The Strange Incident at Singapore Zoo.

Just found another letter from our Singapore holiday in 2005:

Here's something very strange I forgot to tell you about ... most likely because it was so odd my brain sidelined it because it had no way to deal with something so far out of everything it believes possible.

We're at Singapore Zoo, right. Lovely place and I especially loved the birds:

Man, I loved that camera!

Sure, it was the one that exploded 

in my hand, but look at the picture quality.

I should get another one!

And this bird was one I've never seen before.

Lovely day but I have to tell you this incident that happened when I went to the loo.

I'm on my way out but there's this tiny sickly-looking "failure to thrive" syndrome little Chinese girl in front of me, already at the door, blocking my way. She's pressing hard at the door with both hands like she's trying to push it open - whereas it opened inwards - and I notice she's got hands that look more like a gorilla's feet - in shape rather than colour or hairiness - with these tiny fingers the size of a baby's toes and a very long palm that didn't bend and so, being helpful - and also wanting to hurry her along - I reached over the top of her head to open the door.

But just as my hand moves towards the door ...  I swear, I swear, I swear ... this hand snakes out the neck of her T-shirt and, traveling right beside my own hand, turns the door knob first. Then this bizarre hand pulls the door towards us and she goes outside.

For long long minutes I'm standing there, frozen on the spot, with my mind whizzing in and out, backwards and forwards, shaking and trembling like some strange formless mindless blob that has nothing to do with me, and then I think "Is this what they mean when they say 'the mind boggles'? " and then  "Yes! My mind is boggling! Definitely! It's not just an expression!  It is something that actually happens!"

But I'm still standing there stupidly with my brain still out of my control, and it's trying without my help to make sense of it; going "Extra arm growing out of her back. She can't use it unless she presses hard against something. So that's what she was doing at the door; pressing hard against it to get use of that spare hand that grows out of her back."

But it's still all too strange and too much to take on board, however I come back into myself and immediately my curiosity kicks in and so I decide to follow her to see where she comes from.

Outside, she's rejoined a bunch of people who look like a Mainland Chinese tour group - only without the usual shrieking cadres or the usual angry woman carrying the red flag on a stick.

There are about twenty adults aged from about twenty to eighty, all looking like perfectly normal humans, but there's also a dozen kids all aged about eight who've all got these extra limbs - like five arms or three legs - and two of these kids in addition had huge lumps on their backs that the adults were taking turns to press - swopping places every five or so minutes - like these are lungs outside the body that have to be manipulated by hand.

None of them were in wheelchairs or anything like that and they were all dressed in normal red T-shirts like it's a school uniform with no allowances like extra armholes or whatever for their extra bits so it's all like two arms coming out of one arm-hole.

My mind, fully back under control, decides it's most likely a class from a school of desperately deformed kiddies from Mainland China traveling with their nurses, teachers, parents and grandparents and just having a nice day at the Zoo but my curiousity about them is in full swing - and I had hundred of questions which I knew they couldn't answer, being from Mainland China and so undoubtedly having no English - so when they set off down the hill I follow so I can watch.

Like, how does someone with three legs actually walk?

And, yes, I'd entirely forgotten about poor Keith but he's seen me trailing them and races up and starts hissing at me "What are you doing? Stop it!  You're treating those poor little kids like they're freaks!"

"Um, yeah, like, what exactly isn't "freak" about them? They, surely, are the very definition of freak!"

So Keith and I have a big fight and I realise I should be more considerate of him; that he teaches kids who have deformities, although not on this scale, so he has a vested interest in seeing them treated as 'normal' ... although he's been outside with this tour group the whole time and so probably had already had a really good hard look at them.

But I wasn't being spurious and downright condemnable with this interest.  I just wanted to know.

I remember, when I was about three, seeing a deformed Indian baby and was so curious about her I asked the mother if I could have a closer look, and the mother was just so proud and unwrapped her from her blanket and showed me all the strange bits and pieces and manipulated the bits to show me they worked. But Indians think deformity is a gift from the gods and so aren't all touchy and icky on the subject.

And that's really all I wanted to know; to see these strange bits and discover how they worked. I tried telling Keith this but he refused to discuss it with me and dragged me off in the opposite direction so we ignored each other for over an hour - difficult when you're walking side by side - until we both got over it.

BUT ... I still have so many questions.

Like, what the hell is China doing with so many of these kids? And since these ones were all about eight years old, are there dozens more someplace who are all about ten? Or five? Or 17? Or 30? Do they actually have hundreds and hundreds of them?

At first I was wondering if they weren't the result of some weird genetic testing, or if they'd been a Chenobyle-type nuclear power meltdown someplace they weren't telling us about.

But then I thought about statistics?

China has a population of 3 billion, sure, but what % of human population actually throws up these massive deformities? One in 13 million? One in a quarter of a billion? OK, maybe this is the right number of 8 year olds with massive deformities for the population - I can't be bothered doing the maths - but why are they allowed to survive?

Those two who looked like they couldn't even breathe unassisted? What are they doing keeping them alive? China has a strictly enforced one-child-policy (although the rich have recently been encouraged to have a second) so, since these ones are so obviously nonviable, why aren't they allowed to die so the parents can have another possibly undeformed kid? It isn't like Communist China has a philosophy of Right to Life blah, blah, blah, so why are they doing it?

For show-off scientific reasons? Because they can? So many, many questions.

Are you able to provide any answers?