Jake – About a Boy

What’s in a name?

There once was a zoo. It wasn’t a very big zoo, but the animals liked it and the staff enjoyed working there. There was a giraffe named Gerald, a monkey named Mike, a penguin named Polly and a hippo named Holly. They were all really good friends. Then, one day, the zoo bought two crocodiles, both named Croc.

“Hi”, said Gerald. “Welcome to the zoo. What are your names?” “Thanks, said Croc. “I’m Croc, and this is Croc.”

“That’s funny. How come you’re both called that?” asked Susan. “Well we’ve both got different other names, but Croc is a very common first name for us crocodiles. It’s the way we’ve always done things.”

Then one day, the staff at the zoo decided it would be fun to do a survey to find out the most common animal name at the zoo. To their surprise, it turned out to be Croc.

“That’s not really that surprising”, said Mike. “They’ve already explained that most crocodiles are called at least some variant of Croc, and the rest of us are called different names.”

“You’re right”, agreed Polly, and they all carried on with their day without wilfully and idiotically misreading a perfectly understandable and logical statistic. The end.