King of the Jungle

They called him the King of the Jungle—it was right there on his sign, under the Latin—but jungles were pretty scarce in the zoo. He had a couple of trees. Mostly he liked to hang out on the rocks, in the shady spot where he could keep an eye on things and stay cool.

He also liked to stick his tongue out at the tourists.

He’d wait until he saw an obnoxious one—a guy with two cameras, or a teenager trying to roar at him, or a mother saying, “Look, honey, it’s Simba,” over and over to a kid who didn’t care about anything but the location of the next ice cream cart. Then he’d stick it out, real casual, and turn his head toward them. He knew they saw. The cameras would start going double time, or the teenager would laugh, or the mother would say, “Look, honey, he’s panting.”

He wasn’t panting. He was saying, Screw you.

They thought they were so much better than he was, out there walking around while he was stuck in an enclosure. They were the ones who were stuck. They spent most of their time doing things they hated, and they spent their free time stumbling around a zoo, getting sweaty and tired and grumpy. Meanwhile, he sat in the shade and watched his own zoo wander past. He didn’t even have to pay for parking.

The little girl got it. She frowned instead of laughing when she saw the tongue sticking out. I could eat you in one bite, he thought at her. She turned away from him and tugged on her mom’s shirt. “The lion’s mean,” she said. “Can we go now?”

He settled back against his rocks and surveyed his kingdom. He was pretty sure he could jump out of here and eat the lot of them, if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to. He just wanted to watch them, to relax and stay cool, to stick his tongue out and to keep his pride.