When the animals...

Blurb - The animals at Midrow zoo are fed up with being mistreated and are now planning the greatest escape of all time. Predators and prey unite to overthrow handlers to escape to the wilderness, with an unexpected twist at the end.


This day started like any other, there was nothing special about it, nothing different. My stomach grumbled with hunger, the obvious result of not eating for days. Here, at Midrow, hunger pains are a normal occurrence. By the way, Midrow is where I live, housed with hundreds of other animals. Of course I have never really seen these other animals but I know that they’re there. I can smell them in the air and hear them in the breeze. I can tell that they feel as trapped as I do; just waiting for the day that they can run free.

Recently, there have been many rumours that something sinister is being planned by the handlers. The other Tigers in my enclosure tell me that the handlers have been having regular meetings, which seems suspicious. The birds in the zoo are escaping so they can communicate with other animals. All we have to do is wait...

As we waited, tension started to become apparent in the group. You see, Tigers aren’t used to working together, we’re very solitary creatures. Finally Makalu, one of the messenger birds, came. He brought news of something that they were calling ‘The great escape’. In his small, squeaky voice, Makalu told us what the birds had planned for us. I was surprised that all the other animals had agreed to the plan, we were last to find out because our enclosure is farthest from theirs. It was your basic distract, contain and flee routine explained Makalu. The birds would supply the distraction, we would team up with the other felines in the zoo to contain the handlers, and then we all just flee.

The plan seemed high risk, and I was worried about being caught. Makalu appeared to be trustworthy so I put my doubts aside. He said that the escape is taking place at feeding time, when all the handlers are in the enclosures. Makalu left in a flutter after realising that feeding time was in 5 minutes. We all got into our positions as our handler entered. He was skinny with dirty blonde hair and had a bucket of raw meat in his nervous grasp.




Suddenly, people started entering our area, locking us into cages. They wheeled us onto trucks. On the way, we passed Makalu and other animals, all being loaded onto similar vehicles. Their trucks door closed with a loud bang, followed by a blinding darkness.

The trucks engine spurred to life, and we slowly drove to our unknown destination. Long after we came to a stop, the door was opened to reveal the entrance to a new zoo. We were taken off the trucks and wheeled into brand new enclosures. No wonder the meetings the handlers were having seemed suspicious. They must have been planning our relocation to a better place.

We settled into our new enclosures very quickly, running around in our jungle and lazing by the billabong. Thank god, we didn’t escape, on that crazy day.