As luck would have it, the subject that week was rhinos.
Pretty soon, there were rhinos all over the screen. Running rhinos, feeding rhinos, swimming rhinos, grunting rhinos. Mr Raja’s rhino sat up and grunted back at the television. The television rhinos responded by grunting back most provocatively – or so he thought.
Mr Raja’s rhino was normally well behaved and did not stand on dignity. But nor did he take kindly to being dissed by other rhinos to whom he had not even been introduced. He grunted and, I’m sorry to say, started pawing Mr Raja’s brand new carpet.
He was just about to write off the other rhinos as beneath contempt, and thus not worth bothering with, when a bunch of them started running straight towards him, heads
bowed, horns like lances. Mr Raja’s rhino could take it no more. He leapt up, pawed fearsomely at the carpet, snorted fearsomely through inflamed nostrils. And charged.
A rhino and a television set is not a fair fight. Consider the statistics.
Weight: Rhino – One and a half tonnes
TV – 25 kilograms
Length: Rhino – three metres five centimetres
TV – 56 centimetres
Charging Speed: Rhino – up to 35 mph
TV – stands still
Length of Horn: Rhino – 52 centimetres
TV – No horn (some have an indoor aerial in place of horn)
The television never stood a chance.
There was an almighty crash, a shower of sparks and glass and a plume of smoke. Mr Raja’s rhino ran straight through the television set into the wall, knocking out several bricks
before bouncing back and sitting, slightly bewildered, on the carpet. He sniffed the smoke, peered around him, and noted with some satisfaction that the other rhinos appeared to have scarpered. That would teach them, he thought.
Mr Raja heard the explosion and rushed in, looking shocked and astonished. ‘Oh no,’ he groaned. And then ‘RooooooOO!’ which was his way of telling the rhino he’d slipped up rather badly in the manners department. Mr Raja’s rhino took not a blind bit of notice.
The rhino sat on the sitting room carpet quietly beaming to himself – a beam that said: ‘You will have noticed that there is now not one other rhino in sight. I think they realized who was who around here.’
It may be best to pass over the subsequent incident involving a half-eaten Mars Bar, the gang of local lads rejoicing in the name of the Melton Magpies and a two-mile chase up and down the length of Buttermead Avenue.
All in all, the weekend was not a success.
Chapter Six
Mr Leaf, the lion keeper, took his lion home to his little terraced house in Litigate Lane. This was, you may imagine, not as easy as it sounded. It is not every day that a lion goes for a stroll down the pleasant byways of Melton Meadow. And though Mr Leaf was well known as a very capable lion keeper, and though he kept the lion on a good strong lead, and though the lion appeared to be exceptionally well behaved… still, many people crossed the street and hid behind pillar boxes and pretended to be gateposts until Mr Leaf and his lion had passed by.
Eventually, the pair reached home and Mr Leaf decided that he would be best off in the hall, where he could prowl up and down just like he did in the zoo.
This was Mr Leaf’s first big mistake.
All went well until Saturday morning. The lion had spent a comfortable night on the hall rug, dozing away like an overgrown guard dog. He was rudely woken by a knock at the door. Mr Leaf answered it, and found Jill the postwoman holding a brown paper parcel. She balanced it under one arm as she got out a piece of paper for Mr Leaf to sign.
Now, as misfortune would have it, it just so happened that the lion’s supply of meat arrived at the zoo each day neatly wrapped up by the butcher in a brown paper parcel. The children who came to the zoo loved watching the lion’s feeding time: one of the lion’s best tricks was to grab the parcel from his keeper and shake off the wrapping before eating the meat. It always brought a round of applause.
Well, the lion saw the postwoman’s parcel and put two and two together. That was just like Mr Leaf, he thought. Considerate as ever. He might have brought him to this strange place for the weekend, but he’d been thoughtful enough to make sure his customary supply of meat was personally delivered to the door. First thing too.
He pushed past his keeper, leaped in the air, grabbed the parcel from the postwoman’s hand and proceeded to shake it around in his mouth. When he was at the zoo he found he got the best round of applause if he accompanied this trick by letting out a mighty roar. Rrrrrrrrrraa-aaaaaaaaurgh! Like so. So now he duly let out one of his most growl-some growls.
During the twenty years Jill the postwoman had done the job she’d been bitten by dogs as small as gymshoes and as big as a chest of drawers. Dogs no longer held any fear for Jill. She’d even had to cope with the odd goose hissing at her and – on one unforgettable occasion – a llama which had nibbled her left ear.
