City Zoo (eBook)

an unfairy story

Jeff Pedigo (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
240 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-5937-6 (ISBN)

Allegorical fiction in the Orwellian tradition! Welcome to the extraordinary City Zoo, where the animals have driven the people out and created a veritable nation of animals-a republic, if they can keep it. Their great experiment has been a resounding success-but when Gus the gilded elephant challenges Balthazar the revered donkey for the high office of Animal Zookeeper, the monkeys in the media go ape. Now the fairy tale news threatens everything the Visionaries of the Animal Revolution have built. In CITY ZOO, Jeff Pedigo crafts a savage satire and cautionary fable about truth, fear, and power that might feel unsettlingly familiar to champions of Western civilization in the early 21st Century. If you loved George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, you will weep for the City Zoo. THRILL! To the first Animal Revolution in the world, and the rise and fall of the incredible independent City Zoo. WITNESS! The classic political showdown of donkey versus elephant, covered responsibly by an exceedingly honest monkey news media. READ! The savage, satirical, and tragic farce and fable-CITY ZOO an unfairy story by Jeff Pedigo-the Essential Animal Allegory For Our Time. MORE FUN THAN A BARREL FULL OF MEDIA PERSONALITIES! Jeff Pedigo's Orwellian CITY ZOO is a biting satire of American politics, the formerly mainstream news media, the culture war, ex-twitter and social media, pop psychology, ideologues, identity politics, useful idiots, immigration, the well-meaning residents of Martha's Vineyard, narrative-driven journalism, masks, pandemics, lockdowns & quarantines, attacks on religion, white privilege, the 2020 Presidential election, January 6th, systemic racism, the entertainment industry, American academia, ANTIFA, CHOP, the intelligence community, political animals, public education, the tortoise and the hare, media personalities, pets, sustainabilityness, climate alarmism, 'protests,' and much more...probably. Read CITY ZOO by Jeff Pedigo.

Mississippi author Jeff Pedigo wrote advertising for 30 years before writing this book.

Allegorical fiction in the Orwellian tradition!Welcome to the extraordinary City Zoo, where the animals have driven the people out and created a veritable nation of animals a republic, if they can keep it. Their great experiment has been a resounding success but when Gus the gilded elephant challenges Balthazar the revered donkey for the high office of Animal Zookeeper, the monkeys in the media go ape. Now the fairy tale news threatens everything the Visionaries of the Animal Revolution have built. In CITY ZOO, Jeff Pedigo crafts a savage satire and cautionary fable about truth, fear, and power that might feel unsettlingly familiar to champions of Western civilization in the early 21st Century. If you loved George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, you will weep for the City Zoo. THRILL! To the first Animal Revolution in the world, and the rise and fall of the incredible independent City Zoo. WITNESS! The classic political showdown of donkey versus elephant, covered responsibly by an exceedingly honest monkey news media. READ! The savage, satirical, and tragic farce and fable CITY ZOO an unfairy story by Jeff Pedigo the Essential Animal Allegory For Our Time. MORE FUN THAN A BARREL FULL OF MEDIA PERSONALITIES! Jeff Pedigo's Orwellian CITY ZOO is a biting satire of American politics, the formerly mainstream news media, the culture war, ex-twitter and social media, pop psychology, ideologues, identity politics, useful idiots, immigration, the well-meaning residents of Martha's Vineyard, narrative-driven journalism, masks, pandemics, lockdowns & quarantines, attacks on religion, white privilege, the 2020 Presidential election, January 6th, systemic racism, the entertainment industry, American academia, ANTIFA, CHOP, the intelligence community, political animals, public education, the tortoise and the hare, media personalities, pets, sustainabilityness, climate alarmism, "e;protests,"e; and much more...probably. All this, plus the true, long lost, and incredibly relevant moral of perhaps the most famous fable in Western literature, the timeless tale of the tortoise and the hare. Read CITY ZOO by Jeff Pedigo.

