Extinct Animals!
Let’s go Grandpa!” The voice of my eight-year old grandson woke me up. I took a moment to gather my thoughts. I had slept off on the couch again. Today, I was taking Arsal, my grandson, to the zoo for the very first time. “Ready to go, Arsal?” “YES!” Arsal clapped his hands in glee. I took his tiny hand in mine, and we began walking to the station. I had not been to the zoo in a long, long while. I had read in the news that they were opening a new exhibit today. Excited about it, I had decided to take Arsal along. The train soon halted at the Zoo station. I held Arsal’s hand and led him towards the ticketing booth. The ticketing booth was large visual interface that asked me if I already had tickets or whether I wanted to purchase them now. “Look here Arsal. It is a map of the entire zoo. Where do you want to go first?” Arsal studied the map intently. I knew he was bright and had probably read about a great deal of these animals already. He jumped up and down and shouted. “Grandpa! Penguins. Let’s go see the penguins. They are cute.” It was early evening now. We had roamed around the entire zoo, and had covered all of the exhibits: Penguins, monkeys, elephants, reptiles, all of them. Arsal had thoroughly enjoyed his day at the zoo, and that made me happy. Watching him squeal in amazement upon seeing an elephant, and gasp in shock watching a komodo dragon, made me feel young again. It was a joy to see Arsal go through the same experience as I had been through many many years ago - The experience of witnessing a plethora of animals, all under one roof. Arsal nodded and approached the tiger, who did not make any movement. Arsal outstretched his arm and kept his hand near the tiger’s mouth. The tiger opened his mouth wide and Arsal placed the pellets on the tiger’s tongue as instructed. Arsal rushed back to me and hugged me. I watched as the tiger swallowed the pellet. It was not really eating it, of course. It was adding the pellets - battery packs into its recharging sockets. The zoo had done a brilliant job of creating lifelike robotic versions of all the animals. They resembled their now-extinct real-life counterparts in almost every aspect. What choice did they have? Now that every animal was extinct, if the zoos had to stay in business, this was their only viable choice. I was happy these robots had managed to charm Arsal, but to be frank, for me they were still fakes. I remember the days when I could actually watch a real life tiger. Yes, they were endangered back then, but we could still spot them. It makes me think back to those times. If only we had been a bit more careful. If only we had been less selfish. Even little Arsal would have been able to see real animals. by Zainab Zahid