July 22, 2025

Today at the Zoo

Photo by Leon Aschemann on Pexels.com

Today at the zoo, someone has posted a video of a polar bear playing with a cow out swimming. They dance and hold each other tight and the bear licks the cow and the cow kisses back and eventually they pull back the camera and the polar bear takes the cow’s severed head out of the water and now it’s like one of those pictures where you look at it one way and it’s a rabbit and the other way it’s a duck, but you can never not see the duck after you see the duck. The people at the zoo say they have to normalize the polar bear. They must learn how to strip the meat out of an animal from underneath the skin, which is essential if they are going to one day reintroduce the polar bear back into the wild. Which is always my favorite part about zoos: when they let the fucking animals out of their cages.

About the Author

Benjamin DrevlowBenjamin Drevlow  is EIC of BULL and poet laureate of bull. You can check out more of his bull stuff at thedrevlow-olsonshow.com or on twitter, insta, face, bsky, & threads @thedrevlow.

Related Flash

Squirrel Fish

Ann Yuan

I meet my future husband on the eve of the Lunar New Year. A forty-seven-year-old Beijing native: a decent job, two apartments, recently divorced, and seeking a stepmother for his preteen son—my auntie posted only this much in the family WeChat group.

red lantern lamp turned on

In the Dark

By Ali Mckenzie-Murdoch

“Their names in lights, bright as their burning bodies, in the 1800s, ballet dancers often went up in flames. Gauzy tutus brushed flickering lamps, a pirouette of torched limbs, and incandescent hair.”

body of water under blue and white skies

Subjective Condition

By Rebecca Tiger

“A woman swims up to me in the clear blue-green Aegean. We agree that the water is beautiful.”

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This