Rhino of the sorrowful countenance

I've never seen a living rhinoceros but I have spent some time in the company of a dead one. It's not so bad, he still looks good, his improbably solid body still exudes a strength and vitality that impresses and intimidates. His name was Bull and he lived for almost half a century by some estimates. Occasionally I'll sit beside him, preferably by his right side, because then I do not have to see his melancholy face, which the taxidermists have banked off to the left. From what I've learned Bull was born to a comely she-rhino in the wilds of South Africa, his father was undoubtedly a handsome stud, but also a negligent one if my friend's sad visage can be speculated upon. Bull likely ate some unforgettable grasses down there, and I can only imagine the immense size of his boundary-marking excrement piles. The potency and linearity of his urine must have been a sight to see, and if I could, I would have fashioned a comfortable saddle on which I would perch, and accompany my unhappy friend as he tended to the sovereignty of his territory. I wish that this were so because then I would understand what has caused this great animal to express such sorrow.

Eventually, Bull was captured by some well-meaning conservationists, no doubt alarmed by and moved to offset the stupidity and greed that was then motivating idiots to reduce these animals to a memory. He was a teenager at the time, still far from his prime. Still, there can be no doubt that his territory was well marked and tended, I suspect even the old bulls would have thought twice about dousing one of his shrubs with their own pungent calling cards. I also wonder how Bull was captured, what was he doing at the time? Perhaps he was grinding his horn against a rock or tree, hoping that the ominous sounds would dissuade these feeble un-horned creatures from trespassing. I imagine that his last thought, before the darts sent him to sleep, was something like, "You got to be kidding me! I'm going to trample these hairless dogs into the ground if they neglect for another moment the inviolability of my property." The next thing he knew he was on a ship, hopefully a large one to offset the rhino's tendency to seasickness, being shoveled batches of stale grasses by more of those hairless dogs. "These bitter grains do not allow me to forget the injustice done to me," he likely thought.

Soon enough Bull was plunged into the profound solitude of zoo life. Undoubtedly the hairless, hornless dogs who tended to his well-being loved him and patted his considerable flanks with a gentle empathy that was understood by his singular wisdom. After some trial and error, it is likely that he was provided a steady supply of choice grasses, which went some lengths in calming the rancor of his lonely heart. His immortal prowess was lost on none, and zoos from around the continent dispatched their best rhino maidens to his pen, where he would court them and mount them, doing his duty among the last of his massacred species. But was his passion diminished by these brief affairs? No, though Bull carried out his duties beyond the expectations of rhino maidens and hairless dogs, still his inner eye gazed back in time to the geography of his homelands, and the herds of free maidens that would be coaxed into his domains by the pungency of his urine and excrement piles. At these reminisces, Bull would emit a low bellow, a peculiar sound whose meaning was lost to all except the two bison in an adjacent paddock. They and they alone knew well the depths of the sorrow contained in Bull's primordial lament over his lost world.