Water. The elixir of life. It transforms an unremarkable, rocky wasteland into our wonderful blue marble which teems with life at every turn. From the enormous humpback whale to the minute carpenter ant; from the grandiose giraffe to Anders, this guy that works out at the gym my girlfriend goes to. All life, great and small, depends on water, as does Anders, who is neither great nor small. He sucks, but is unfortunately 6’4”.
The river basin of the Rubi provides the water which grants life to the majestic African okapi. The okapi’s tremendous, striped legs and graceful, elongated neck earned the okapi the nickname “zebra giraffe.” The striped legs of the okapi are quite striking, aren’t they? They would certainly look good on just about anyone.
Like if a guy had unusually thick leg hair, and he watched this okapi footage yesterday, then on the way home he saw a sign that said “laser hair removal: $30” and, after spending a while trying to figure out if $30 was a lot or a little for laser hair removal, ended up going for it and getting his leg hair lasered off into okapi-eque stripes, that would be cool, right?
Though necessary for life, danger lurks at every turn in the river basin. Gorgeous though they are, the stripes on the okapi’s legs serve to protect the okapi; allowing it to blend into the dense vegetation of the African grasslands. However, away from the African plains, in the gym locker room, the striped leg hair instead attracts attention. Lasered off leg hair stripes solicit calls of “Hey Anders, come look. That guy who keeps saying you’re hitting on his girlfriend has zebra stripes in his leg hair. It looks really stupid.”
Were it a real life okapi Anders was seeing in the locker room, he would merely admire the beauty of the tremendous creature. He wouldn’t go up to the okapi and say, “Hey, that woman said she isn’t your girlfriend. She doesn’t even know you.”
And he definitely wouldn’t drag a real okapi to the front desk and get it banned from the gym by lying and saying it peed in the shower, when actually it peed while on the leg press machine and it was trying to wash the pee off in the shower.
Here, the okapi uses its prehensile tongue to grasp leaves that appear just out of reach. The complex and wondrous tongue allows the animal to reach its dinner, while remaining low enough to the ground for its natural camouflage to keep it safe from predators. And since this African river basin doesn’t have any Chipotle managers wandering around, the okapi does not get yelled at to “quit doing that tongue thing to the sour cream. Also, I can’t in good conscience sell you any more dairy or pinto beans. Not after what I had to clean up yesterday.”
No, the remarkable tongue of the okapi, along with its natural habitat, protects it from such annoyances.
A female okapi has just entered the male’s territory. The male begins to chuff and dip his head to showcase his small horns, or ossicones, in an effort to impress her. Were he not equipped with these ossicones, the male okapi would have to find a different way to attract her attention. But, a warning to the hypothetical, hornless okapi, don’t seek attention by getting what you thought was a cool, huge tattoo across your chest. The aforementioned Chipotle manager will pull you aside and say, “Hey, you have to wear a shirt in here.
Also, my lawyers said I can’t do anything about it, but we don’t know each other at all, and it makes me uncomfortable that you got my likeness, complete with my work name tag, tattooed on your chest. Especially after Anders told me you are referring to me as your girlfriend?”
Because the okapi is solitary he is unlikely to pass a long haired man with a sign saying “laser hair removal reversal: $1,000.” And since $1,000 is way more than the $30 it cost to get the leg hair lasered off in the first place, this seems like a much more legitimate and trustworthy operation. Out on the range, the okapi also wouldn’t need to toss in an extra $100 to cover up a chest tattoo. And the okapi absolutely wouldn’t have to deal with paying all that money only to realize the laser hair removal reversal process and the tattoo removal process seems to just be this guy gluing animal (hopefully not okapi) fur onto still very tender skin, all before the guy’s wig falls off and you realize it’s the same guy that did the laser hair removal in the first place.
But, above all, because the mating season is relatively short, an okapi would never return home to find its wife standing outside saying, “Some guy named Anders came by here because you left your membership card at the gym. He said you’ve been calling some woman there your girlfriend? What happened to your legs?”
The okapi has survived, but tomorrow the cycle will begin anew. Life’s troubles, it seems, cease for no creature.