I | PROLOGUE

Gerald stepped out of the Paradise bar and walked toward 17th Street trying to make out the big iron gates of the City Zoo on the far side of the old freight yard, but they remained completely obscured by abandoned rail cars and overgrowth. Entering the abandoned psychology building on the corner, he made his way to the dim access tunnel in the basement. The long, damp corridor led him under the freight yard and the railroad tracks, under the barricaded access road and the zoo’s great stone wall, under Zoo HQ and Safari Station, and finally to the spiral staircase leading up to the Human Exhibit.

Gerald unlocked the door at the top of the steps and was pleased to find the room undisturbed. Bright orange curtains covered the far wall, floor to ceiling. A lime green sofa and loveseat occupied one side of the room with an orange and yellow kitchenette on the other. He set his briefcase on the orange card table. The air was stale but familiar: vinyl, standing water, animal dung. Everything was smaller than he remembered.

He heard a shuffling outside with some barnyard sounds. Emboldened by a shot of whiskey from the bar, he retrieved a piece of paper from his briefcase and powered up the public address system. Checking his watch, he took a deep breath…and flipped a switch.

With an electric hum, the orange curtains parted to reveal a wide wall made entirely of clear plexiglass. As the curtains shimmied to the corners, Gerald’s knees grew weak. Beyond the wall were gathered animals by the thousands, large and small (but mostly surprisingly large, Gerald thought). They covered every brick of Primate Plaza, all the way back to Rhino Valley and partway up Elephant Hill—and every single one of them was staring directly at Gerald.

A giant tortoise sat front and center, glaring at him. Atop the tortoise sat a bear cub wearing a pith helmet. Perhaps Gerald should have ordered another drink.

He tried to focus. In the middle of Primate Plaza stood a grand cascading fountain. The large reservoir doubled as a wading pool for young children while the low retaining wall served as bench seating for parents. Small animals now crouched upon it to glare at Gerald.

The pedestal in the center of the fountain featured a stone sculpture of three monkeys, larger than life, all sitting back to back (to back). Three large basins sat above the statuary, each half the size of the one beneath. One stone monkey held its hands flat above its eyes as if to look across at Zoo HQ, another monkey cupped its hands to its ears as if to listen carefully, and the third monkey cupped its hands to its mouth as if in mid-shout. Gerald remembered being frightened by these very monkeys when he was small. Then he recalled reading about the proverbial three wise monkeys in college, the ones who “see no evil, hear no evil, or speak no evil.” Those had something to do with propriety, Gerald remembered. He had no idea what these foolish ones were meant to mean.

“Artists,” he thought.

The Human Exhibit had been described as a joint scientific venture among the zoo, the city, and the college, although the exhibit had been shut down since the college moved to the county campus years ago. The flat-roofed, prefab box was billed as a modular “dwelling of the future,” and donated to the project by the manufacturer in return for a tax credit. The college required that every psychology major spend several lab hours “living” in the Human Exhibit, which the syllabus called an “Experimental Socio-psychologic Observational Exhibition.”

One of Gerald’s favorite jokes in college was that every psychology major was an exhibitionist.

Nobody liked Gerald. He had only majored in psychology to win over a girl. It did not work. The jokes did not help. He switched to a planning major instead, although nothing in his life had ever gone according to plan. Now an army of giants glared at him from just a few yards away. For the first time, he wondered exactly how thick that plexiglass was.

The zoo’s smallest creatures sat on the rail above the Human Exhibit’s educational placard. Gerald had no idea what kind of animals they were. Not squirrels. The text on the placard described the history, habits, and habitats of human beings, their callous disregard for nature, endless wars, litter, that kind of thing. “The Most Dangerous Animal In The World,” screamed the placard’s largest letters. Other small creatures sat along the bottom of the glass. Several bears and big cats lounged behind these (but still much too close, Gerald thought). The animals got progressively larger and taller the farther back they went. Together the beasts appeared as some writhing amphitheater rising up before Gerald. All the shapes and stripes and spots and colors and patterns and twisting horns and branching antlers made his head swim. He felt overwarm. Surely, he would die here. How had it come to this?

