Donkeys dyed into zebras

Two white donkeys were dyed with black stripes, to the delight of Palestinian children at a small Gaza zoo. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

GAZA - TWO white donkeys dyed with black stripes delighted Palestinian kids at a small Gaza zoo on Friday who had never seen a zebra in the flesh.

With their long ears, drooping heads and sleepy eyes, the impostors probably would not have fooled a lioness. But the effect achieved by the zoo owners' dye job looks not so bad - to the unpractised eye, and from a distance.

Nidal Barghouthi, whose father owns the Marah Land zoo, said the two female donkeys were striped using masking tape and women's hair dye, applied with a paint-brush.

'The first time we used paint but it didn't look good,' he said. 'The children don't know so they call them zebras and they are happy to see something new.'

A genuine zebra would have been too expensive to bring into Israel-blockaded Gaza via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, said owner Mohammed Bargouthi. 'It would have cost me US$40,000 (S$55,716) to get a real one.'

Gaza's Palestinians are impoverished by their isolation under an Israeli embargo against its Islamist Hamas rulers, who refuse to give up armed resistance against the Jewish state. -- REUTERS

Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking...ry_440151.html

OS from ADS: hmm.. quite creative and imaginative... but poor donkeys....