Saturday, August 19, 2006

Knee Deep in Gossip and Fleece
I've recently relocated to another part of the zoo and I now share a cage with the acclaimed Basilgrey. I settled on a particularly sunny area so I can work on my ashy complexion. That, and Basil needs his reading light. The cage is pretty comfortable. It smells okay for now, and the area is quieter than the ape house I lived in previously, but there is one concern.

Basil is a goat and a damn sharp one at that. He 's been at the zoo for a long time and has seen just about everything within it's walls. He previously lived in the area with the other caribou and sheep and gazelles and such, before they moved him in with me. The sheep love him and constantly follow him around. When he made the move to the new cage, many of the sheep trailed closely behind.

Now it should be known that I have no problems with sheep. Through Basil, I've even made friends with a few. He is a sort of unofficial leader to them, and often enjoys his role. They hang out by the cage all the time, even when Basil is away, and I admit that it's better than sitting by myself most times. It's apparently unusual for sheep to socialize at all with bipedal species or anything outside of the ovis genus in general, but they've really taken to me and I've been told I should be grateful. The problem is they wont go away.
They baagh their woolly heads off about who's mating who, about who's fleece is the best, and about how certain sheep don't deserve to be anywhere near the front of the flock. It's ridiculous. They might as well be chickens.

I, like Basil, am the only one of my kind here at the zoo. He's somewhat anatomically similar to the sheep which allows him to rub hooves with them fairly easily. I on the other hand am more of a novelty to them and slip into the token ape role. That's not so bad, but an orangutan has dreams too, and this ape gets a little tired of counting sheep every night before I get there.

I miss my primates, especially ol' Ming Krosky. He would tell me that I'm wasting my time around sheep. He's never been a sheep fan. He would smack me for even complaining about such a thing. "You're a big fucking ape," he'd say. "If somethings bothering you, fix it. Who's gonna stop you? A bunch of worthless bah bah's?" He's a cantankerous old cuss, but he's right. If Goat (the little dog I used to hang out with, not Basil the actual goat) were here, he'd ramble on about how sheep are nothing compared to the evils of the hood rat bitches he loses his mind over. He's always one to top a complaint with some gut wrenching tale of his own. I haven't heard from Goat since he was taken to the pound on a drunken driving charge. He smashed his van around a telephone pole on a bender one evening after chasing a young chicken head around the back streets of Price Hill. He claims she was cheating on him when they really didn't have any established relationship to begin with. It's too bad to. I could really use a good night out on the town. Away from all these damn sheep