Old mungoes look enviously at their rah-rah counterparts, snorting and pawing the ground as they watch scrums, muscles twitching like clapped-out racehorses at the sound of the starter's voice.
Paradoxically, his animals remain unknowable not because they're in the wilderness but because they're in captivity, in the cramped, clapped-out cages of old, outmoded zoos.
We spend the afternoon of our wedding anniversary (and my birthday) by the side of a road with our clapped-out car waiting to be picked up by a recovery vehicle.