It's an Expert's Life!: One Day at the Zoo... Picture of the Week, 14 June 2012

two lions are rather old...

Freddy Jones has been unemployed for several weeks when he is surprised to be offered a job at the zoo. He has to start at the bottom but he doesn’t mind, he quite likes animals. He had a hamster once. He puts on his rather impressive zoo-keepers cap and his new boss gives him a large wheelbarrow, a yellow plastic bucket, a rake, a strong broom and a shiny new spade. Freddy is told he has four jobs to do on his first day. He soon realises these are the jobs that none of the old hands want to do.

The first job is to clear the piranha fish tank of slimy weeds. As he begins to haul the weed out with his rake, a shoal of piranha swims up and try to bite him. To show them who’s boss, Freddy beats the water with the rake, killing several.

Realizing his new boss won't be best pleased, he uses the rake to pull the corpses out of the pool. He hides the dead piranha under some weed in the yellow bucket until he can dispose of them by pushing them through the feeding hatch into the lion enclosure, as the boss has told him lions will eat pretty much anything.

Moving on to the second job of cleaning out the ape house, Freddy is attacked by two chimps. As he tries to rake up the dirty straw the chimps pelt him with rotten fruit. Freddy grits his teeth and begins shovelling the muck into the wheelbarrow with his shiny new spade Then they start throwing turds at him, which is too much. He swings at them with the spade, which unfortunately is very sharp and decapitates one. The other begins to scream horribly and charges at Freddy. He hits it hard with the spade, killing it. Once he has calmed down, he is appalled, piranha are one thing, but he’s watched David Attenborough on telly, he knows that apes are different. Does it actually count as murder? What can he do?

He hides the bloody bodies in his wheelbarrow under the sacks of dirty straw. When he sees his chance, he shoves the corpses through the hatch into the lion enclosure, because lions will eat anything.

He moves on to his third job of the day, which is to sweep up litter which has blown down a very long path with a tall hedge alongside. Unknown to Freddy, there is a bees’ nest down at the far end of the hedge. Just as he finishes sweeping he accidentally hits the nest. The bees swarm out and attack him. He fends them off with his broom and smashes the bees nest to a sticky pulp. His wheelbarrow is already full of litter, but by now he knows what to do and shovels the whole mess into the lions’ cage.

Freddy’s final task for the day is to release a newly arrived lion called Simba into the lion enclosure. Simba is young and magnificent, the two other lions are rather old and a bit past it, or at least the lionesses think so. Freddy is terrified and shaking because lions will eat anything. He has his trusty tools at the ready, but he isn’t certain they will help much against an enclosure full of enormous lions and lionesses. What Freddy doesn't know is that well fed lions are notoriously lazy so all goes well. Simba is very amenable anyway, he’s only interested in the lionesses.

Freddy hangs up his zoo-keeper hat, goes home and vows never to go near a zoo ever again.

Meanwhile, down at the lion enclosure Simba is starting to feel hungry. He wanders up to an attractive lioness and asks,

“When’s feeding time, babe?”

“What a shame, you’re just too late,” she says. “You’ll have to wait until breakfast.”

"Bother, just my luck!” Simba says. “What's the food like here, anyway?"

The lioness says, "It's a shame you missed out today, it was absolutely brilliant! We had fish and chimps with mushy bees.”