By PetarM - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Muja the Alligator
Everyone is
still talking about the night the Zoo was bombed for the first time.
There are
several versions of what happened afterwards.
People claim
they saw
animals flying.
There are
stories of
lions,
leopards, polar bears and wolves roaming the city,
underground
tunnels full of monkeys, blackbucks, buffalos and zebus,
pelicans and
parrots hiding in trees,
even a tiger
who married a girl
somewhere in
the mountains.
Those are
all just legends.
He is the only one who knows the real story.
He could
tell you this tale and many others.
He prefers
to keep quiet.
No one has
ever seen him move,
except the
guards.
They say he
is fast for his age.
They say he
can spring into action when you least expect it.
Do not throw
objects in his direction
or make silly
noises.
That will
not disturb his calm.
He has been
around for too long to fall for that
and he has
seen it all before.
They don't know exactly how old he is.
He is the
oldest of his kind in the world.
That much
they do know.
He was fully
grown when he arrived.
That was in 1936.
The Zoo was bombed five years later.
The Zoo was bombed five years later.
Then twice more, but people got tired of this story.
He had a
wife at first, though she didn’t live long.
He never had
any children.
Loneliness doesn’t
seem to bother him, or captivity.
He has never
been free.
I think he
is just waiting.
He has seen
the bars disappear three times.
It could
happen again
any minute.
GloPoWriMo Day 21 - a poem with wild, surreal images
Both Muja's story and the story of the night animals roamed the streets of Belgrade are true. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction. The bombing of the zoo has inspired many artists, including Emir Kusturica and Tea Obreht.
Oh my! :o Fascinating and sad. You've got such a great turn of the tongue.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I actually found a thing or two on Wikipedia about this guy. I remember visiting the Zoo as a child and he was always there, but I didn't find him interesting because he never moved. No one has ever seen him move.
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