I saw him every day, sucking on a tube of Superstrength or curled up like a foetus in his tattered sleeping bag and I thought about our armadillo munching his vegetables, our pumas tearing into slabs of glistening steak, our zebras in their warm straw beds and I called him over and said come with me.
I placed him in an empty orang-utan unit and told him to stay out of sight during opening times. I put two solvent-abusers in with the giraffes and the muttering shopping-trolley woman onto gibbon island.
But the shopping trolley woman kept showing her bottom to school children and the boss called me in. He was pleased with my intervention, but could the new guests be given educational classes like art, music and dance so that the public could watch? This would be the zoo finally putting something back into the community.