ZONKEY!
Some of you might have already heard about these. They are a cross between a zebra and a donkey. Rather unimaginatively, the names have been clumsily mashed together and you end up with something that essentially looks just like a donkey with stripey legs. I think it’s a pretty poor attempt at animal-mashing-together, to be honest, so I’ve given it a go myself. Check out the results!
First up! It’s the caterpony!
It has millions of tiny legs, which slow it down a little to be honest. The caterpony does not worry about this though. He eats leaves and grass in the same small space and waits for the day when it can weave a huge cocoon and wake up as a beautiful butterhorse, when its legs become much longer and it has lovely colourful wings.
Next in line is the girelephant!
It has a large elephant head on its long giraffe neck, which gives it a bit of a neck ache. It will sometimes be found resting its huge heavy head on strong high tree branches. Its long trunk helps it to reach the water from so high up but the girelephant must remember not to lean too far forward when getting water, as the weight of its head can topple it over, causing it to splash about helplessly, until a flying butterhorse spots it and pulls it out.
Last up in the Zoo of Laura’s Mind, the reinguin!
The head of a reindeer and the body of a penguin, this Arctic creature can fly in the air and go under water! When Santa gets nervous because there is a storm that may overturn the sleigh, the reinguin, just dips under the water for a while until he has passed the storm and emerges into the air to continue the journey round all the children’s houses.
When the reinguin is hunting, it can store its catches on its antlers and later, when he gets home, unhook all his fish and have plenty to eat.
So how did I do? Are my animals as believable as zonkeys? Can we get someone to work on creating them? I’m not scientifically minded so I’ll just provide the ideas. Any scientists want to jump on this?
P.S. 25 days til first exam… and counting…
lazylauramaisey 
Posted by davidmcgowan on May 3, 2012 at 06:01
You’re a nuckin futcase!
Posted by lazylauramaisey on May 3, 2012 at 16:11
Why, thank you!
Posted by rambler5319 on May 3, 2012 at 10:23
Fabulous (as in its original meaning) creatures! If you check out fabulous at dictionary.com they have a related words section and there in the list is HIPPOGRIFF: a fabulous creature resembling a griffin but having the hind parts of a horse.
Posted by lazylauramaisey on May 3, 2012 at 16:12
Technically a hippogriff should be half HIPPO not half horse! Someone needs to sort that out.
Posted by rambler5319 on May 4, 2012 at 06:24
Not technically – ellem-ically! And don’t forget a griffin has the body of a lion and the head of an eagle so a hippogriff is actually a “tri-breed” not a simple cross-breed. A mythological mongrel in fact!
Posted by rambler5319 on May 4, 2012 at 06:43
Interestingly “Hippo” prefix comes from Greek word for horse “hippos” which is why one of the meanings for Hippodrome is a racecourse for horses; “potamos” (Greek for river) then gives us the “river horse” or hippopotamus in English. SNYK! (So now you know.)
Posted by The return of the caterpony « lazylauramaisey on May 19, 2012 at 07:34
[…] Z is for… I played around with some animal combinations and the most popular seemed to be the caterpony. […]
Posted by The big 100! « lazylauramaisey on June 18, 2012 at 07:58
[…] have been lows (eating everything in sight during revision). There have been silly moments (the invention of the catterpony), there have been serious moments (…wait a minute…. have there?). There have been […]
Posted by Can I have a word? Part 4 « lazylauramaisey on June 27, 2012 at 04:26
[…] the whole land mass they become the portmanteau Eurasia. If you look back to LLM’s blog, Z is for, you will see the word zonkey – a portmanteau of zebra & donkey; also there is a zorse, a […]