Mumbling.

Alex The Lion would be the source of the mumbling. He'd talk in sleep, mumbling absolute nonsense, and would suck his thumb. It was an occurrence, but nobody would actually be in his enclosure except him.

well, not until tonight that is.

"Come on, now, baby." The mumbling continued. "My little filet. My little filet mignon with a little fat around the edges. I like that. I like a little fat on my steak. My sweet, juicy steak. You are a rare delicacy. But nothing compared to Ayana. She's priceless." Alex began sucking his thumb.

"Hey, Alex. Psst," Melman whispered, he stretched his neck over so that he was peering down the sleeping lion. "Alex. Alex. Alex!"

"What? What?" Alex yanked his thumb out of his mouth and stared up at his friend.

Melman recoiled. "You suck your thumb?"

Alex realized what had happened and hid his thumb under his body, in hopes that the giraffe would forget about it. "What is it, Melman?"

"Okay, okay. Woah. You know how I have that bladder infection -" he looked around quickly as if someone were around to hear. "- and I have to get up every two hours? Well, I got up to pee, um, and looked over at Marty's pen, which you know I usually don't do- I don't know why- but I did- And this time I looked over and-"

Alex was watching Melman with the expression that someone would wear if they were yanked out of a good dream and then someone else frantically explained something that sounded like gibberish. "What, Melman? What's going on?" Melman stopped in the middle of his story.

"It's Marty and Ayana...they're gone!"

"Gone?!" The lion bumps his head on the concrete of his pen roof. "What do you mean, 'gone'?"

The giraffe had led him to Marty's pen, and Melman noticed a small hole in the ground.

"How long has he been working on this?" Melman wondered aloud, sticking his muzzle down the hole the penguins made earlier.

"Marty! Ayana!" He shouted gently.

Gloria huffed. "They wouldn't fit down there,"

Melman mentally kicked himself at that. Of course, they couldn't fit down this 3 inched hole! Their friend was missing! But he did feel less silly when he saw what Alex was doing.

"Marty? Ayana? Guys! Guys!" Alex asks as he frantically dug through Marty's bedding as if the zebra could be hiding beneath a single piece of hay.

Gloria sighed anxiously and put a hand on her head while Melman stuck his snout inside the hole in the ground once more."This doesn't make any sense! Where would they go?!" She asked herself.

Alex lets out a shaky breath and thought for a second before gasping in horror. He placed his paws on his head, covering the half top of his mane, screaming out the answer:

"Connecticut!"

Gloria's eyes widened in disbelief. "They wouldn't..."

"They would!" Alex yelled. "Ayana talked to me about leaving with her, and I thought she was joking!"

"Oh, no!" Melman gasped, looking back and forth between the mammals rapidly, feeling like he would have a heart attack. "What are we going to do? We gotta-- we gotta-- I mean, we gotta-- we gotta-- we gotta call somebody!"

Any other time, the other animals would playfully roll their eyes at the idea of them- zoo animals- calling humans. But, Alex raced to the nearest payphone and called 911.

"Hello?! Get me some Missing Animals! And hurry. We've got a lost zebra, and leopard probably on the way to Connecticut by now, and we're gonna need..."

Melman was too flabbergasted to say anything, as was Gloria. The humans would punish Marty if they learned of his escape.

The human on the other side of the line only heard the roars of an animal, and he looked at his headset, confused.

"Hello? Hello??" The man answered back.

Alex soon then realized what he was doing. "Wait a second. We can't call the people!"

"What the?" The man spoke before the lion hung up the phone.

Out of nowhere, Alex ripped the payphone off the pole the moment after and tosses it away, destroying it entirely. "They'll be really mad! It'll get Marty and Ayana transferred for good. You don't bite the hand that feeds you."

"Mm-hmm. I know that's right." Gloria agreed, placing her hands on her hips.

"We got to go after them!" Alex declared.

"Go after him?" Melman repeated in shock.

"They're not thinking straight. We gotta stop them from making the biggest mistake of their life. Ayana has been spouting stories about Africa for years, and I guess it brought something out." He sighed, lion stared out into the city streets wondering about his friends. "They're probably out there lost and cold, confused...Poor little guy, poor little girl."

Unfortunately for Alex, Marty strutted his stuff on the sidewalk with Ayana walking before him, on all fours on the streets of New York.

The huge city, out from behind the large walls of the Central Park Zoo, was beautiful. Ayana had to admit that.

Marty suddenly stopped, as well as Ayana when they saw a woman with a black and white blouse walking by. It took a second only to take the sight in before continuing. Marty walked off shaking his head while smiling softly at the coincidence.

