Count Victus Visits The Local Zoo
Some time in February of the year 1672, Roger Williams built a zoo. What most people don’t know about Roger Williams is that he was actually an agent for the underworld.
It began with some basic creatures: insects he collected, some cats he’d rounded up. Pigs, horses, and a zebra. After seeing the zoo’s popularity, he used his earnings to sail abroad and collect animals from other continents. Finally, when he was ready to leave this world, he left his zoo to his associates and that is the zoo we visited today: Roger William’s Park Zoo.
The name may be misleading to the history I’ve presented. Over its history, it’s evolved into a park-zoo. It holds both humans (who can leave freely) and animals. (who are trapped for eternity) Becoming a father has been a great excuse for me to leave my lodgings to visit such a place.
The zoo hours are 8AM-4PM. This is why I’ve taken my family today to zoo’s after-hours, from 7PM-3AM. It is common knowledge among Rhode Island’s finest citizens that, since Roger Williams was an agent for the underworld, his zoo has two forms: one, in the daytime, which is the normal zoo that overweight Americans attempt to walk the full length of so that they may see… giraffes and elephants. I’m not exaggerating, readers. These people waddle into the zoo so that they may not see mammoths, but elephants.
The other form of the zoo is when, at the stroke of 7PM, all creatures of the zoo shed their ephemeral forms consisting of skin, veins, and fur. The lights fizzle out and the sky - only from within the zoo - turns a hazy, dark red, which provides enough light to see the zoo’s current animalia. The middle of the zoo normally holds the restrooms and food provisioning stations. From this area now rises the throne of Roger Williams, his reanimated corpse cackling madly as he descends from the sky upon his thunder chariot.
I’m consistently impressed. I’ve seen this spectacle on five occasions and each time he seems as lively - perhaps, not the best word - as any other time he’s done it. He is joyed to be the lord of these beasts that, without him, would probably have been disenchanted in the bowels of the underworld. At best, used as table salt. He’s given these transmogrifying misfits a home. For a crowd of maybe 20, 30 each night? I’ve only been on a weekend, but I doubt there’s more on a weekday… I digress.
The moonbears in the normal zoo are not really from the moon. They are bears, which is admirable, but at night they turn so vicious! Elongated front teeth, and their fur retracts inwards and pulsates, as if a miniature black hole were sucking their organs inside their own rib cage.
Spiders grow thrice their size. Snakes get their appendages back. Bats are no longer blind, and are released from their cages. The mice they feed upon grow fatter, full of meat.
The giraffes don’t change. They’re hideous enough.
It was a great experience. Probably my favorite so far. The kids loved every soul-harrowing minute of it, of course. I bid farewell to Roger William and we casually left.
