Animals Galore

"Where do you study?"

"TAR College."

"Where's that?"

"Setapak."

"Where?"

"Er, near to the Malaysia National Zoo?"

I have to admit that this joke few teachers fed us with is a perfectly true situation. It is easiest for people to find us if we mention "Zoo Negara". The lecturers might say that we were behaving like wild animals, but coem to think of it - i've seen dozens of animals in school.

Just this morning, i looked up from my breakfast to a fearful shriek. Monster alert! Extra annoying! Might be carrying diseases! Trouble maker! I looked at her direction - she was dining with three male friends of hers, who seemed to be enjoying themselves.

What did they see? Snake? Iguana? Bat? Rat? Venomous spider?

I remember spotting two monkeys in one of the canteens. Actually, i have seen bunches of them, but this encounter is by far the most memorable one.

The monkeys, one mother and a child, were wrecking havoc as usual. They upturned the rubbish bin, dug out bottles, investigated them, and threw them aside before proceeding to the next piece of trash they could land their hands on.

Sounds like scavengers.

Then the child came to play with the properties of a female student, left unattended. It grabbed the bottle and started to open it, its long tail hanging annoyingly from its back.

Oh no! Somebody do something! But none did, so i went forwards and attempted to shoo it away. I quickly realised of the mistake i made.

Mama monkey rushed forwards, standing between her baby and me, baring her sharp fore teeth, seething like an angry cobra. This gave me quite a fright and i stepped backwards, alarmed. I had never seen a monkey behaving like this before this.

Thankfully, i accomplished my mission when the student returned and snatched up her stuff and the monkeys were distracted. I immediately understood why the monkey was attracted by the bottle.

It was the bottle for the tropical fruits flavoured yogurt. What with the colourful illustrations of pineapples, mangoes, lime, papayas, rambutans, and worst of all, bananas, which primeape wouldn't get tempted?

Pushing the monkeys aside, i've also seen canines here too. That's not really surprising, but what they did was rather disgusting. I actually saw a pair of them doing, er, you-know-what, in bright daylight before, attracting big crowds of audience.

Back to present day. I got distracted from my breakfast and tried to see what caused the girl to scream. She was sitting at the very edge of her bench, looking as though she might faint if whatever she was staring at moved an inch closer to her.

Then the attacker leapt onto the bench! To my utmost horror, it was...

Only a cat.

I don't understand why they were so frightened of cats. I mean, i have two younger sisters and they really love animals. We had fish, birds, tortoises, hamsters, squirrel, and cat as pets before.

Wait, a girl was walking towards the cat. Show us what you've got!

She snatched up her backpack, signalled the other girl "Let's go!" and disappeared for good.

My goodness!

I'm waiting to get a tiger at school. Wish me luck.