A Striped Adventure

I growled, and then roared at the people in front of the glass that kept me locked away. I hated the people that visited the Zoo, especially the children. They laugh at anything and everything I do. I hate when they tap on the glass, and I hate when the adults try to keep their kids safe like I’ll attack. Like I could even attack. I hated being stuck, and I envied the other cuter animals. Like the penguins who also had plenty of water to swim in. I would like to swim, but do the stupid humans think of that, no. If I were free of this wretched place there is so much I could do. I could hunt my own prey like is shown on the black boxes with moving images. I’ve watched them so many times, there isn’t much to do when stuck in the same place for years. I have witnessed others of my kind, orange with stripes, bigger than the kings of the jungle. Able to camouflage with the surrounding terrain. Plenty of food whenever they want. All they have to do is hide, pounce, and eat. I could mate and have my a litter of cubs. I could feel freedom for once. No more waiting for drinking water and food, or laying in the same containment with my waste. I could run and swim and do as I please. No more kids, scared parents, or terrible zookeepers that think they know what I want. I could roar to my heart's content. Now I had a goal and knew what I would do if I achieved it, all I had to do was escape. That's the hard part of my plan. I have glass on one side of me and the other four sides are walls with some vegetation and rocks keeping me company. I could wait until it was feeding time, but that would be too extra. As I was planning, I saw strange men with uniforms on, they were similar to the ones that the zookeepers wore. So many questions came to me. Who were these people? What were they doing here? But most importantly, were they my ticket out of this dump? Indeed they were, when they were leaving it was already beginning to get dark. They left in a big truck with cages and enough room for a tiger. I also saw equipment for bad zoo animals and a misfit monkey. I would need there to be enough complaints about me so they could take me away. I still had one worry however, would I be able to escape the truck? However, my worry subsided a little when the monkey picked the lock and ran back to the zoo. Why would they want to come back? I got the attention of the lemur and they came over asking what I wanted. So I asked if they could help me escape the truck, and that I was planning to get myself into trouble to leave the zoo. I knew from the information that the lemur provided me with that they would take you back to your original habitat. Before they drop you off in your new home though, they teach you how to survive in the wild. The monkey explained to me that the reason they came back was to see if any others wanted to leave. Turns out there are plenty of animals that want to leave. I then came up with a brilliant idea, what if the zoo animals were so bad that the zoo had to shut down? Then they'd have to free us right? Henceforth, for one whole month, none of the animals in that zoo behaved themselves. We were escaping, every last one of us. Or so we thought when the time came some were taken to be trained to survive. The rest, (like me) were taken to somewhere else to train to be circus animals. Again I was trapped, my plan had failed me due to a lack of information and the zoo shutting down all together. After all, it was deemed unsafe for visitors and workers, and don’t forget how unsanitary the dump was. Now I was back to square one, but this time it was somehow worse. They underfed us and whipped us if we didn’t do it perfectly, so you could imagine we would have a few scars. And the ring mistress was the worst and most cruel of all. We didn’t have space to stretch, we constantly worked, and we became sick with all the things she intentionally made us catch. She said that if we get sick with these things then it will strengthen our immune systems. Except that she would force us to harbor multiple illnesses, viruses, and diseases all at the same time, or one after another. Then she complained when we weren’t performing well, so she whipped us some more to shape us up. She threatened to have us put down if we disobeyed her and gave her a bad show. In order to survive we had to come up with another way to escape, somehow. Then one cold, restless night as I lay outside in the pouring rain, I devised a new plan. I had come to realize that the place in which we performed was only a big cloth. At the end of performances sometimes the kids and adults were able to see us up close. That I decided would be the perfect chance to escape since she had her incompetent “goons” if you will look after us after shows. If we were to just escape their grasp then we could make a run for it. And that was just what we did. It was a special night, one of great performance and stunts. We all did our best for our final show ever, and at the end, everyone clapped as usual. Once the time was right, I gave the signal, (a roar) and we ran and ran. None of us dared to look back as we heard the angry sounds of the ring mistress and the others chasing after us.

After we were sure that no one was after us anymore we stopped to take a break. We quickly came to the obvious conclusion that we were lost, we had no clue where we were. We hadn’t prepared for how we were to get to the habitats that we had never seen. We rested for the night, and when we awoke we were in the care of some lady. She had brought us into her huge mansion and had gotten all of the paperwork and met all of the requirements to own all of us overnight. She was the kindest lady that any of us had ever met. She fed us right, gave us plenty of space, she had a huge yard with everything we needed. We were finally somewhere we could call home, and it was about time. And as for the scars, they remind me of how I was able to overcome and survive.