From A to Zoo

From A to Zoo is an episode of the Happy Tree Friends internet series, the twenty-seventh of season two, and fifty-fourth overall.

HTF Episode Description
This is our first "extra long" episode, coming in at 7 minutes. As we started thinking about how we'd produce shows for the upcoming television series, we had to take a shot at a more complete episode, showcasing more characters and delving into their personalities. We first screened this piece at Comic-Con 2005 to an overwhelming reception. the crowd went nuts! We think it's a great story and the team has had a lot of fun continuing the process for the upcoming series.

Part One
The episode begins with Lumpy, the school bus driver, parking his school bus outside a zoo. Taking attendance, he looks around to see Petunia, Cuddles, Toothy, Sniffles and Flaky, all excited for a day at the zoo (except Flaky, who is nervous as usual). The group enters the zoo, holding hands and singing a familiar tune, and walks up to a sign designating where everything is. While Lumpy ponders what they should look at first, the others scatter and run off to various parts of the zoo. Noticing the kids are gone, Lumpy runs after them.

Cuddles and Toothy are standing by the baboon cage, poking the baboon with a stick and laughing. The two run off when Sniffles approaches, camera in hand. Lumpy catches up to Sniffles, who asks Lumpy to take his photo with the baboon. Lumpy has Sniffles back all the way up to the cage, so that his body is pressed up against the bars. When Lumpy takes the photo, the flash from the bulb sparks something in the baboon, and as a result, the ferocious baboon begins attacking Sniffles.

Lumpy looks around and spots a blow dart gun and two tranquilizer darts in a glass case. Standing next to the case is Petunia, who is eating an ice cream cone. Lumpy runs up to the case, grabs the little hammer hanging from the box, and gives it a hard swing. Unfortunately, the glass shards end up piercing Petunia all over her face, making her scream in extreme agony. Realizing he has two problems to deal with now, he focuses his attention towards Sniffles when the baboon begins tearing him limb from limb. Lumpy quickly shoves a dart into the blow dart gun, and aims it at the baboon. He shoots the dart, but the baboon does not stop. It turns out that he hit Petunia, who was stumbling in pain due to the glass shards piercing her face. Because of this, she ends up falling into a snake pit, where a snake advances on her.

Lumpy tries once more to try and knock out the baboon, but as he is too panicked to pay attention, he unknowingly places the dart into the blow dart gun backwards. He takes a big breath, but the suction of his inhale causes the dart to fly right into his throat, making him choke and eventually faint.

Part Two
Several hours later, Lumpy wakes up, yawning and scratching himself (like he always would after sleeping), apparently the effects of the dart wearing off. Suddenly, Lumpy remembers that Petunia fell into the snake pit, and goes to check on her. Unfortunately, the snake that advanced on Petunia has already eaten her, and is in mid-digestion. Lumpy jumps into the pit to save her, and after a brief struggle, Lumpy winds up getting eaten too. Fortunately, he is able to use his pen to cut the snake open and free himself. Unfortunately, the snake had already begun digesting Petunia, as she is smothered in stomach acid. Realizing that there is nothing else that he can do for her, Lumpy runs off to find the others.

Elsewhere, Toothy stands on all fours while Cuddles stands on his back and peers through a hole in a wooden fence. On the other side of the fence is a rhinoceros, which Cuddles pokes with a stick through the hole in the fence. After getting no reaction, Cuddles sharpens the end of the stick and begins poking the rhinoceros again. Still getting no reaction, Cuddles sticks a branding iron through the fence and brands a circle on the rhinoceros' skin, finally getting the animal's attention.

Lumpy runs up to the mischievous duo and Cuddles runs off, giving a mocking laugh. As Lumpy watches Cuddles leave, Toothy asks Lumpy to lift him up so he can see the rhinoceros through the fence. Sighing, Lumpy agrees, much to Toothy's delight. While running, Cuddles comes upon a helium tank used for inflating balloons and decides to have some fun. He inhales the helium, begins singing in a high-pitched voice and laughs about it.

Meanwhile, Lumpy hears Flaky shriek in the distance. While he turns his attention away, he does not notice the sound of approaching footsteps or Toothy's head being impaled by the rhinoceros' horn through the fence. Determined to see what the problem is, Lumpy places a crate under Toothy's feet and runs off, still not aware that Toothy's head has been stabbed. The rhinoceros removes its horn from the fence and Toothy falls down, dead.

