The Cost of Wiggling One‘s Butt

Old Li Tou was a temporary worker at the zoo. His daily job involved driving his beat-up van back and forth between the city center and the wildlife rescue station in the suburbs. One day, he received an urgent notice stating that a wild panda was "parading" on the highway, wiggling its butt while running, which was seriously disrupting traffic.

Old Li Tou mumbled to himself, "Is this panda drunk or something?" He had been driving for half his life, and he had seen all sorts of strange animals. But one that dances on the highway was definitely a first. When he arrived on scene, sure enough, there was a crowd of people pointing at a black and white furball, and the panda was wiggling its butt with a good sense of rhythm. It took Old Li Tou a great deal of effort to get the "dancing king" into his van.

The panda was locked in a cage, seemingly not finished yet, still grunting and wiggling its butt every now and then. Old Li Tou shook his head, started the van, and drove towards the rescue station. On the way, Old Li Tou found it a bit strange, how did this panda end up on the highway? Did it want to learn square dancing from humans? He couldn't help but look at the panda through the rearview mirror. The panda was hugging the cage bars, looking aggrieved, as if to say: "I didn't want to wiggle!"

When they arrived at the rescue station, Old Li Tou handed the panda to the vet and then went to the office to sign in. As soon as he entered, he heard his colleagues in the office talking animatedly.

"Hey, have you heard? The panda that was dancing on the highway got fined!"

"Fined? It doesn't have money, who's paying?"

"The zoo is paying! They said they didn't manage the wildlife well, causing social disruption!"

Old Li Tou almost spat out his tea when he heard that. A fine for a panda? He laughed, thinking the whole thing was absurd.

The next day, when Old Li Tou went back to the rescue station, he found that the panda was gone. He asked the vet, who sighed and said, "It was taken away by people from the Animal Behavior Research Center, they said they wanted to study why it was dancing on the highway."

Old Li Tou thought, what's the point of the study? It was just wiggling its butt! But he dared not ask too much, after all, he was just a temporary worker.

Over the next few days, Old Li Tou repeated the same work of picking up and dropping off various injured animals. But he always felt like something was missing, as if he had an empty feeling every day. Until one day, he saw a post on a forum called "Animal Voices":

"A tribute to those souls trapped by life: we repeat the same life every day, just like being locked in a cage. We can only express our unwillingness and resistance by wiggling our bodies, even if it seems absurd and ridiculous..."

Old Li Tou stared at the post, dumbfounded. He suddenly understood why the panda was wiggling its butt on the highway. It wasn't drunk, and it wasn't learning square dancing. It was a silent protest, a protest against this boring and absurd life.

A few more days passed, and Old Li Tou received a new task, he was asked to take some injured birds to the artificial wetland park in the city center. The park was filled with people coming and going, laughter and joy. Old Li Tou placed the birdcages on the grass, watching the birds flying freely, he suddenly felt a surge of restlessness in his heart.

He thought of the panda that was taken away, he wanted to know, how is it now? Is it still wiggling its butt? Is it also looking for a place where it can fly freely?

Old Li Tou suddenly made a bold decision. He opened the birdcages, letting the injured birds fly into the sky, and then, he stood in the center of the park and began to wiggle his own butt.

Passersby stopped to watch, some whispered, some laughed, some took pictures and uploaded them. Old Li Tou didn't care, he just wiggled and wiggled, until he had twisted himself into a big "absurd".

A few days later, Old Li Tou received a ticket, stating that he was disrupting public order and was fined two thousand. Old Li Tou looked at the ticket and smiled, he felt that he would accept the fine. At least, he proved one thing, even humans, like a butt-wiggling panda, can express their dissatisfaction with this absurd world.