a hornless dilemma

I have to admit that I was not aware at the time I got the original idea that the rhinoceros was so endangered. I mean, I knew it was sort of endangered but I didn’t know it was endangered endangered. You would think I would have gotten the scheme from seeing a story on Michael Vick or a bad PETA ad complete with sappy music sung by a doe-eyed musician that can’t find work now that Lilith Fair is no longer in vogue. But no, I actually thought it up while watching a show on Animal Planet. I swear, at the time I almost jumped off the couch I was so pumped up. I thought it was a foolproof little plan.

I was wrong.

Let me lay it out for you so you can see what got me so excited. If people will pay top dollar to see dogs and chickens duke it out in a pit in someone’s basement or backyard imagine how popular rhino fighting would be. See? Doesn’t it, at first glance, seem like a surefire winner as far as bright ideas are concerned? I know right.

Now obviously you’re going to need a larger fighting space. You can’t expect 2 giant ceratotherium simum to throw down in tight confines. I was on it. I was able to rent an indoor equine riding arena for pretty cheap. Not exactly the Coliseum but problem solved.

The next obstacle is getting people to show up. How do you advertise an illegal event? Good question, I’ve never been invited to an underground dog-fighting event in my entire life. I wouldn’t even know where to go to see one. The answer came in the form of my neighbor who was having a garage sale. I saw him putting these little signs all over, sticking them into the ground or taping them up on telephone poles. Genius! Marketing for the event… done!

I even played the race card. I didn’t even know at first there were white rhinos and black rhinos but as soon as I did I promoted it like Rocky with horns! I’m not much of an artist but I sort of made the white rhino look like a skinhead and the black rhino had a little bit of an afro. Hey, I have seats to fill. Neither Barnum nor Bailey had anything on me when it came to promotion.

As the date of the first rhino-fighting event drew closer I started to get a little nervous. I was almost sold out but nobody had entered a rhino to fight. Not a single solitary one. I even relaxed the rules on Javan and Sumatran but nothing. I couldn’t return the money from the ticket sales because I’d already spent it on the arena and a bunch of t-shirts and hats I had planned on selling at the door. Three days before the show I even doubled the prize money to $400 but not a single entry.

Where the fuck are all the rhinos? It was like nobody owned a rhino or if they did they didn’t want to see them fight. A major miscalculation on my part to be sure. Zoos in the area just laughed when I contacted them, thinking I was kidding. I tried to sell them on the idea of cross-promoting it but when they realized I was serious they just hung up. Apparently those in the wildlife management field lack a certain vision. No wonder the fucking things are almost extinct!

So I was getting seriously worried, the smelly arena had almost 200 people in it and they were getting restless, when all of a sudden I saw the lights from the trailers coming up the dusty road. Apparently in the rhino game it’s considered cool to show up at the last minute. As the din of the chanting crowd soared across the nearby stalls I saw 12 magnificent rhinoceros being unloaded, each one eager to fight to the death.

I’m just kidding. No rhinos entered and I am now sneaking out the back before things get ugly. Who could have seen this coming? I mean really.