The zookeeper often compared management of the zoo to marriage with his wife, Matilda. She was a large, angry woman he’d met while traveling through Romania. He was often afraid of her. But he was also fascinated by her brooding and the thickness of where her legs met the beginnings of her behind. Early in their marriage, he discovered that the tone of authority was calming for Matilda. After barking a sharp retort, he could see her shoulders loosen and give way. He would follow this with kindness (sweet things he would like to smother her in), and he found it was only in these moments that she would accept his love. He tried to imagine what he would do if Matilda gave him a list of demands. He would tear it up in her face. He would try to convince her that he was angry. He would scream obscenities, shake his fist, then secretly make sure everything she desired came true.

The zookeeper decided the best action would be to publicly refuse the giraffes’ demands. Perhaps even to make an initial show of punishment so the other animals would realize what defiance would cost them. He couldn’t have every species writing lists and such. What, for example, would the hippos demand? Or the wombats? After the situation blew over, in a few months, perhaps a year, he could then begin to implement some of the less costly modifications, make the animals believe the gesture came from his own good nature, and make the benefactors believe he was an impetus of change. The zookeeper smiled to himself and opened the drawer of his file cabinet to the appropriate letter. As he fingered the G, his secretary buzzed through the intercom. She told him that a hysterical groundsman was on the line and that all of the giraffes were dead.

The giraffes had concluded that the surest way to get a response to their demands was to sabotage the zoo’s usage of them. A mock group suicide, they decided, would bring the greatest attention to their cause. Francesco, Lulu, and Doë stretched themselves on the ground, stuck their legs in the air, stared blankly, twisted their necks at severe angles, and hung their long black tongues out of the sides of their mouths.

It was not long before the children began to cry. Horrified parents, teachers, and babysitters ran for the exits, afraid of scarring their innocent charges with further sightings of animal corpses, and muttered, This never would have happened at Disney.

The zookeeper was rushed to the scene by golf cart.

“What’s all this?” he said. “What’s going on here?” A crowd of zoologists, groundsmen, and adults who were visiting the zoo without children that day were pressed against the safety railing that surrounded the fence, which surrounded the pen, which surrounded the bodies of the giraffes.

“They’re alive,” said one of the zoologists. “I can see them breathing.”