation,” says the human.
Mr. Monkey removes the mic from Turtle and shuttles it over to the rest of the panel of animals who are ready to support the point.
“Ok well, for start, I have checked the Internet as of recent and have understood that I probably suffer from an illness known as ‘Bipolar Disorder’,” explains Scorpion, “I have sudden inexplicable spells of both good and bad that are independent of the support of others.”
The excitement lights like gunpowder through the animals who wish to voice this examples and personal anecdotes regarding this topic and the microphone remains all but forgotten. Mr. Monkey flails his arms towards the other animals to signal that they should wait, but he is of course disregarded.
“I believe that I may potentially be subject to have issues in regulating the amount of nutrition I consume,” exclaims Chinchilla.
“And I for one am aware of my aversion to social situations. As such, I am most probably one of the many who suffer from social anxiety,” admits Parrot.
Despite the lack of microphone, the voices of the animals ring loud and clear.
It takes the humans take a moment to discuss amongst themselves.
The same one with the stiff serious suit who spoke initially is the one to draw the verdict.
“Our sincerest apologies, we are slightly distraught: this is the first time we have understood you to have such cognitive capacity,” he says, voice marked with deep hints of regret, “The points you have made are fair however, and we promise to take the necessary steps towards erecting a system that will allow your minds the ease your souls deserve.”
The animals clap and cheer.
It was what they wanted all along.
“Yes, it shall be named the Organisation for the Mental Health of the Others,” exclaims the uniformed dude, failing to take a look back to gauge the reactions of his fellow committee members or of the human crowd.
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WAST WRTNG 