Alfred Gnu's Gnu Zoo

Alfred Gnu's Gnu Zoo
by
Robin Hall


The BBC is known all over the world for its fair-minded, if somewhat dull, broadcasting of news, weather, some sports like soccer which they mistakenly called football and a few features about animals, especially dogs. The British are very fond of dogs.

Yesterday's featured story was about some improvements at the London zoo, one of the world's best known. What does this have to do with Alfred Gnu? Well, as you know, Alfred is still a pretty new gnu. Not as new as he was a few months ago when he was born or when he knew he knew but still, pretty new.

Alfred's goal was to learn all sorts of things by watching people and other animals because he couldn't go to gnu schools since there weren't any. There were radios though and many were tuned to the BBC since they had very powerful broadcasting towers all over, even in darkest Africa which wasn't really dark at all.

So Alfred would sneak up near tourist's or guide's tents and listen to the news. He had figured out several languages by now because of all the tourists. He knew Japanese, German, American English and 8 African languages. British English still gave him the occasional headache however but Alfred was very persistent and finally picked it right up along with South African and Australian English. Swahili was easier than English, even the American brand.

So yesterday's feature was on the fine zoo in London. Now this started Alfred thinking, which is a very good way to figure things out as he well knew. On the one hand, zoos seemed like animal jails. None of the animals were free to roam around, check out the tourists, eat new grass on the other side of streams or visit new places.

Alfred had seen people catch some of the animals for the zoos and haul them off. This didn't seem like fun to him either. People would usually shoot a funny gun at an animal and later it would just fall over. Then they would put the animal into a cage and away it went far from home, family and friends. This also seemed sad to Alfred.

On the other hand, Alfred knew, again from the BBC, that each year there were fewer and fewer animals and some kinds had completely disappeared from the face of the earth. This was also bad news for a thoughtful gnu and you too I bet.

Well, on the whole, Alfred thought zoos were probably not that bad an idea, at least till people stopped taking all the land away from animals who were there first. Zoos gave people a chance to see interesting animals from all over the world. They also gave the animals a chance to study up on humans though most of the animals in the zoos weren't the studying kind like Alfred Gnu.

All this thinking made Alfred hungry. After all he was still a pretty new gnu. Each day he grew and grew. Actually, Alfred was always hungry so he stopped by the local tourist picnic tables to see what they had left that day on their way to see the sleepy lions on duty over by the shade trees. Today's treats consisted of tuna fish which Alfred had the good taste to ignore, some bread which he liked a lot, part of a Baby Ruth candy bar which he also liked a lot, some milk, plus some grass to wash it all down with.

Then Alfred thought some more. "If zoos can protect animals, why can't I have a zoo? I could have a gnu zoo right here for all the baby gnus and show the bigger gnus how to stand watch too." Well, as I am sure you can imagine, this was harder than it seemed.

First, Alfred couldn't just talk to the gnus. Other than a few gnu words like: "Let's eat;" "There's some more grass over there;" and "Look out for the lions!" gnus couldn't get the hang of most communication like Alfred did, so he had to show the herd over and over again, which of course also made him very hungry.

When lions or hyenas were around, Alfred finally got the herd to circle up with the bigger gnus on the outside facing inward. Yes, inward. More than one gnu was taken before the herd got the hang of it and faced outward toward danger. The lions and hyenas didn't readily get the hang of it and many of them passed on the horns of this dilemma.

Alfred taught the herd, again with great difficulty, to travel by day and stand watch at night for all those other mean animals. Alfred's herd grew and grew and in its way was like a zoo protecting the herd. They were also pretty free to roam which was much better than a zoo too. But Alfred had taught them a very valuable lesson that many great leaders around the world have found out. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

Some day you too might get to go to Africa. If you see a big herd, look for Alfred. He's the one with the two spots on his side who looks extra smart just like YOU!