Mall

Took a lovely expedition to the Mall. We roamed around a bit gawping at the exhibits. It's a very interactive environment, and the animals rarely even notice visitors, but sometimes feel so close you could almost reach out and touch them. 

There were flocks of young flamingo-like creatures, all knobby knees and insane day-glo colors, skittering around and chattering, always in groups. The older versions, of course, become the neon-colored koi we saw everywhere, swimming lazily through the underbrush and the herds, many heavily marked, and most with metal of one sort or another protruding through lips, cheeks, and noses, doubtless remains of personal battles of some sort. All these were mixed with clusters of other exotica, a rare trio of cubs identifiable by a long-thought-extinct-since-the-50s flattened pompadour and flashing jeweled black tones, park clowns in their uniforms,  clouds of drab supporting players for contrast or to provide prey…fascinating.

Many were one-of-a-kind — I saw an older specimen who I at first took to be a species who wore their asses on the front. A perfectly normal upper half that could pass for any of a dozen of the other types, but the lower half looked like the result of the teleporter accident in the movie "Spaceballs." 

I finally realized, however, that in fact the creature had an ass on both front and back. I could not find a caretaker to explain, and we were getting hungry, so we just chalked it up to a mystery of nature and went to the food court.

It's a corporate scam, of course, but it's fun, easy to pretend you're eating out in the wild. It's the crossroads of the mall, and looks out over the floor below, like a gigantic glass-bottomed boat. We sipped our iced teas and noshed on a bit of nothing, while below us the roiling ecosystem, a carefully managed corporate wilderness, played out, highlighted by flitting, iridescent Pokemon players dodging randomly throughout.

It had been a good day, visiting this high-end zoo, and we figured it simply couldn't get any better. We were wrong. As we prepared to leave our table, the floor rumbled almost subliminally beneath our seats, mini-earthquakes setting Jurassic Park vibration rings rippling through our drinks. Suddenly, several herds, each consisting of three to five gigantic Nubian princesses, hove into view, waddling from the underbrush right next to us at random intervals, trumpeting and squealing far more than necessary to communicate or warn off predators. Perhaps it was to convince themselves they exist. They slowly wandered around and past us, stopping to eat whatever they had handy every three or four steps, then unhurriedly, even majestically, disappeared into the mist.

Time to go home.

In Our Next Episode: An unforseen breach in Mall confinement protocols results in a release of a large number of exhibits into the surrounding city.