The suited and booted commuters jostled like bad tempered sardines as the tube train went over the points. "Like riding over a dragon's back" said the wit with his nose in the air. The train tannoy crackled into life, "All passengers for London Zoo please alight at Regent's Park, please note the escalators are out of order and you will have to use the stairs."
A very hot and sweaty zoologist, legs still hurting from the climb, walked past the butterfly house, where the inmates were devouring the morning nectar. Empty bottles of champagne and the dregs of other drinks in glasses lay around on the research laboratory common room table. Just past seven in the morning, time to check on the eggs in the incubator. There they were, nestled underneath the minature pine tree and there were definite signs of hatching. This was going to be the big day, he hoped last nights celebrations were not premature, after all you don't count your eggs until they are hatched. Was that a foot poking out of one of the eggs?
He thought back over the project. There had been a fair share of smiles and frowns. After the initial cloak and dagger way in which the sample DNA had been obtained there had still been all the paperwork to prepare for a proposal. That had meant burning the candle as both ends, much to his wife's dissaproval. Even after the purely scientific data had ben presented there was then the 'razzle-dazzle' wooing of sponsors and politicians. Painting such a vivid picture of the benefits of the work, it almost felt like a circus act. Then many nights wining and dining them at clubs and cabarets. One senior politician even insisted on being taken for a diving holiday on a tropical island ,".. to help him think through the ethical problems".
Finally the sponsors had agreed and the big black cars left them alone to get on with the real work. That in some ways had been easier. Clad in their outlandish protective suits in the clean room they had treated the DNA with the extract of the fly agaric toadstool and implanted that into the reptile eggs. Now the waiting would soon be over. What would the world make of a new species created in the laboratory by genetic modification? All their market research told them that a pink variety would be a great hit with young females.Though sometimes he wondered if the world really needed minature flying horses.
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