A Snowflake in the sun

written for composition... hope you like it...

Looking out of the bars of my cage, I ready myself for the day’s onslaught of onlookers. For some reason the visitors at The Biosphere Zoological Park like to make fun of me. They make faces, throw things, and even yell at me. Of course, I cannot understand their strange language, but I can tell that they do not like the way that I look and intend on making me regret so myself. But I will never regret who I am or what I am. Anyway, living in a cage for ten years makes one grow accustomed to doing the same thing day after day. But being accustomed to it does not mean that I like it. The name I was given is Snowflake, and this is my story.

My life at this place started ten years ago, when I was an adolescent. The day was warm, so my mother, my sisters, and I were outside playing. Suddenly, a pair of hands appeared out of nowhere. They bound me with a thick brown rope, and then tranquilized me. I awoke in a small dark cell, which had a small sign outside of it. Though I could not read the sign, for it was written in a strange language, I was positive that it said something to the extent of, “Please Do Not Feed the Animals”. An even smaller sign next to that proclaimed the name that they had chosen for me: Snowflake. What an un-feminine name! I would have preferred Lyra or Aurelia, but they figured that my fur was light enough to be the color of snow, so I got stuck with it. The cell that I had to live in was even worse than my name. It had a cold stone floor covered with hay, and thick iron bars surrounded it. There was no room for me to run around in, so I sat and slept all day long. My captors had been kind enough to create a separate sleeping area that was opened by a sliding door. I could go in there to sleep at night, but during the days I had to be out in the main part of the cage, where visitors could see me.

For the most part, I lived a lonely, solitary life. I once had a cellmate, Fireball, who was named after his bright red fur. We were very good friends, but one day our captors moved him into another cage. I did not eat for many days after this, and the captors ended up having to force-feed me. I ate enthusiastically after that. Not that the food was good or anything, I just did not want to be force-fed again. My meals always consisted of rotten meat and fruit, and the stench of the two combined was over-powering. During every meal, I would wish for a piece of fresh-tasting food. Let us just say that I never got my wish. So I sat half-starved and malnourished for many years until the day I had dreamed of arrived: the zoo got a new staff.

The new staff remodeled the whole zoo, so I got a new place to live in. It was quite a bit larger, plus it had an outside area where I could run and climb trees. I would run around for hours, glad to be free from my tiny little cage. Then I would climb this short yet strong tree, and sit in it until it was time to eat. So at mealtime, I would leap from the tree and eat my much-improved meals in my indoor area. The food they gave me was so much fresher than my old food had been. The meat was newly killed and cut, and the fruits tasted as though they had just ripened that day. Under the new staff, my life was good. I grew bigger and stronger as each day went by. The visitors now marveled at my antics instead of laughing at them. One day, a staff member named Velma came in to visit me. None of my other captors had ever bothered to sit by me and stroke my light-colored fur as she did. We became good friends, and I could tell that she felt sympathy for me. She felt sorry for all the others caged in the zoo too, and though I could not understand her words, I knew that she wanted to help us all escape. But her supervisor must have known what she was planning to do, so he fired her the day before the plan was to go into action. So once again, I was left with no friends and no way out of this prison.

The staff must have realized how lonely I was, because a few weeks later they moved another cellmate in with me. His name was Delta, for his eyes and coat were as brown as the Mississippi Delta was back home. We fell deeply in love, as most captives do. The staff at the zoo obviously wanted us to breed, so we willingly did. That spring we had two little bundles of joy. Delta and I named them Dirk and Talia, but the personnel obviously could not understand us when we told them our children’s names. So Dirk and Talia became known as Brownie and Praline. Once they were old enough to be separated from us, Praline was brought to another part of the park and Brownie was sold to another zoo. I was so depressed when they took away my children that I did not eat for a week. Once again I had to be force-fed by the evil staff.

The staff never understood me. One day I wish I could put them in a zoo and see how they like it. Day in and day out, you are being looked at by thousands of strangers. You are stuck behind bars, never able to be free. You have a poor diet, which results in malnutrition. Your children are taken away from you, even though you are perfectly capable of taking care of them. And most of all, no one understands your flaws. I, too, have flaws, which this alien race seems to overlook. They expect me to be perfect, but hey, I am only human.....