Extract

 

“Oh hello, hello all the way down there! My name’s Bubble. Who are you all? Do you like living here? It’s just so exciting isn’t? Don’t you just love sunny days like this and new friends? Oh, we will be friends wont we? I would just hate it if we weren’t. I’m Bubble, oh silly me, I’ve already said that haven’t I?! So what are your names?” she blurted out all in one great long breath.
You could not help but want to be her friend. She was so sweet and eager and I think it is safe to say that everyone at the zoo fell in love with her straight away. “My name is Mombassa and this is my wife Bella,” said the lion. “Oh course we would love to be friends with you.”

She then turned her big eyes to look at me. “And I am Blizzard,” I said. “It is a pleasure to meet you Bubble. How are you settling in? You seem to like it here already.”

“Oh yes I do, I’ve met so many people and I was really ready for a bit of a change so I feel very lucky to have been picked to come here.”

“Where were you before? Are you a zoo animal?” asked Bella.

“No, this is my first time in a zoo ever-I feel like I should have queued up with all the visitors to get my ticket really!” she said giggling. “I come from the circus down in Cape Town.”

“You mean you have travelled all the way up from Cape Town,” I asked stunned. “But that’s over a thousand miles away”.
“I know, it was a bit of a long journey I must say. We had to keep stopping and taking breaks-it took almost a week!”
Her jubilant entrance now seemed a little more understandable if she had been cooped up in a truck for a week.
“I suppose that explains the pink bow then?” asked Mombassa.
“Oh yes, I cant be parted from my bow. They did try and take it off before I got in the truck but I cried so much and ended up soaking them all, so they let me keep it.”
She turned her head around to take a look at her tail as she gave it a flick in the air and a smile broke out across her face.
“Aren’t you very upset about having to be in a cage all day when you were once part of a big circus where you must have had much more freedom?” asked Bella.
“Oh no not at all. I am going to be doing rides here so I will be out and about in the zoo most of the day everyday, which will be lovely. I love children don’t you? And they love going for elephant rides so I think it will be really fun.”
She then received a sharp tug on her rope from the workers at her feet and she was off.
“I’m sure I will see you again sometime soon” she called over her shoulder.
She was right as well. From that day on we saw a lot of Bubble as she took children past our cages ever day and always stopped to say hello. She was a breath of fresh air and we become very fond of her. The only down side to Bubble arriving is that the zoo workers were worried about children falling off her back into our enclosures and eating them, which is of course absurd. Little children are not very tasty and it would be very bad manners wouldn’t it? Anyway, nevertheless, they felt steps needed to be taken to ensure all the children’s safety and so they built wire roofs on our cages, so we felt even more closed in and imprisoned than before.
It was not just us that Bubble made an impression on. As I have said, everyone fell in.