The Fantasy Zoo

[Author's note: this poem is linked to the GloPoWriMo 2018 prompt for Day Three, namely "to write a list poem in which all the items are made-up names". It is certainly full of made-up names, but it was impossible to contain the challenge within just a simple list!]


The in-laws from rural Kentucky
Were visiting England last week.
They were usually terribly lucky
But were having a miserable streak:

They had travelled across the Atlantic
To sample our quaint English life,
But were getting increasingly frantic
And begged for some help from my wife.

Their children were not into cricket
And bored with museums and rain,
They wanted to see something 'wicked'
Or wouldn't come over again.

So to stop them from going to pieces,
If just for an hour or two,
I invited my nephews and nieces
On a trip to the Fantasy Zoo.

They came with a low expectation,
Prepared for the pain and regret.
But our trip into imagination
Was a day they will never forget.

On arrival, they were stunned by the chorus
Of growling and howling and roars.
Was that a brachiosaurus?
Aren't they some plesiosaurs?

Firstly, we made for the tropical dome,
Where, perched on a high fallen bough,
Was a magical Amazon Albatrome,
A huge bird with the face of a cow.

Next, to the monkey enclosure,
Where the three-legged Baltic Bunnn
Was crippled by heat exposure
In the blaze of electric sunnn.

We watched someone feeding the Crealzyn,
Their troughing was awfully loud,
And my niece threw a bucket of eels in
To the general delight of the crowd.

We paused at the Dodecadelphi
And counted each angle and side.
The eldest boy posed for a selfie,
Whilst the others just pointed and sighed.

In the tropical wetland creation,
Wallowing low in the pool,
Eleraffes from some faraway nation
Were helping themselves to some cool.

Under the shade of a filigris tree
Which they claim is a squillion years old,
A Fontana bird from the Bodensee
Was preening her feathers of gold
(Her rainbow tail a delight to see
And her green eyes a sight to behold).

We took a short break at a ginger-beer spring,
For the children to quench their thirsts.
When, quite unexpected, a Gillymathing
Out of the undergrowth bursts!

Wandering through the bat section
We chanced on a Hovering Haptiff.
He seemed lost in deep introspection,
Musing on the fate of the captive.

We amazed at an Impossibillo
And the salmon-like journey it made;
Taking rests on the white foamy pillow,
Making leaps through the roaring cascade.

Now, my niece had a terror of spiders,
(And I wasn't too keen on them either)
So we banished the phobias inside us
By caressing a Jelly-legged Jeether.

From here to the wild dog compound.
We concurred there was no canine better
Than the rare Kilkenny Komp Hound,
Like a feral Irish setter.

Lazily lolling in her own leafy lounge
Was the longest of Longiloop Worms,
Looped round whatever lush leaves she could scrounge
(as her name eloquently confirms).

A Madagascan Mishling
Had us gawping in multiple awes.
It was kind of a lizardy-fish thing
With furry opposable paws.

We discovered a wonderful creature
Which surmounts any task it might find,
Called a Nevaletanithyngbeatya.
(It just shows you the wonder of nature
And the positive powers of the mind!)

In the humid vivarium, we all agreed
That it was our collective belief
There was surely a miniscule Octopede,
On the vein of tiny black leaf.

Nextly, we stood for a while-and-a-half
By a mudpool, all glassy and twisted,
For a sight of a shy Potohippamus calf.
When it surfaced, we almost missed it!

Hidden by scrub in the bamboo savannah,
Crouched a queen of the zebras, the Qangle.
Her red and gold head-stripes recalled a bandana
Worn at a jaunty angle.

Around the abode of the mighty gorilla,
A curious crowd had assembled
To witness the monkey-like Resemborilla
And the ape that it closely resembled.

At the mock-Kalahari next door,
We were startled with shock and surprise,
Coming face-to-fang with a Sandclaw,
With a venomous look in its eyes.

We moved on to look at the lizards
And encountered a Terragotorl.
It could stand in the blizzliest blizzards
And never get wetted at all.

In a temperate forest of primeval fern,
a Unifawn grazed... most adorably.
This rare one-horned deer from the Alpsides of Berne
Was almost extinct... most deplorably.

Over beasts and beastesses magical,
Flew an ugly Vulgarian Vulture:
A phenomenon ornithological
In this lost world of faunaculture.

In the dark of the jungle-house canopies,
Lazed a curious Woolly Wallinga.
For lunch, it would open a can of peas
With an oddly-shaped nail on its finger.

The xheerfully xheeky Xherizmah,
From the tropical isle of Xheriz,
Was a meerkat with xtra charisma,
Like no other meerkat there is!

With our final bizarre introduction,
To the grumpy old Yackety Yak,
We avoided a desperate ruction
(Or we'd never have been allowed back)!

As we left, we were asked by the friendly vet,
Zookeeper Zoe Zamorra,
To be part of a regular visiting set
And asked if we'd go back tomorrow.

Back in the sitting room, speechless and tired,
The kids were no longer so glum.
We exchanged hugs before their amazement expired,
Then I handed them back to their mum.

So when all their moaning is doing your head,
If you don't know what else you can do, Take a tip from a man who has refound his cred,
Make a trip to the Fantasy Zoo.


(c) Andrew Halsall Smith, 2018