Zoo Animals

I am reading articles about people who had to take big cuts in pay to get back into the job market. The result was selling off or losing their homes, their enlarged life styles, their cable-telephone packages and of course their pride in where they were.

I will often say this. I know what it's like.

But then any animal in the zoo who thinks everything is linear gets caught like this. My pay will go up. My title will go up. My seniority will go up. The zookeepers will feed me each day at 4 pm. I can roar now and then and rev up the visitors.

Out in the wild life just doesn't work that way.

You survive as long as you can, any way you can.

No 4 pm feeding.

You eat when you bring down an animal prey. Your jaws close around its throat and you asphyxiate the thing that soon will be dinner. And even then it may not happen. Other prey animals have a way of showing up (lions for instance)who will think nothing of chasing you off and enjoying the fruits of your labor. You can't take it personally. You off looking for the next victim.

As much as possible I have adjusted my thinking about life styles and careers. I have whittled it down to the basics. I hunt, I eat. Sometimes I am the leader of the pack and more often I hunt alone. It changes day to day, week to week. I never get that attached. Certainly not to other beast of prey. I work on my hunting skills. I will collaborate if it means a meal. I am willing to share. I am even willing to help another animal hunt and let them have the meal. Especially if I am already full.

But cars. Houses. Cable packages. I have them all at various levels. I don't need much.

My car is 10 years old. 105,000 miles on it. I would like a new car. I can afford a new car.

But (and this is important)I don't need a new car. Not right now.

Beasts of prey often go long times between meals. You have to get used to being hungry at times and also enjoying the times when you have made a "kill", can roll over in the high grass and feel the sun.

Zoo animals enjoy the sun too. But they also like that 4 pm daily feeding. So they will suffer a cage or a fence.

I have recently wandered in from the wild and am enjoying living in a habitat. I have a great deal of freedom so for now whocan complain? It won't be for long though. It suits me for now (barely) but eventually I will bolt and seek the plains again.