Vampire Bats (At the Zoo)

All asleep in the corner where the wall of the cage meets the ceiling. Some half-hearted stucco detail suggests “cave” but it’s a cage. The animals are prisoners. Some, like the seemingly friendly toucans, are less put out than others. The toucans sit on the wooden railing that crosses the duck put, right at chest height so you could pet them, if you were an idiot. The two toucans sit side by side and occasionally one of them clacks its great loud beak over the other’s. Their eyes, within their little neon rings, are like little rave-hipsters’ eyes. The eyes are incongruous next to the giant protuberance of beak.

But the vampire bats huddle together upside-down like stressed mice. They make shivering movements, tiny yawns with needle teeth, twitch their oversized delicate ears. They’re living dustbunnies hungry for blood. How are they fed? For the bats there can’t be much pleasure in the process, whatever it is.