It turned out that Gerald was the only person in city government to have visited the City Zoo as a patron and also as a student inside the Human Exhibit. It was this critical mass of experience which made Gerald “qualified,” to deliver the Mayor’s “official” proclamation to the animals when the Mayor was “unexpectedly” called away and had to back out “at the last minute.”

Gerald was not a man of the outdoors nor a student of biology; he too had tried to back out of it. He reminded everyone that his college years were long ago and that he had not majored in psychology after all, and that he was only seven years old when his mother took him to the zoo that one time—and they had to leave early because Gerald was so easily frightened…but that plan did not work either.

The Mayor had kept the troubles at the zoo over the last several months a closely guarded secret, even from others in government, so it was hard to verify what was true and what was not. Official rumor had it that the animals had gone berserk one evening last year, killed or frightened off all of the zookeepers and security, and then locked both the main gates and the service entrance behind the old farmhouse. Finally, they sent word to the mayor’s office that they would handle things from now on, thanks.

The authorities attempted to take back the zoo many times but to no avail. Once after several months of failed incursions, they were able to push the animals back to Creature Cavern, but were ultimately overwhelmed. The Mayor lost many fine officers. But when he heard that several of the zoo’s most dangerous predators had been injured or killed as well, he sensed weakness. He told the SWAT unit that he was counting on them to bring the whole affair to an end. What he did not count on was monkeys with firearms. The primates had gathered them from the dead, and wielded them with surprising accuracy.

Gerald noticed the primates now gathered primarily in front of Monkey Island across the plaza. The island featured an impressive reproduction of a stately medieval castle, complete with towers and parapets and battlements. Around the castle were numerous small structures reminiscent of doghouses. Monkeys perched on these to glare at Gerald. The gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans had all come over from the Go Ape! exhibits next door, and now sat on some benches and along the edge of the Monkey Island moat. Numerous monkeys frolicked round the castle behind them like children on a playground. None of the primates seemed to be packing, but Gerald could not help but wonder if the plexiglass was bulletproof.

The Mayor had been forced to switch to diplomacy after being forced to switch from being a right-handed person to being a left-handed person; Gerald was not privy to the details. Still, it fell to him for some reason to deliver the city’s ultimate recognition of its ignominious defeat. In so many words.

A flock of geese overhead caught Gerald’s eye, and it occurred to him that he did not see a single bird in the plaza before him. No ostriches, no penguins, no peacocks or flamingos, no colorful parrots or toucans, not even pigeons.

Gerald remembered when he was seven years old how frightened he was of the zoo’s pigeons, how they desired his soft pretzel.

Clearing his throat, Gerald pressed the rectangle button on the PA system microphone and said…something that nobody could understand over the ringing feedback now spewing from the loudspeakers. The sound laid ears back across the plaza and set the animals wailing and stamping. Mercifully, the noise faded quickly. When the animals settled, Gerald said again into the microphone, less loudly: “Good afternoon. I shall now read an official proclamation from the Mayor.” He flinched when his “P” popped like a kettle drum over the loudspeakers. There was once again a slight ringing noise under his voice. Nevertheless, he cleared his throat once more, and with great care, read from the piece of paper that the assistant to the mayor’s assistant had given him: “‘Greetings and salutations, animal neighbors and creatures of the City Zoo. Please pardon my absence today as I was called away on pressing business. Nevertheless, I have enlisted one of my trusted aides to deliver to you this very important proclamation. Please do not kill him.’” Gerald hoped that this might be a joke. The animals did not seem to get it.

“‘Whereas, some months ago the animals of the City Zoo embarked on a path of self-actualization unprecedented in all...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	22.5.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Comic / Humor / Manga
ISBN-13	979-8-3509-5937-6 / 9798350959376

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