Carl Hagenbeck, a Hamburg animal dealer, was one of the first to create a zoo without bars, using moats to separate animals in his Stellingen zoo park which opened in 1907: to the public it looked as if gazelles were grazing near the lions.
The despised traffic cops are itching to ticket florists' vans ("like lions around gazelles," says Gary Page), part of a covert effort by successive mayors to kill off the market in favour of developers, most wholesalers believe.
In one village, your correspondent saw a group of SPLA soldiers melting bullets to fashion spearheads for hunting gazelles.
These are expected to include making it easier for foreign entrepreneurs to obtain visas, and easing regulations that make it hard for start-ups to raise money.Mr Case argues that the government and its partners should focus attention and resources on the minority of start-ups that have the potential to grow rapidly; the so-called "gazelles".
Only the fast-breeding rabbits, hares and partridges, and for a while gazelles, could cope with such hunting pressure.
On the other hand, the eastern spur, as proposed, would run smack into the migrating gazelles.
The government has a lousy record of picking winners, as voters were reminded when Solyndra, a green energy firm for which the government guaranteed $535m in loans, went bust in August.Mr Case is also keen to find ways to make it easier for gazelles to raise money from the stockmarket.
Then, gradually and inexorably, starting in the Middle East, they switched their attention to smaller animals, and especially to warm-blooded, fast-breeding species, such as rabbits, hares, partridges and smaller gazelles.
Even South Africa, which considers itself to be the "S" in BRICs, seems sluggish and hidebound next to the gazelles to its north.Now it is Brazil's turn.
But when the government did attempt a far-reaching reform of the labour market earlier this year, it backed down after nine weeks of student and union-led protests across the country.This month Mr de Villepin attempted to regain some ground, by announcing a series of initiatives to help 2,000 so-called gazelles, small, high-growth companies with five to 250 employees.
Animals such as gazelles, which would, on the face of things, be good candidates for domestication, do not have such hierarchies, so they would not easily submit to the discipline that the farmyard requires.
