The City Jungle by Felix Salten Read Free Book Online Page A

were concerned his conscience was perfectly clear. But he was a sensitive and upright man, and had been somewhat alarmed by Dr. Wollet’s remarks and the fate of the mysterious corpse in the elephant house. He was seeking some endorsement of his rule, some reassurance on the whole question of the administration of the zoo.
    The high tops of the oaks, elms and plane-trees, the dark foliage of a purple beech towered above the fantastic architecture of the animal houses. A joyful happy life flitted and fluttered through their branches, twittering and singing, screaming and rejoicing in the thick sun-flecked foliage. With delight the curator watched the oriole streak like a winged golden flash from tree to tree. He listened to its melodious piping call. He saw the woodpecker’s zigzag flight, heard it pounding on the bark, heard its exultant laugh. He heard a jay’s angry rasping from the tree top, and the gentle twittering cry of blackbirds. Then, the furious swift scampering of squirrels passed in a flash of red through the branches.
    The curator walked by the cage where the fox was having another of his insane fits, dashing around in a circle. “He’s feeling spry,” thought the curator, bestowing a sidewise glance on the creature. “Poor fellow, he must have suffered dreadfully when he came to us with that injured foot. I didn’t think he’d ever pull through. But now he’s recovered completely.” He became ­indignant. “How stupid and how cruel to set such traps, how pitiless to plan such frightful tortures for poor foxes.” He went on, with an agreeable sense of feeling real sympathy for his charges.
    He came to the big pond, and affectionately watched the gay population stirring here. Here the denizens of all the zones settled peaceably together. A flock of big gulls from the North Sea fluttered on their clipped wings, a mass of rosy red flamingoes from Africa strutted slowly and elegantly along the turf of the bank. Five or six ­pelicans, natives of Albania, crouched with philosophic composure at the edge of the water whose mirror-­like surface was furrowed by white swans, ­Chinese ducks, Indian moorhens, lesser divers, and sandpipers from the lagoons of the Adriatic. There were storks and marabus, looking like worried actors and apparently plunged in profound thought. From time to time wild geese ­waddled ponderously through the grasses, spreading their stumps of wings and uttering their characteristic cronk, untamed and unrestrained.
    â€œIt is just as if they were free,” thought the curator. “They really are free, and yet they are protected from all danger.”
    He went on, turning his back on the thwarted flapping of all those clipped wings.
    On an enclosed lawn, shaded by lofty chestnut trees, ten or twelve cranes were parading, looking like trim gentlemen in cutaways. They hurried to the wire as soon as they saw the curator. He could not resist their dumb appeals, and slipped into the cage. Then began a strange and solemnly grotesque dance. The curator called the time and the rhythm. The cranes danced around him, keeping step, turning when he turned, sometimes striking at one another with their long breaks. When the dancing man spread his arms, the cranes would flap their abbreviated wings.
    â€œThey are happy,” he said to himself when he left them, “there is no doubt about it.”
    He passed the cages where the panther constantly hurled itself against the bars, where the tiger paced restlessly back and forth, where the lion lay in a deep sleep. He passed the bears’ den and the monkey house whose hubbub did not detain him. “Delighted as usual,” he thought, with a glance at the crowd surrounding the big cage.
    He wandered along the gravel walk between the enclosures where were exotic cattle and sheep, strange gigantic or delicate antelopes, tousled, peevish gnus and wild zebras. Many of these creatures,