The giraffes at the zoo make up a list of demands.

(from Animal Crackers)

In this story, the giraffes are more-or-less sentient beings, capable of rational thought, bargaining, protest and hope. And while their skill for communicating with humans is limited, there’s no denying their intelligence once they’ve written up that list of demands and handed it to the zookeeper. After that, this story reminded me of Family Guy a little, where you don’t know whether anybody can understand the baby and you can’t see any good reason they made Brian a dog in the first place. And so, parts of “Reasonable Terms” feels like a satire, other parts are the real world, and we’re pulled along for the ride. Thankfully we are in good hands.