The nearest zoo was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles away from where I grew up. Our town was so poor that we couldn't even afford to have the Republicans put up a sign, much less have a REAL elephant. We'd heard stories of course, but the best we could do was to go out of town and see a drunken cow or something. Even if there had been a zoo with a drunken elephant my family couldn't have afforded the entrance fee. But that was okay, because any time we wanted to see a wild animal we only had to look out and watch the wolf at our door. Finally, there was nothing left in the house to eat and no money to buy food with, so we ate the wolf. Then we didn't have anything to see when we looked outside. Just the piles of rubbish and trash, because we could only afford to live in the city dump.