LILLE, France: The sentinel meerkat at the city zoo has stopped standing guard.
For three years, a meerkat keepers call Gérard took the morning shift, standing upright on the highest mound in the enclosure and scanning the sky while the rest of the group dug for food. In September, keepers noticed a change. Gérard now spends most of the day slumped against the warm pink wall at the back of the enclosure, belly out, eyes half closed, facing away from the sky.
“He is technically still upright,” a zoo spokesperson said.
Keepers believe the trouble started when Gérard did the math. In three years on watch, he raised the alarm at roughly 4,000 pigeons and one plastic bag. No hawk has ever come. He now considers the position redundant and, having worked well past France’s 35-hour week the entire time, has stopped showing up for it.
The rest of the group has since adopted a rotating watch with shorter shifts, an arrangement the zoo says is working well and which Gérard is believed to have negotiated. On Fridays, two younger meerkats now sit against the wall beside him. A retiree from Roubaix brought Gérard a small folding chair last week. Keepers removed it. He has asked for it back in writing.
“Honestly, he’s not wrong,” said one keeper, who asked not to be named because she has been thinking about it too.
FTN BULLETIN: This report is fiction.