Flaky is now seen bellowing in terror as a cute little baby chick cheeps and hops over to her, trying to get some love. Lumpy runs over to tell her everything is okay, but he accidentally and unknowingly steps on the chick. This causes Flaky to start yelling even more. Lumpy picks her up and runs off, stepping on and killing multiple chicks as he runs. Later he slips, crushing numerous chicks and covering both himself and Flaky with blood and the remains of dead chicks.

Cuddles has finally had enough fun playing with the helium and starts to walk off. He stops when he sees the baboon, who has escaped from his cage and is now playing with Sniffles' camera. He looks over at Cuddles and gets angry, wanting revenge for the humiliation he suffered earlier. Cuddles turns to run away, but he slams his eye into the nozzle of the helium tank. He is unable to get his eye free as helium flows from the tank to his head. His head slowly expands as his screams get higher and higher pitched until they stop altogether. Now dead, one of Cuddles' eyes begins to float up as though it were a long balloon.

The baboon runs off as Lumpy approaches, still carrying a traumatized Flaky. He sees the balloons and decides to get one for Flaky, Unknowingly, he grabs Cuddles' inflated eye, mistaking it for a balloon, and makes a balloon animal out of it. He hands it to Flaky, who stops crying and slowly smiles. He picks her up and carries her off. Unfortunately, Flaky realizes that the "balloon" she is holding is the nerve of Cuddles' eye, and because of this, she gives one last scream just before passing out.

Back on the bus, an exhausted Lumpy plops down in the driver's seat and looks around, taking attendance again. He is surprised to see Petunia, Cuddles, and Toothy laying dead, a traumatized Flaky, and the baboon holding Sniffles' camera. Lumpy looks suspiciously at the baboon until it places Sniffles' glasses on. Lumpy shrugs, either thinking the baboon is Sniffles or not caring, and drives off. From outside, we see a silhouette of the bus. Seconds later, a bright light flashes from the camera through the bus's windows and the baboon begins screeching. As the iris closes in completely, we hear the bus crash.

Moral
"Don't bite the hand that feeds you!"

Deaths

 * 1) The baboon rips out Sniffles' organs.
 * 2) Petunia gets digested by a snake, and the stomach acid deteriorates her body.
 * 3) After getting eaten by the same snake that ate Petunia, Lumpy uses a pen to free himself, ripping apart the snake's body.
 * 4) Toothy's head is impaled by a rhinoceros' horn.
 * 5) Numerous baby chicks are stepped on and crushed by Lumpy. Three are impaled on Flaky's quills.
 * 6) Cuddles' head fills up with helium, inflating his brain, or possibly killing him from helium poisoning.
 * 7) Flaky, Lumpy, and the baboon may have died after their bus crashed. If they survived the crash, it is possible that the baboon killed them afterward. (Debatable and death not shown)

Injuries

 * 1) Petunia's face is impaled by shards of glass.
 * 2) Petunia is shot in the eye by a tranquilizer.
 * 3) Petunia falls into a snake pit.
 * 4) Lumpy knocks himself out when he tranquilizes himself in the throat.
 * 5) Lumpy wrestles with a snake and ends up getting eaten alive.

