25The Rhino Who Has Heard Every Joke

He has heard every joke. He has laughed at none of them. The white rhino stands on his red pad with his head low and his expression set to a flat, patient nothing, and whatever you are about to say to him, somebody said it years ago and he did not laugh then either. This is not grumpiness — it's composure. Rhinos are built almost entirely out of composure, two tons of it in the wild and half a ton of it here, and the sculptors caught the precise moment when a very large animal decides that the correct response to the world is to keep standing exactly where it is. Try to make him laugh. Go on.