So that crowd of kids got in, at last! Now zoo animals can think, just
as humans can; and it was amusing to watch a pair of boys staring at a
pair of orang-outangs; and a pair of orang-outangs staring back at a
pair of boys; both thinking, no doubt, what funny things it saw! And,
occasionally, both animal and boy won a point! Now if you think that
only young folks find any fun in going to a zoo, you probably don't
go to zoos much; for many a big, rotund capitalist had to laugh at
simian antics, though, probably figuring up just how much satisfaction
his cash contribution brought him. Many a family woman forgot such
things as a finicky child or burning biscuits. All was happy-go-lucky
joy; and, at two o'clock, as Branton Hills' Municipal Band, (a part of
Gadsby's Organization of Youth's work, you know) struck up a bright
march, not a glum physiognomy was found in all that big park.
Gadsby and Lucy had much curiosity in watching what such crashing
music would do to various animals. At first a spirit akin to worry
had baboons, gorillas, and such, staring about, as still as so many
posts; until, finding that no harm was coming from such sounds, soon
took to climbing and swinging again. Stags, yaks and llamas did a bit
of high-kicking at first; Gadsby figuring that drums, and not actual
music, did it. But a lilting waltzing aria did not worry any part of
this big zoo family; in fact, a fox, wolf and jackal, in a quandary at
first actually lay down, as though music truly "hath charms to calm a
wild bosom."
At Gadsby's big aquarium visitors found not only fun, but opportunity
for studying many a kind of fish not ordinarily found in frying pans;
and, though in many lands, snails form a popular food, Lucy, Sarah and
Virginia put on furious scowls at a group of boys who thought "Snails
might go good, with a nut-pick handy." (But boys always _will_ say
things to horrify girls, you know.) And upon coming to that big glass
building, with its boa constrictors, alligators, lizards and so on,
a boy grinningly "got a girl's goat" by wanting to kiss a fifty-foot
anaconda; causing Lucy to say, haughtily, that "No boy, wanting to kiss
such horrid, wriggly things can kiss us Branton Hills girls." (Good for
you, Lucy! I'd pass up a _sixty_-foot anaconda, any day, for _you_.)
In following months many a school class was shown through our zoo's
fascinating paths, as instructors told of this or that animal's habits
and natural haunts; and showing that it was as worthy of sympathy,
if ill, as any human. And not only did such pupils obtain kindly
thoughts for zoo animals, but cats, dogs and all kinds of farm stock
soon found that things had an uncommon look, through a dropping off in
scoldings and whippings, and rapidly improving living conditions. But
most important of all was word from an ugly, hard-looking woman, who,
watching, with an apologizing sniff, a flock of happy birds, said:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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