Goofs

 * 1) The directions of Lumpy's antlers change multiple times throughout the episode.
 * 2) The baboon's cage is floating when Sniffles stands next to it.
 * 3) When Lumpy asks Sniffles to move towards the baboon cage, Lumpy has three fingers and a thumb. When he does the 'OK' signal, he has four fingers and a thumb. From that point onward, Lumpy only has three fingers and a thumb.
 * 4) When Lumpy breaks the glass, none of the shards hit Petunia, yet in the next shot chucks of glass appear on her.
 * 5) When Petunia falls into the snake pit, a thud can be heard before she hits the ground.
 * 6) When Lumpy grabs his throat you can see three hands. The third one is not connected to an arm.
 * 7) When Lumpy falls down, the background gets slightly darker.
 * 8) When Petunia is shown having started to be digested, she has her flower on her head, despite how it fell off her when she fell into the snake pit and was not there when the snake first appeared. It is possible that it could have fallen on her before the snake started eating her.
 * 9) The rhinoceros' horn is too big to go through the hole without taking a chunk out of the fence.
 * 10) Moreover, the rhinoceros' horn should have pierced Toothy's right eye, but instead, it pierces his forehead.
 * 11) When Lumpy is taking Flaky back to the bus, both his antlers are turned upwards. They should be pointing in opposite directions.
 * 12) Sniffles' glasses are broken when he is attacked by the baboon, but the baboon is later seen wearing them (intact) while on the bus.
 * 13) In the bus, Lumpy has chicken blood on his chest, but it disappears when he slouches and then reappears when he sits up straight again.
 * 14) When the baboon puts on Sniffles' glasses, his hand becomes blue (like Sniffles' color), but it changes back to its original color when the baboon holds the arm.
 * 15) The dart in Petunia's eye disappears when Lumpy kills the snake, but it can be seen again when her body is on the bus at the end.
 * 16) The tape on Sniffles' glasses is missing when the baboon is holding them; it appears on his nose. (Adding to this is the fact that the glasses go behind the tape when the baboon puts the glasses on, but the tape is too small, so the frame can be seen around the tape).
 * 17) When Cuddles is standing on Toothy's back, Toothy's tail is smaller than normal.
 * 18) When Lumpy appears, Cuddles runs away and his branding iron falls right before Toothy, but in the next scene, the branding iron is gone.
 * 19) Unless Lumpy was careful (which is far from plausible), he should have gotten pierced by Flaky's quills.
 * 20) At the very end, the baboon's nose quickly goes over the camera it is holding, then quickly goes behind it as it should.
 * 21) At the end when Lumpy takes attendance, as he clicks his pen, it abruptly disappears.
 * 22) When Toothy is impaled by the horn of the rhinoceros, the horn does not have any blood on it. But when the rhino takes it out, blood abruptly appears.
 * 23) When the baboon runs away after killing Cuddles, the camera disappears, but later, it reappears during the bus scene at the end.
 * 24) When Flaky screams, her right arm is detached.
 * 25) When he leads the characters into the zoo, Lumpy does not appear to really hold Petunia's hand at all.

Quick Shot Moment
Part 1: When Petunia stumbles backwards before she falls into the snake pit, there is a brief shot of Petunia screaming in agony from the glass shards impaling her face.

Part 2: After Lumpy accidentally steps on the chick that made Flaky scream in fear, there is a brief shot of Cuddles with the helium nozzle stuck in his eye. (This almost spoils Cuddles' death.)

Note: This is fixed in the Classics Remastered versions (for the first and the second part) on Mondomedia.com.

Trivia

 * The title of this episode is a parody of the phrase "from A to Z", which means from start to finish.
 * This is the last time the characters have their Season 1-2 designs. Every episode after this one has a new, improved design matching the TV series. (An exception being the Break episodes, where the characters still have the previous designs, but only for those episodes)
 * This is the second episode in which Lumpy is a bus driver. The first is Happy Trails Pt. 1.
 * Coincidentally, both episodes are season finales.
 * The buses in both episodes looks exactly the same.
 * This is the only season finale that Lumpy dies in so far (Debatable, he may have survived the crash at the end of the episode).
 * If Flaky and Lumpy survived or died in the bus crash instead of being killed by the baboon, Cuddles would be the only character whose death wasn't caused by an animal.
 * In the beginning of the episode, all of the kids except Flaky sing the HTF Theme song when entering the Zoo. The other times the characters sing the theme are Cuddles, Flaky, and Giggles in This Is Your Knife, and most of the cast in Happy Trails Parts 1 and 2. They would all later sing the song again in Take a Hike.
 * Lumpy would later go camping with the same group (with the addition of Nutty) in Take a Hike.
 * Funnily enough, the animal that Lumpy makes out of Cuddles' eye is a rabbit, just like Cuddles.
 * Cuddles is indirectly responsible for Toothy's death, as he made the rhino angry in the first place.
 * This episode and A Sucker for Love are the only internet episodes that are as long as the TV series' episodes.
 * Lumpy is shown to be left-handed during the entirety of this episode.
 * Despite Ellen Connell replacing her at this point, this episode is the final time Dana Belben is credited, as they used her old voice clips.
 * This episode makes Lumpy and/or Flaky (Debatably) the last characters to die in the second internet season.
 * This is the second time that Flaky cries. The first was in Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya!.
 * This is the last episode in which Sniffles has a long snout. In all future appearances, Sniffles' snout will be shorter (first shown in the previous episode).
 * The picture Lumpy takes of Sniffles shows him with his short snout.