Serengeti, friend of animals

(BY PABLO BURGUÉS)

Some months ago, this humble servant of you was having a cooling mojito outside Marina Playa Hotel, at San Antonio bay, when, out of the blue, a sort of XXI-century Messiah appeared in front of me. I quickly dubbed him with the suggestive nickname of Serengeti.

In spite of being about 70 years old, the guy was such a young and free spirit that just as he got into the place everyone present felt, at the same time, the uncontrollable need to turn to him, being drawn by his tremendous animal magnetism. Never better, because that cheeky guy was wearing snake boots, zebra-print trousers, a tiger-print shirt and a crocodile hat.

At first sight I knew that Serengeti and me were made for each other, and that, no matter which his story was, he needed to tell it and I needed to know it. So, using the wounded gnu technique, I dragged along the counter, getting closer to him, little by little, waiting that his predatory instinct would made him spring at me. And so it was: three minutes after he arrived we were having a beer.

After the appropriate introductions, and to break the ice, I decided to use sarcasm and asked him if he liked zoos. I don’t really know if he didn’t get the joke or if, on the contrary, he was quick on the uptake, but his reply was a fucking masterpiece: “I hate the fucking zoos, boy, in those fucking places animals have no space enough and they are not comfortable”. Of course, I thought, they would be much more loose and comfortable all over him or in his wardrobe.

Serengeti told me he was Scottish but he had been living in Ibiza for more than 40 years. So you speak Spanish?, I asked him, and he replied a categorical “yes, man” and, after five seconds of awkward silence, he continued speaking in English. Apparently the guy was in love with scuba diving and for that reason he decided to come to live in the Mediterranean. But he complained that the island was not as it was before: “Tourism and big yachts have pissed off the seabeds, and due to this there are no more turtles and sharks here”. Right after finishing this sentence the guy showed me a tortoiseshell bracelet adorning his left wrist and, immediately afterwards, as the grand finale, he unbuttoned two buttons of his shirt and showed me a leather necklace with a huge shark tooth hanging from it.

I would have loved to stay all my life listening to that human being prototype, but his already impenetrable English with Scottish accent became completely unintelligible after he drank his fifth mescal (all of them including a worm, of course). Moreover, the gentleman was becoming more vulgar and he only communicated with sentences where there were more fuckings than vocals, so I kindly said goodbye and left before Serengeti got on furrier mode and decided to make a cap and a waistcoat with me.

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Translation: Dora Sales