A Dead Giraffe

__ «» The post-mortem on the body of a giraffe must be something like a trip m the tuppeny tube. When the valuable giraffe recently imported for the Auckland Zoo gave up the ghost m disgust at the climate of which Aucklanders so proudly boast (the "Winterless North"), a post-mortem was ordered, and the vet. set to work. How many hours or days the job took him is not revealed, but after travelling along a few miles of windpipe and pulmonary tubing, he discovered that the 'raffe had expired through the rupturing of' a small bronchial artery — probably oVily a few feet long — and thus removed from the minds of the City Fathers the horrible suspicion that it might have shared the fate of some animals who gave their last kicks last: year from the effects of arsenic. -It is a long lane that .has no turning, and m this, case it was a long neck to nothing that the 'raffe died from natural causes — through being brought to a climate that to an exotic is simply "not. natural." Talking of "long lanes" reminds '■ one that the death list at the Auckland Zoo since the Council took it over is a very long one, and one Avonders when the Zoo undertaker is going to get a rest. But do they bury giraffes? — they would take up a lot of space. Or do they feed- dead giraffes to live lions?