SO THERE WAS THIS CAMEL SMOKING A CIGARETTE...

Animals seem to amuse me, especially those that have human characteristics and physical movements. So, hoping to get some chuckles out of seeing a monkey act like George W. Bush, I took my nephew to the zoo over the weekend. It was a small local zoo, but big enough to see all the animals that you’d like to see in a typical visit. We spent some time with a couple of bears that seemed to be more interested in scaring the children by pacing back and forth in front of the viewing station and licking the saliva from their lips. Or maybe they had hunger pains and were just looking for a tasty suburbanite treat.

There were also some kangaroos that actually boxed each other, which entertained us all. We are sick. All of us. I stood there as two gladiators of the marsupial world battled it out for all of our pleasure. Yes, I believe they were doing it for the enjoyment of their captors, and not because some primal instinct told them to duke it out because one of their noses got too close to the other’s butt. They’ve been brainwashed, or roo-washed, whichever feels better on the tongue.

Kangaroos suffer from the same stresses and emotional shipwrecks that humans do. Kidnapped from the deepest and darkest interiors of Australia, they too know what it’s like to sit for months shackled in the hull of a boat while feasting on nothing but grool and eucalyptus leaves. Their plight is on par with the Amistad travesty, yet they never get to go back home because they are stuck in a cage and forced to fight on the grand zoo stage for the amusement of a few hundred knuckleheads a day. Get angry fellas. Fight fire with fire. Ride the lightning. Or something like that.

Ok, so maybe this is a little overdramatic, and maybe I was the one who wrote “animals seem to amuse me” (see the beginning of this post). But, we must stop the anthropomorphism of today's animal kingdom and take any actions necessary to make sure that we stay on top of the food chain. Humans can't allow llamas to spit in our faces while holding AK's and garnering arm patches. Whatever. Welcome to Thunderdome.