Antelope and Zebra were friends who lived in the same Serengeti. They used to have another good friend, Mole, but he was discontent with staying in a short story and left for greener pastures in a starring role in the novel “The Wind in the Willows”. As they grew older, the plains was no longer the friendly neighbourhood where neighbours smile at one another. Now hyenas grin as you pass by. It was unsafe for Antelope or Zebra to walk down the streets to each others house for a barbeque or to play some tennis. Not that they could anyway, seeing that they were herbivores and had no hands.
One day, as they went for a swim at the river, they had a close encounter with ferocious Tiger. As they were ready to take the plunge, Tiger jumped out from behind a tree. They thought he was a mirage, but they were uneducated and didn’t know mirages only occurred in deserts. Just desserts for them, but they could soon become the main course. They sprinted with all their might, but Tiger was in the athletics team back in high school. Suddenly, Antelope turned around and exclaimed, “Tiger, you are the King of the Jungle, you don’t belong here on the Serengeti!” Tiger disappeared with a poof and a bewildered look.
After that close scare, they came up with the idea of keeping in touch by writing letters to one another. Somehow, they managed to get around the difficulty of using pens without opposing thumbs, but that’s a benefit of knowing an author of a short story. Their trademark was to sign off with just their initials, A for Antelope and Z for Zebra.
Their postman was the fastest creature, Cheetah. He zipped around town sending letters faster than they could be written. Seeing how small the town was, he often overshot the destination before he could slow down. Cheetah was the biggest cheater around, that’s how he got his name. He sneaked peeks at the letters he delivered and reported interesting mails to the King of Animals, Lion. The Queen of Animals preferred interesting males.
“I know all the letters from A to Z!” boasted Cheetah.
“You illiterate fool!” roared Lion. “I’m already learning to build basic sentences!”
Recently many animals caught onto the Internet craze. Unfortunately the cables keep getting disconnected by stampeding Gnus. Elephant got fed up and chased them away, exclaiming, “No Gnus is good Gnus.” To protect the cables from future damage, Elephant laid his thick dung pats on them which hardened into protective shells, and built huts made from dung bricks to house the computer terminals.
Antelope got a mail from a Nigerian fellow seeking a proposal for a business deal to merely transfer a small sum of money for administrative matters to receive an obscene amount of money. He consulted Zebra’s advice. Zebra looked at him and answered, “Don’t do it. You can call it ‘animal instinct’ or ‘an E-mail in stink’.”