They have returned.

After much worry and bad humours of the bile, the Santa Barbara Zoological Garden staff welcomed back their Grendels with great pomp and celebration and reopened the Grendel exhibit to the public Monday. Groundlings, nobles and their thegns could once more gaze upon the eyes of fire, the carp-toothed mouths and humped backs of Grendels, which had been missing for over a month prior.

The Grendels were transferred to another zoo temporarily after they ate their previous keeper, Alex Aeschere. However, the zoo sold the Grendels over ye olde Internet to a man who kept them on his feudal estate in the Land of Texas – a primitive duchy where the former nobleman was ruled by corruption due to his close ties with the peat industry.

The SB Zoo found their Grendels through ye olde eBay and brought them back due to popular demand.

“I like watching the Grendels play with the warriors that are released every half hour. It really gives new meaning to the term ‘meat market,'” one young maiden said. “I have not seen anything this exciting since that Connecticut Yankee got loose in King Arthur’s Court.”

“Seeing the beastly descendent of Cain makes me feel so self-righteous, I can say to myself, ‘Hell, I can cast the first stone,'” said one visitor who was on leave from the Crusades and visiting with his family.

The Grendels’ Keeper, John Beowulf, bespoke that he is in good humour to have them back and said the Grendels have vigorously returned to their diet of mainly meat and simple sugars.

“Our Grendels certainly like their Danish every morning,” Beowulf said. “They just could not start the day without a hot, fleshy Dane.”

Beowulf, a zoologist who was referred to as “king of the Geeks” in high school biology class, said a common misconception about Grendels is that they will regenerate new arms if old ones are ferociously ripped from their bodies.

“I think people are confusing Grendels with dragons, which lose their tails to confuse enemies and make their escape, and then can later grow new ones,” he said.

The zoo is also opening a new heavy petting zoo for the children where they can ride the great bulls of Gilgamesh, or gently stroke them.

For more information send a messenger pigeon to SB Zoo, located atop the hill by yonder ocean. SB Zoo is not responsible for avian agents eaten by dragons.

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