The City Zoo was a popular place for families enjoying a leisurely day. Animals from all over the world were kept there. Among them, there was: Lexy the Lion from Kenya; Jerry the Giraffe from Tanzania; Ruddy the Rhino from South Africa; Ellie the Elephant from Botswana; Gordo the Gorilla from the Congo; Monk the Monkey from Japan; Barry the Bear from Canada; Louie the Llama from Peru; Buster the Yak from Nepal; Carrie the Camel from Morocco; Terry the Tiger from India; and Patty the Parrot from the Amazon. These were joined by dozens and dozens of other animals that had been taken from the rainforests, deserts, mountains, grasslands, tundra, seas, and skies across the world.
It was summer. Each day the zoo was full of visitors, and as usual, all the animals were locked in their cages. The visitors passed by and many were nice to the animals, smiling and wondering at how amazing the animals were. A few even seemed saddened that these wonderful creatures were locked away in cages. But a few were nasty, sneering at them, making nasty remarks, and even throwing things at them. The zookeepers were mostly nice to them as well. But even they were sometimes mean. For the animals, the days they spent in their cages were long and boring with nothing to do but pace back and forth in their cages. They missed the wide-open grasslands, forests, swamps, and open skies where they lived freely before they were brought to the zoo and trapped in these cages. Overall, the animals were very unhappy. Although very different from each other, the animals were able to understand the roars, grunts, and other sounds that each made. They heard each other's cries of sadness.
At night, after all the visitors left and after the staff had finished feeding and settling the animals for the night, the animals would talk about the days when they would roam free in the wild. Lexy Lion and Terry Tiger were in cages very close to each other. Although in the wild these two ferocious cats would probably be enemies and fight each other, here in the zoo, they had become close friends. In the days when they were free, Lexy lived in the grasslands of East Africa and Terry lived in the forests of India. Two very different places, but they were able to share common experiences of being the animal Kings of their home territories.......
