Reason #1: You Work At a Zoo

Zoo employees hate April Fool's Day, and complain about it bitterly, for one reason alone: the infamous phone-the-zoo prank.

Here's how the prank works. You leave a note on a co-worker's desk informing them that 'Jim Panzie' called. Your colleague innocently dials the number beneath the name and asks to speak to said person. Only then does he find out that he's called the zoo, and hilarity ensues. (If you don't get it, try saying the name a few times aloud). Of course, there's nothing special about the name Jim Panzie. I just chose it out of a hat. You could equally well claim that Mr. Bear, Mrs. Robin, Mr. Wolf, Mr. Lion, Mr. Bird, Ellie Font, Mr. G. Raffe, Al Gator, Bob Katz, Anna Conda, Ann Eagle, Albert Ross, Sally Mander, Sue Keeper, or (my favorite) Don Kee called. And this hardly exhausts the list of possibilities.

Every year major zoos such as the Los Angeles zoo receive over 2000 such calls on April Fool's Day. The calls come flooding in without interruption, tying up all the lines. The operators try to be polite. They explain that there's no one at the zoo by that name. Or maybe they'll say, "I'm sorry, but Mr. Lion is in his cage." Callers usually realize pretty quickly that they've been tricked, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes they become belligerent and begin to loudly insist that they need to speak with 'Ryna Soris,' because Miss Soris left an urgent message on their voice mail. It's callers like this that cause zoo employees to feel a dull sense of pain when they think of April Fool's Day.

For some reason, zoos and animals have always been a popular subject for April Foolery, even before the invention of the telephone. Back in 19th century London one of the most popular pranks was to give out-of-towners tickets to see the white lions being washed at the Tower of London. Of course, there were no lions at the tower, as the victims of the prank eventually found out. References to this joke can be found as far back as 1698.

In 1866 (on Easter Sunday, April 1) it's recorded that a large crowd gathered outside the London Zoological Society demanding that the tickets they had been given to see the 'Procession of the Animals' be honored. Apparently this Procession, which was supposed to start at 3 p.m. on the dot, involved a grand parade of all the society's animals through the center of the zoo. When the zoological society refused to allow them entrance, the crowd grew restless and nearly rioted. History records that the mastermind behind this prank was Mrs. Sarah Marks, a bookseller. She avoided criminal prosecution by writing an abject letter of apology to the zoo.

Lately zoos have begun to fight back against phone pranksters by using answering machines to screen calls, or by using the opportunity to urge the victims of the prank, while they have them on the line, to make a donation to the zoo. But of course, this does nothing to stop the ever increasing flood of calls that pours in each year, which is why the zoo employees hate April Fool's Day.


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