This is all a stretch of the neck, the truth and the imagination!! They are here by virtue of the fact that I stumbled across it and because it might shame me into putting some work and imagination into getting it finished or fitted in.
Let us face it when have you heard of a giraffe eating mango leaves!! Well, it sounded good at the time. Oh and I was trying to think of names for a giraffe too with little success or sense and I don’t apologise for that – you have to start somewhere because even a giraffe needs a springboard..
Geronimo Graphneck stood looking at the people walking passed his pen and wondered why they did not stop and talk to him before passing along the walkway to see the newly arrived Sunstripe family and the Tapernose pair. They were the latest addition to the Zoo and just like he once was they all sat and basked in the glory of the attention they now had. What they did not realise was that once the novelty had worn off they would be in the same state he was in, that being part of the furniture and overlooked.
He thought back to his wondrous days on the Savannas of Africa and the day a kind lady came along and sweet talked him into taking a vacation with her to see the world. What he had not realised that his world was about to shrink and that he would not have the wider horizons of yore, which he wondered about and hankered for many a time. Every day it was the same old diet.
Geraldo G. Raph chewed on the very last leaf left on the tree by his pen and wondered why firstly he was standing in the middle of a crowded zoo and what the G stood for in his name. It was certainly not written on the wall or even on the entrance gate. He knew this because with his long neck Geraldo could get into all manner of nooks and crannies which was handy when he was foraging for flora but it was even more useful when he wanted to eavesdrop on his neighbours or generally nose around without even having to lift a leg. He was rather prone to obesity due to being able to attain so much without blinking an eye or shaking his tail and more to the point moving off the spot he settled in for the day.
The grumbling he had from his keeper each morning for being so fat and lazy had become just a part of another day and he had learned the art of switching off whilst looking attentive. For this he had to use his long and upward curling eyelashes. They could bat on command and when he felt like it they could become water dropped when he bawled. Not that he was prone to too much eye batting & bawling but it proved a point that lashes do have some purpose other than being dust and fly traps. Poor Geraldo found it very hard cleaning them and he wondered at the genetics of it all. After all, he had no hands like the primates who spent their days doing all manner of unmentionable things with theirs including rubbing their eyes. He was not so fortunate. He had heard mention of the tree of Life which did so many things even control the acid build-up on teeth. Unfortunately where he was there was no such tree of life because he enquired about it only to find that it was back onto the distant land which was once home for him. In fact, he would be lucky to even get a just plain alive and kicking tree because his was currently on its last pegs.
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Meanwhile, back on the Savannahs, Georgie Raffsquare had been eating so much sweet mango leaf, which was not part of his natural foraging diet, that his teeth ached even more than his neck today. This not only meant a trip to Edgar for his monthly neck stretch ’n’ roll but also a trip into father foreign territory to see if Sebastian Sunstripe could fit him in for munch ’n’ crunch repair
