It’s complicated, but I found myself in need of steps to make my daily goal of 1000, so I decided to spend some time at the city zoo one day. They had many different animals, most of whom I presume wished on their lucky stars to be someplace else. There were some green alligators waiting for someone to fall or climb over the barriers, long necked geese honking away like an out of tune jazz band and passing a hat around for tips, a disinterested looking camel that was gazing in the direction of the Sahara desert, and some chimpanzees who looked cute but secretly wanted to rip your face off.
So I was walking by the lion’s cage and there was a grumpy, mean looking lion growling at a couple of people. He was pacing back and forth growling, growling, growling. At least he was awake. A lot of times animals at the zoo are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. I guess it would be a boring, boring, boring place to be. The people moved on and I looked over and casually said to the lion, “How come you’re always in a bad mood?” not expecting an answer of course. He looked around and surprised me by saying “I’m not really, but it’s what people expect. Nobody comes here to see a happy lion.”
I replied “True that”, awkwardly trying to sound hip. I asked him if he got tired of always acting mean and prowling around menacingly. He replied “It’s a living. I don't particularly like people much anyway.” Then he asked me what people taste like. “Chicken I suppose” he said, because of course everything tastes like chicken. "I was just curious in case something happens and I get free, I was wondering whether it would be worth chasing somebody down.” He then mentioned the first place he would go is the hot dog cart which was nearby. “Those things smell good and I gotta be stuck inside here all day sniffing those all day.
Thinking about his question, I would guess that people would taste bitter and sour because a lot of them are. Rarely could you find one that is sweet like a glazed donut. So I told him it wouldn’t be worth the effort to chase after anyone and instead advised him to head for the hot dog cart, and then get popcorn and some ice cream dots on the way out to complete the three course meal. He’d be in less trouble that way, because eating people is generally frowned upon. If that happened, he might be facing a firing squad, or the hangman’s noose. At that point, we’d pretty much exhausted the subject, so I moved on in my quest to find the elusive unicorn.