Gaza, Oct 11 (THAINDIAN NEWS) There were two crowd-pulling zebras in the Marah Land Zoo, who unfortunately died of hunger. Since they were one of the main attractions of the zoo, which boasts of a dozen animals, so the zookeepers were very concerned, about how to go about it. They also didn’t have any money to replace the dead animals, but what they had was creativity.

So they dyed 2 donkeys with stripes to make them look like zebras.

One local man was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that since his three kids had never seen real zebras before, they enjoyed the Gaza version; basically, they didn’t know the difference.

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 paintbrush.

“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 broken the back to bring into Israel-blockaded Gaza via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, said owner Mohammed Bargouthi. “It would have cost me $40,000 to get a real one.”

As long as the children are coming in, after paying the zoo’s entrance fees, which brings in the revenue to watch the donkeys posing as zebras, nobody is complaining.