Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday, we target: The Zoo

  • How do current politics affect us visitors or animals in the zoo?
  • How to do we get out?
  • Is there no escaping the zoo, and mostly, count blessings to be outside the bars observing rather than confined to primping (such an almost appropriate word) for the public or just ignoring interests and pacing about a world of self-design?
  • Like focus on a few, art museum, master works versus visual onslaught of the many, shall we explore a zoo where only three animal enclosures await?
  • Payment for entry seems excessive but the first, semi-aquatic exhibit features a creature that quacks, swims and waddles, though with severe limp, call it lame, and inquiring, we’re told “it’s a penguin or a chicken?”
  • Discounting protestations from paid staff and media, do we know it’s a duck?
  • Does this obvious duck, ruler of a shrinking pond, talk, and when awake, try to ward off the inevitable by spouting a deluge of featherlight ideas plus promises of other people’s money?
  • Next, are we amazed to see not one but two leopards furiously licking one another?
  • Recently acquired from obscure, but permissive, regions, thrust together to bond, why are they totally engaged in salivating one another’s spots?
  • Are they trying to change their spots?
  • Cage keepers confirm, ” See the difference; aren’t they’re so wonderful, so marvelous, tirelessly talking and cackling about all your best interests? “
  • Staff also informs that a prime-time event is coming soon and both leopards will be featured reading from a teleprompter to euphoric delight?
  • Can we anticipate a fulsome duckology segment as well? Quack?
  • Finally, in a small and olfactory offensive cage, does a little dog, heavily hirsute, a Tibetan offshoot, really capture surroundings?
  • Are we seeing (and are we in) a Shih Tzu and show?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours.