At a single lamppost- the bond of their pens, and maybe their friendship- in the center of five enclosures, the bricks walls formed a star.

The large animals all gathered at the lamppost to celebrate today's special occasion: Marty's tenth birthday. How could anyone forget?

Melman gave him a thermometer. Alex presented a snow globe, Gloria made a cake, and Ayana had given him paint so he could dress up more often and decorate his body and stripes.

"Ooh, it's Marty's birthday!" Gloria sang.

"Happy birthday, bud."

"Just rip it open. Come on." Alex encouraged.

"What is it? What is it?" Marty asked as he shook the present.

"Come on. Open it up." Alex encouraged once more, to which he finally obeyed.

Marty opens the box to see his present. "Yeah!"

"What you get? What you get? What you get?" Gloria asked excitedly.

"A thermometer. Thanks. I love it, Melman. I love it." He twirled his new gift in the air and caught it with his mouth and smirked and crossed his arms.

"Yeah, I wanted to give you something personal. You know, that was my first rectal thermometer." Melman explained as he smiled softly, but Marty looks at his new gift in disgust.

"Mother-!" He gagged at the thought and spits out the thermometer while licking his tongue.

As Marty turned his back for a moment, everyone else got into position and hummed loudly to grab the zebra's attention. He looked back as they began to sing a spritely tune.

"Happy Birthday to you. You live in a zoo. You look like a monkey-" They all switched off at every word, taking turns in chanting the birthday song.

"Aaaaaaand!" Melman drawled out.

"you smell like one, too." They finished in a flourish of grins and chuckles.

Mason overhead and took a spit take with his tea. "I say!" He gasped, looking at the other zoo animals as Mason sniffed his armpit, fainted, and fell out of the tree branch and lands on the ground, passed out.

"Aw, well, now, you guys are just embarrassing me. And yourselves." Marty tells them.

"What are you talking about? We worked on that all week." Alex remarked, grabbing his steak. "Wouldn't take us so long if someone would actually show up to practice instead of sleeping. Ayana."

The female leopard stuck her tongue out playfully.

"Let's go. Let's make a wish, babycakes." Gloria tells the zebra, presenting a small chocolate cake nearly dripping with frosting and gummy candies. Marty thought for a moment before furiously blew out the bright, neon candle and plunged his mouth into the cake. He came away, snout coated in a thick layer of smeared, snowy white frosting.

"Come on. What'd you wish for?" Alex pondered, lounging on his brick wall casually.

"Nope! Can't tell you that." Marty replies, shaking his head.

"Come on. Tell." The lion goaded.

Unfortunately, he kept rambling about how bad of an idea it was, spraying bits of chocolate crumbs and frosting from his words.

"No siree. I'm telling you, it's bad luck. You want some bad luck, I'll blab it out. But if you want to be safe, I'll keep my mouth shut." Marty continued.

"Oh, for crying out loud, Marty. Would you just tell us?" Gloria tells him, ending the endless ranting. "I mean really. What could happen?"

Ayana scoots closer to Alex, their shoulders scarcely touch. "Is it suspense, 'cause it's killing me right now."

The other three groaned as Alex promptly gives her a high-five and chuckles.

"OK." Marty finally obliged. "I wished, I could go...to the wild!"

Everything happened so fast.

"The wild?! Whoa!" Alex tumbles backward and his steak fell on the wall with a slap.

In complete shock, Melman swallows the party horn dangling from his mouth and chokes on it as Gloria dropped her jaw. Ayana kept the same expression as Gloria, but she only did that to suppress a smile spreading on her face.

"I told you it was bad luck!" Marty retorts their reactions, humor snipping his tone.

The female hippo had grabbed the giraffe by the head and was smacking the top of his neck to desperately try and dislodge the blower out of Melman's throat.

"The wild?" Alex asks, peering over the ledge. "Are you nuts? That is the worst idea I've ever heard." the birthday horn finally was hacked up out of the giraffe's mouth, clattering against the concrete floor just a few feet away.

Melman gasped for air and looked at his friends. "It's unsanitary!"

"The penguins are going. So why can't I?" Marty asked as a matter of factly.

"The penguins are psychotic!" Alex reminds, altering his spot on the wall, pulling out another steak that he probably had stashed away for later.

Marty shook his head and walked away for a moment. "Come on. Just imagine going back to nature. Back to your roots. Clean air, wide-open spaces!"

Marty spoke of the idea in a voice filled with desire, spreading out his arms in excitement at what would be an incredible plan.

"Well, I hear they have wide-open spaces in Connecticut," Gloria replied.

"Connecticut?" The zebra echoed, perking his ears up.

Melman nodded to confirm. "Yeah. What you got to do is you got to go over to Grand Central. Then you got to take the Metro-North train... north?"

"So one could take the train? Just hypothetically." Marty added instantly, after a moment of deep thought.

"Marty, come on. What would Connecticut have to offer us?" Alex asks.

"Lyme disease," Melman answered with no hesitation to ponder.

"Thank you, Melman."

The responses to his dream were overpopulated by disagreeing comments that Ayana finally argued her feelings on the topic. "...It's not a bad idea."

Marty knew it. He just knew that Ayana would be on his side!

His reaction: His long, narrow ears perking upwards and a grin spreading across his snout, signaling the leopard to continue.

"Imagine this: no cages, no rules, going to bed whenever you want to, and definitely no loud gongs in the morning to disrupt you. Nothing to spoil your fun. And plenty of memories along the way." She smiled in a random direction, nostalgic as she spoke.

"You two just want to throw your lives away for what, fun? memories?" Alex unexpectedly spat. "You have loads of fun here, and we've shared plenty of memories together. Right, guys?"

Melman and Gloria nodded their heads, no surprise there, because they've been in this zoo for their entire lives, or as long as they could remember. Leaving was out of the question.

"No, no, really, really, I just want..." Marty tried to explain but he got interrupted by a confused Alex.

"There's certainly none of this in the wild." Instead of letting Marty speak, he continues to explain his point. "This is a highly refined type of... food thing, that you do not find in the wild."

"You ever thought there might be more to life than steak, Alex?" Marty asks the lion in a serious tone. His face even rendered empathy and even if Alex had noticed, he waved it off.

"He didn't mean that baby. No, no, no." Alex reassured the slab of meat, caressing it on his face.

Ayana didn't have time or energy for his antics. If she did, Alex would've received a punch in the arm.

"Doesn't it bother you guys that you don't know anything about life outside this zoo?"

The three Zoosters contemplated for a split second, Ayana pondering, twisting her head back and forth for their answers.

"Nuh-uh...Mm-mm." Gloria hummed.

"Nope," Melman said.

"Well, I mean, come on. That's just one subject," said Alex.

"Guys, you're not seeing the point." Ayana scoots away, giving herself room to address herself. "Back in Africa, I was free to do whatever, whenever, whoever, however, I wanted to and no one could stop me. I felt happy then, Alex,"

"But don't you feel happy here?" Alex questioned in turn, blue orbs flickering with perplexion.

"Nevermind." Ayana let out a sigh.

Then Alex turned back to the monochromatic animal.

"You got a little, uh... you got a little schmutz right there on your..." Alex implies to the remains of the cake on Marty's face. He sighed and wiped all of it off with a napkin and smiled weakly; one that the leopard knew anywhere.

"Thanks, guys. Thanks for the party. It was great! Really." He turned his back to the others, trudging to his treadmill with his head hanging low.

Alex spat out the bone of his steak, catching it with his tongue, but let it drop on the floor from seeing Marty's current mood.

Everyone felt like their smiles drop dead. Stares followed the zebra's steps; three confused and one understanding.