The Elephant by Slawomir Mrozek

The story starts with a description of the zoo director. "He regards his animals simply as stepping stones of his career. He is careless about the educational value of his establishment." Being in a remote town the zoo is not funded and therefore was "lacking all the important animals"; basically all they had were surplus. Alas, the zoo's anniversary is vast approaching, for they are getting an elephant! Instead of rejoicing the director was thinking of his career and decided to write a letter to Warsaw refusing the governments offer. He said that he has a more economical plan and wou…