Back at the zoo, the three Zoosters were trying to get over the brick wall; separating the zoo from the rest of New York. Melman heaved Alex over the wall with his neck, flailing and swinging like a kid on the Monkey Bars, then he flopped on the ground with a thud.

Gloria, however, used brute force and smashed through the brick wall with no hesitation. It wasn't elegant or graceful, but she got through it, didn't she?

Both Zoosters got up and started to go find Marty and Ayana, while Melman was still hesitant about the situation, so much he even put empty tissue boxes on all four of his hooves.

"Melman, come on!" Gloria urged as she looked ahead of the outside world.

With the brick wall broken, there was nothing to separate Melman from the streets of New York. Or the filthy, putrid germs that awaited them in the city. Alex and Gloria, we're already running ahead. So what if Marty and Ayana came back?

"You know, maybe one of us should wait here in case they come back," Melman suggested, his narrow head peeking from behind the rubble of bricks.

Gloria whirled around. "Oh, no. Not now. This is an intervention. We all got to go."

Meanwhile, Alex examined the city he had only noticed from behind fences before turning around to face his friends. "What's the fastest way to Grand Central?"

"Ooh! You should take Lexington." Melman suggested.

"Melman!"

Jumping at the tone of the hippo's voice slowly but surely began to follow the other Zoosters over and through the rubble of the wall. "OK. 'We.' We should take Lexington." He corrected himself.

"What about Park?" Alex insisted, running with Gloria.

"No, Park goes two ways. You can't time the lights." The mammal explained as he ran after his friends after some difficulty.

Phil and Mason poked their heads out from behind the wall and looked around, checking if anyone saw what just happened.

"I heard Tom Wolfe is speaking at Lincoln Center," Mason told Phil, who communicated by sign language in response. "Well, of course, we're going to throw poo at him!"

After that short conversation, both chimps smiled and left the zoo as well to go find Tom Wolfe.

Back to the two missing animals, they were having a great time at the Rockefeller Skating Rink.

Marty slid gracefully on the ice. He spun in an elegant pirouette spin and landed with grace. But he eventually lost his balance and fell flat on his face.

Ayana snickered, leaning on the side of the rail of the rink, trying to keep her balance on the ice.

Alex, Gloria, and Melman on the other hand were waiting for their subway at the station. The lion peered past a pillar. "I knew we should've taken Park. Are you sure this is the fastest way to Grand Central Station?"

"I don't know! That's what Melman said." Gloria barks back.

Speaking of the giraffe, he walked out of the men's bathroom with a smile and something in his mouth. His boxed-hooves clomping softly against the floor. Both of his friends looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Hey. Hey, you, guys. That room has some nifty little sinks you can wash up in and look!" He sticks his tongue out to show them a urinal cake. "Free mints!"

Both of them cringed, but Alex immediately took some action. "This isn't a field trip." He snapped, yanking the giraffe's tongue and snatching the circular bar from his mouth. He tossed it aside, making it skid across the grey cement before coming to a halt. "This is an urgent mission to save our friends from throwing their life away. Now, where's the train?" He impatiently explains while wiping his hands off with his fur.

Finally, they hear the train's horn.

"Ah! Here it comes." The giraffe piped up.

Melman happily turned his head to the left.

They all poke their heads out to see no train coming their way...until Melman heard the train horn again. He turns around and screamed upon seeing it and all of the mammals ducked their heads back.

"What did Marty say to you? I asked you to talk to him!" Gloria scorns the lion while the train passed by as Melman scooted his head and used his tongue to get the urinal back and he kept it in his mouth while they argued.

"I did! I did! I don't understand! He said, 'Let's go.' And I said, 'What are you, crazy?' And he says, 'I'm ten years old.' And he is black with white stripes, and so then we sang and..."

As they were getting on the train, the people ran out screaming for their lives while Melman's foot gets caught in the door. As a result, he had to lose one of his tissue boxes to make it in.

Back to the Zoo runaways, Marty stopped to ask a police officer's horse for directions to Grand Central Station.

"What you got to do is go straight back down West 42nd."

"Uh-huh."

"It's on your left after Vanderbilt."

"Okay."

"If you hit the Chrysler Building, you've gone too far."

"Uh-huh. Thanks a lot, officer."

Both animals walked away and unsuspectingly went past a red light.

"Hey! Wait for the light!" The Police Horse watched them back up. "Freaks." He mumbled softly as the police officer conversed with the officer on the walkie-talkie.

"Did you say 'zebra'?" The voice on the walkie talkie talking to the officer asks.

"Yeah, yeah, that's right. A zebra and a very big house cat. Right in front of me." The officer replied. "Can I shoot 'em?"

"Negative."

"Then I'm going to need some backup."

The signal turned green and the mammals went on their way.