But being attacked… in broad daylight… by what appeared to be a man-eating lion… on a Saturday morning… in the middle of Litígate Lane! All this was quite another cup of tea.
She dropped her bag, scattering letters and packages all over the street, and ran for her life. She did not stop running until she made it home on the other side of Melton Meadows. And even then she didn’t stop running until she had panted upstairs and locked herself in the lavatory.
It was two days before anyone could persuade her it was safe to leave the lavatory and three weeks before she could be persuaded to go out on her rounds again. And a full three months before she would deliver mail to Mr Leaf.
‘Oh no!’ groaned Mr Leaf when he saw Jill the postwoman disappearing up the road. And then: ‘Wrroooomp!’, which was his way of telling the lion he was a chump and he should know better by now.
For his part, the lion felt more than a little foolish since the parcel, once he’d unwrapped it, contained nothing more edible than a set of thermal underwear Mr Leaf had sent off for in order to keep out the cold.
That evening Mr Leaf’s mother-in-law was coming to supper. Before the meal Mr Leaf took the lion aside and said, ‘Now, I don’t want you frightening anyone else this weekend, all right? Least of all my mother-in-law. Is that understood?’ and he made a little den for the lion behind the sitting-room sofa and gave him a bowl of Horlicks, hoping that he might doze off.
Putting the lion behind the sofa was Mr Leaf’s second big mistake.
The Horlicks did the trick and the lion duly nodded off, sleeping right through his own tea-time. He started dreaming about food. He started dreaming he could smell roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
And then, I am afraid to say, he woke up and realized that he COULD smell roast beef andYorkshire pudding.
Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding: boy oh boy! An older, wiser lion might at this moment have paused to think. He might have remembered the unfortunate episode with the postwoman and the thermal underwear. He might have stopped and wondered whether all was quite as it seemed on this strange, shivery cold day.
But Mr Leaf’s lion was not yet an old and wise lion. Without pause for any such thoughts, he leaped out from behind the sofa, tore across the sitting room, and in one bound was on top of the dining-room table, sparing no thought at all for the Leafs (plus
mother-in-law), who were just about to say grace.
In no time at all they were flat on their faces while the lion was laying into the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, not to mention the odd roast potato and parsnip as well.
Mrs Leaf – who was a shy woman at the best of times – was so terrified that she ran out of the house and booked into a hotel for the night. And it was not three days, three weeks or even three months, but three whole years before Mr Leaf’s mother-in-law could be persuaded to take dinner in Litigate Lane again. And a good ten years before she could even look at a sirloin steak.
You might be thinking that the weekend was, all in all, not a great success. But it is onl
y fair to record that Mr Leaf took some satisfaction from the following years when his difficult mother-in-law refused to visit. And that, when she eventually did resume her regular trips to Litígate Lane, Mr Leaf occasionally nursed dark thoughts about inviting the lion round too.
Chapter Seven
Never was a Monday morning more warmly welcomed than in the keepers’ homes all over Melton Meadow. They were up early and waiting with their animals at the zoo gates when Mr Pickles, the head keeper, arrived with the key at nine o’clock.
Never was anyone more relieved than the keepers were when, shortly afterwards, the central heating man arrived with his flange and mended the central heating. Melton Meadow Zoo returned to its cosy self and Mr Pickles said all the keepers could have an extra day off at Christmas as a reward for their weekend’s work.
The animals settled back into their normal routines, but life could never be quite the same again.
The penguin had glimpsed the high life. He went to bed dreaming of fish pies and goose eiderdowns.
The elephant – who was a bit of a rebel at heart – had briefly tasted the giddy delights of trashing cars and spraying water at annoying people. Entertaining children would never be quite as much fun again.
The crocodile could not really complain about the food he got at Melton Meadow Zoo. But sometimes, as he fell asleep, he dreamed wistfully of the succulent taste of fresh silver carp and other such delicacies.
And the lion – who eventually grew older and wiser, as we all do – nevertheless enjoyed the odd chuckle as he remembered the astonished expression on the face of Mr Leaf’s mother-in-law.
As for the keepers, the first thing they did was to have a collection. With the money they bought two dozen blankets and sixty hot water bottles to keep the animals warm should the heating ever break down again. And, just to be on the safe side, they laid in a plentiful supply of flanges.
They all loved their animals, but one thing they all agreed was that never, ever, EVER again did they want to take them home for the weekend.
The Coldest Day in the Zoo Page 2