The negro wrapped his arms about one of Fleetwing’s legs and in a second was lifted into the air and landed about 20 feet away, with an ugly wound in the side of his face. Then Keeper Ford approached the ostrich from the front, and got an uppercut on his diaphragm, cutting his chest and tearing his clothes. Finally the ostrich was roped and recrated.
“That ain’t no chicken,” said the negro as he watched these proceedings from a safe distance. “That there’s a two-laiged mule.”
2. Make a more entertaining “Zoo” story out of the facts in the following article:
The Chinese wildcat in the Central Park Zoo has received a new lease of life, according to the keepers there, and a graphophone may be used now to make life seem more worth while to[Pg 250] him. If this plan is adopted one of the machines will collect sounds in Mott Street that are expected to help to cure the cat’s recurrent fits of nostalgia, which is the dictionary name for homesickness.
There is a box nailed to the wall by the side of the quarters of the lady hippopotamus and her young son, and on a shelf of this lies all day long a slim and long-bodied little animal with green eyes and a sweeping tail. The yellow sign says that it is a “Felis Chinensis.” He may take exercise at night, but all day he is motionless, still, apparently melancholy, noticing nothing.
He is in surroundings that offer little congeniality. The lady hippo and her young son are out of his class. The capybara not only is from South America, but is like a rat magnified some two hundred times. The lions across the aisle are from climes unknown to the Chinese wildcat. Practically everything in the Central Park Zoo has long ago learned how to eat peanuts, and has thus become more or less Americanized. The Felis Chinensis will not have peanuts.
Last week a couple of Chinamen, rare visitors at the Zoo, strayed into the lion house, stopping before the home of the wildcat. The minute he heard their talk he jumped from his shelf and began purring and rubbing himself against the side of his box. He played ball with a chicken bone on the floor, and had a good time. The uplift he got from this rode him along joyously for two days afterward.
And there is a plan on foot, say the keepers, to collect Mott Street sounds in a graphophone for the Felis Chinensis, if more laundrymen don’t visit the Zoo. There is some apprehension, however, as to how the lions and the tiger will take the graphophone.
3. Use the facts in the following clipping as the basis for an amusing hunting story:
A rabbit that residents of Sayville, L. I., declare plays on the piano has taken possession of a big house near Oakland, owned by Alexander H. Hunter. Mr. Hunter and his family are in Europe, and until they return bunny will lord it over parlor and pantry.