ZOO

Comfydown Cottage

Address withheld

Carryduff

Belfast

 

 

25/2/05

Dear Belfast Zoo,

 

I was horrified to hear that Belfast City Council spends over one million pounds per year to keep your zoo operating.  I decided to visit the zoo myself to identify the main problems and have come up with a fourteen point plan to help save the zoo from closure.

 

  1. I was aggrieved to hear that the bears were ‘hibernating’.  Hibernating may well be a good excuse in the wild, where winter supplies of food decrease, but it cannot be used in captivity where the food doesn’t suddenly dry up.  They’re having a laugh at you.  I suggest you wake up these bears and put them back to work.

Alternatively – there are zoos all over the world.  When it’s winter in one continent it can be summer in another.  Can we not organise a seasonal exchange system with other zoos where we, in effect, ‘swap’ bears?  They could then be working all year round. 

  1. The Chimpanzees were sleeping when we got there.  They’re worse than the Spanish for takings naps. Get their lazy pink arses up and put them back to work.  They can sleep at night like everyone else.
  2. There are no polar bears on show as I’m told they can ‘go mad’ if cooped up. Come on Belfast zoo, you have just got to use your imagination!  Why not find a more accommodating bear and paint it white.  No one would notice the difference; this is Belfast after all- it’s not everyday you see a wild bear.

Alternatively - Hire a psychiatrist for the polar bear.  Ask him why he feels the need to roam over such large distances, when he has everything at the zoo that he needs.

  1. Your zoo is built on a very steep hill.  Why not get the elephants, camels, ostriches and zebras to pay their way, by carrying punters up the hill? One of your zebra’s behind was a little on the big side and I think it could do with some exercise (although my wife Gloria thought the horizontal stripes in this area didn’t help it).
  2. If the cheetah is the fastest land mammal on the planet, let it demonstrate its speed.  Why not dangle some of the less popular animals over its enclosure so we can see it move now and again.
  3. Fox hunting may have been banned but I’m sure a lot of people would pay good money to hunt down that Red Panda of yours that keeps escaping.
  4. Build a mini empire state building in the Gorillas enclosure and get people to fly model airplanes at them.
  5. People like to look at animals.  People like to watch football.  Am I the only one who has thought of marrying these two pastimes together? You could have Giraffes v Elephants for instance.
  6. The Floral Hall is just sitting there unused.  No one wants to dance there anymore but I’m damn sure they’d come and see ‘dancing bears’ (in case you are wondering -they can dance alright; I’ve seen it on the news).  You could dress the monkeys as waiters and have them roller-skating around the tables.
  7. Stick a horn on a white horse and call it a unicorn.  Remember-You can fool most of the Belfast public most of the time- just look at our politicians.
  8. The Loch Ness monster makes a fortune for Scotland and there has been films and documentaries made about ‘Big Foot’.  So fake a few photographs, invite the press up, tell them ‘our monster is a bit shy but he’s about here somewhere’ etc. Call it ‘The Beast of Bellevue’.  There doesn’t have to be one!
  9. Put a baby whale in with the penguins.  There’s plenty of room.  The penguins hardly use the water anyway.
  10. The Marmosets are cute but much too small and very hard to locate.  Could you not make their cages smaller and take out the shrubbery? Or make the glass enclosure from magnifying glass?
  11. TV reality programmes are very popular at the moment.  How about:
    1. How clean is your cage/enclosure? Kim and Aggie would soon sort those filthy animals out!
    2. Animal Swap. Who wouldn’t pay good money to see the lion swap with anything?
    3. I’m a celebrity zoo animal- get me out of here. Put 10 of your ‘C list’ animals together in a small enclosure and see how things progress over the weeks.  You’d have the punters queuing up. 

 

Well, I hope you can discuss this at your next meeting and take my ideas onboard.   I hope you don’t think I’m particularly picking on the bears but their laziness/uncooperativeness really winds me up.  Let me know what you think.

 

Yours Sincerely,

 

 

John J Marley

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