Cloud 9 - Cartoons and poetry

The website of writer and paperfolding designer David Mitchell

a different kind of zoo,

where the visitors sat in a cage with bars

and the animals stared at you.

The monkeys offered me peanuts,

the elephants gave me a bun,

the sealions threw me a bucket of fish

and clapped when I swallowed one.

‘You know,’ said a sad-eyed gibbon,

‘People are becoming quite rare.

They have to wear those peculiar clothes

as they haven’t got much hair.’

‘I wouldn’t have one for a pet,’

said a fussy-faced giraffe.

‘Imagine walking one on a lead!

It would make me look quite daft!’

‘Anyway they aren’t nocturnal,’

grumbled a long-eared bat.

‘They smell,’ said a mouse, ‘if you give them cheese

and they also get quite fat.’

‘I prefer them grilled,’ said a tiger,

giving a wicked grin.

‘Oh yuk!’ said a snake, ‘How can you bear

to touch their slimy skin?’

Well by the end of that particular day

I was glad to get to bed,

but I couldn’t sleep for thinking

of what the animals said.