THE ZOO STORY

It was a fine howdy-do throughout the zoo. No doubt it was true. From cage to cage it was the rage. The lions in their pit were part of it. Every rhino and hippo too were in at the start of it.

The turtles in their shells, the baboons and the men who sold balloons could tell all was not well. It had cast its spell on the sick and well in the menagerie. It wasn't imaginary. Something was askew throughout the zoo.

It started with monkey monkeyshines and spread to the gnus and kangaroos, the pythons and the bisons, the anteaters and the skeeters and cats and rats who got in free without paying an admission fee.

The monkeys were the first junkies to crash. Where they got the cash to buy their stash of crack and hash nobody knew. But every day as the zoo would close the jungle came alive with all the jazz and all the jive and the beat of stamping feet and the smoke of poke,

A cough and coke would soak the veins and befuddle the brains and fur would fly as birds got high not in the sky but in their nests and sometimes guests would join the quest for a shot of pot. And the pelican went pschycodelican again.

The laughing hyena would giggle a lot and the coyote hooked on peyote would howl and the owl would who-who hoot and shoot and the faun would get it on from dusk till dawn and this would go on until all the drugs were gone and they'd have to wait for the next supply to get high again.