Slice of Life 3/1

Hello. My name is Etti. I am in eighth grade and this year I have studied History of Cooking, Tattoos and Exotic Animal Care (which sounded way less stupid in my head). I enjoy eating small children in my spare time.

I watched the animal shift his weight between his three-toed feet and I wondered how I never realized how prehistoric he is. His armor shifted and he opened his mouth to chew strawberries and green bananas, halved but unpeeled. He is a Greater One-Horned Rhino, or rhinoceros unicornis, and he is behind bars wide enough for a human to slip through. The keeper continued to toss fruit into a mouth big enough to hold my entire head. He has no incisors or front teeth at all, only molars to grind his strictly herbivorous diet. The black and white rhinos, found in Africa, are much more aggressive than this species. His horn is small and rounded, which unfortunately means that it is worth thousands of dollars, and his species is threatened by poachers. He is lined up against the bars and his keeper rubs his head. She has trained him to hold still while a veterinarian takes a blood sample, and for a wild animal, he is incredibly cooperative. I stepped up to his heavy, gray body and felt his skin. It is rough and dry, but the crease between the plates of armor is soft. His feet moved slightly, but he stayed focused on his meal. He is still wild, but he is calm by nature. It is hard to say if he did not know that we were there or simply just did not care, but I am amazed that I got to touch this bizarre, endangered animal.