Zoological Conspiracy

``Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears!''

``Shut up you!'' Zebra brayed at Monkey who had decided to invoke a classic speech while standing atop the stone within his enclosure. ``It's not like you're the leader of us. You know full well it is Lion who leads us.''

``No! That's not true!'' Monkey shouted in reply. ``Lion has never been our leader. He's always sleeping, and seems to be sated by the things that the keepers have been giving him. It's clear he doesn't lead us, no way!''

``But who do you think you are, Monkey?'' Zebra countered, striped with perplexity. ``You're not as majestic as Lion, and you're not even as strong as Gorilla. Why would you think that you're an able leader than either of them?''

``Because I'm smarter!'' Monkey shouted.

``Caw caw caw!'' Crow crowed in laughter. ``You? Smarter? That's so not true! I can name at least three others who are smarter than you!''

``Shut up Crow!'' Monkey shouted as he picked up a pebble that was sitting next to him and lobbed it at Crow, who was perched on the branch of a tree growing outside of the enclosures.

``You need to aim better, Monkey,'' Crow taunted.

The zookeepers stepped out of their offices and started to go on their rounds. Hearing the loud yells of the monkey, the braying and neighing of the zebra and crow cawing startled the zookeepers, who spread out to find out just what was going on. It was the third time this week that such a cacophony had occurred, and the head zookeepr, who had been on the job for the past three decades, knew that the animals as a collective whole in the zoo were up to no good.

The last time it happened, it led to a major escape attempt by the elephants, several of the big cats, and half of the herd of grazers. It took the entire zoo three days to hunt down and bring back the animals, and even then, some had managed to elude their search efforts. Those that did were unlucky, as armed police were given the right to fire at these animals and take them down. Quite a few had died that day, including Monkey's grandfather, who incidentally was the one that led the escape.

Monkey glimpsed the movement of the keepers, and quietly ducked down from his rock. Crow kept standing on his branch, but kept himself quiet to not draw attention to himself. He wasn't going to sacrifice his vantage point through silly actions like drawing unnecessary attention to himself.

Zebra couldn't hear anything from Monkey, and assumed rightly that the zookeepers were out doing their patrol and wisely kept quiet.

Over in the corner came the satisfied roar of Lion.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 2014-03-13 20:49:38)