Sunday 21 October 2012

Zoo Wars, Parts 1 and 2


Zoo Wars:

Know Your Enemy:

Ryan had hand-delivered six tiger cubs. However, dragging those bloody bundles of teeth and claws from their barely-sedated mothers had never chilled him like a visit to his boss’s office. He knocked nervously on the heavy door, on which was screwed a brass nameplate: Victor Tasman BA, Managing Director, Sherwell Zoo.

“Come in” Ryan opened the door to find the slender figure of Victor slouched in a high-backed chair, fiddling with a silver lighter in the shape of a revolver. “Sit down Ryan.” Victor commanded. Ryan sat. “You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you in today” Victor gestured at Ryan with the lighter. Ryan, momentarily unsettled by the sight of his boss waving a gun-shaped object at his head, nodded. 

“Well, I’ll answer your question with one of my own. What does Sherwell Zoo mean to you Ryan?”

While he enjoyed his work as Head Keeper, Ryan first and foremost saw his job as a deal-clincher with animal-loving girls at local bars. Knowing that this was not the answer Victor sought, he fumbled for a more noble sentiment: “Er, a place for conservation, a place where people can come to explore nature, um, a job, I suppose…”

“Interesting.” Victor pocketed the lighter, stood up and walked to his window. “To me, it means something different. Something…grander” He turned to face Ryan, silhouetted in the evening sun. Affecting a slight New York Italian accent, he spoke: “It means family. And I don’t just mean the people. I mean the animals. Each and every last one of them, from the elephants down to little Billy Fins here.” Victor gestured to a bug-eyed goldfish swimming around a granite bust of Al Pacino as Scarface. “Do you have a family Ryan?” Victor strode over to Ryan and placed a hand on the back of his chair, peering down at his employee with an unflinching gaze. 


 “No, I don’t.”
 
Victor sighed and returned to his chair. “Sadly, there is someone out there who I have reason to believe intends to harm my family. And I have called you here to ask you for your help in protecting Sherwell Zoo.” Ryan swallowed hard. “Ryan, my boy, I have always seen great potential in you. You know that this zoo has a rival. Namely, the Sherwell Valley Wildlife Experience. For five years, this two-bit menagerie has done me a grave insult by its presence. Now, I have had enough.”

Victor leaned across his desk conspiratorially “In short, Ryan, I am declaring war on the Market Sherwell Wildlife Experience” Incredulity crept across Ryan’s face. “I am enlisting you as my second-in-command.”

“You will be my man on the ground: my enforcer, co-ordinating this campaign. Will you accept this responsibility?”

“What will happen if I refuse?” Ryan asked, his throat dry.

“Would you refuse this task? You would refuse to protect your family?” Victor emphasised the last word, clenching his fist slightly as he spoke.

Ryan was momentarily silent, then, unable to bear the tension any longer, he stammered, “I – I suppose not. I – I’ll do it.”

“A fine choice Ryan. You may leave now, I trust you will not let me down.”

The Spoonbill:

A thick morning mist rose around the pond in the waterfowl enclosure at Sherwell Zoo. The tall figure of Victor loomed out of the mist on the far side of the pond. Ryan, in his capacity as Head Keeper, had been called out of bed at 6 am by a clearly enraged Victor, who had told him that “A calamity has befallen us. I will meet you at the waterfowl enclosure. The nature of the incident should make itself obvious to you there.” 

This cryptic call had led Ryan to the zoo on Sunday morning, mind racing with concerns about what the hell Victor might want with him this time. His boss had a tendency to make unusual demands of him: keep this briefcase in your house for the weekend, start putting caffeine tablets in the sloth feed, and post this threatening letter to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals…That sort of thing.

Ryan noticed that, on this occasion, he was not alone with Victor. He spotted the diminutive form of Samaria Bougainville heading across the wet grass towards the bird house. Samaria was a junior keeper, whose eagerness to involve herself with nature (which sprang from an eye-wateringly expensive bohemian education in North London) ensured she was normally roped in to help with unpleasant tasks at the zoo. Her presence was not a good sign, Ryan thought apprehensively.

“Ryan! Ryan! Come over here, I need you over here right away boy!” barked Victor. Ryan started to jog around the pond towards Victor. When he was about halfway round, he caught sight of a lumpen and bloodied shape at Victor’s feet. It looked like one of the spoonbills had been killed. Christ, he hoped it wasn’t one of the black-faced spoonbills. They were the rarest species of waterfowl on display at Sherwell Zoo, and Victor had a particular penchant for them. 


 “They killed him! They killed him Ryan!” screamed Victor at the Head Keeper, who had arrived at the scene and had paused to catch his breath. 

“They killed who, Victor?” asked Ryan. 

“Luciano. They killed Luciano!” Victor’s voice was cracking with emotion. Oh fuck, not Luciano: this was going to be a nightmare, thought Ryan. “Um, are you sure that that was Luciano?” he asked hesitantly. 

Victor reached down into the grass with a gloved hand and lifted the decapitated corpse of a spoonbill up by the left leg with an air of morbid triumph. The bird’s long neck waggled in the air, spurting blood across Victor’s trenchcoat, whilst a lung flopped uselessly from its ravaged chest.

“Christ Victor, put that thing down, it’s bleeding all over the place.” Ryan said without thinking, and instantly regretted it.

“That thing?!” exclaimed Victor “That thing?! He had a name you impudent boy, he had a name!”
At this, Victor fell to his knees and buried his tear-streaked face in what remained of Luciano’s breast. Even by Victor’s scenery-chewing lunatic behavioural standards, this was some pretty melodramatic stuff, Ryan thought as he watched his middle-aged boss weeping into the spoonbill’s entrails.

“Is everything alright over there?” called Samaria. No, of course it isn’t, you stupid fucking hippy, Ryan thought angrily. This was worse than the time that that pit-bull attacked a goat in the petting zoo: at least then Victor had kept his face out of the remains. “Er, not really…I think you’d better come over here and help Victor!” Ryan called back. “Alright, hold on, I’ll be right over!” Samaria replied.

Victor’s sobs became louder, and he started to rock back and forth. Ryan noticed that some faecal matter had escaped Luciano’s guts and was creeping through Victor’s hair. He averted his gaze and watched Samaria as she ran towards the pair. When she caught sight of what Victor was doing, she suppressed a slight retch before speaking: “I’ve checked the bird house, and as far as I can tell, it’s just Luciano that got attacked.” Victor seemed oblivious, lost in his repulsive grief ritual. Ryan took Samaria aside and downwind of what was left of the spoonbill. 

“When was all this found?” he asked Samaria. “Um, I’m not absolutely sure. I was finishing up at the nocturnal mammal house when Victor called me. He was already quite bad when I got to the waterfowl enclosure.” Samaria replied. 


“Oh, I see. And, it is definitely Luciano that was killed?” said Ryan. “Yeah, we checked his leg ring, then Victor kind of went silent for a bit and just sort of stood there. I said that I’d go and check if the other birds were OK: he didn’t really say anything…” Samaria trailed off and the pair stood silently watching Victor’s anguish.

After a minute or so, Ryan collected his thoughts sufficiently to suggest that “Er…maybe one of us should, you know, stop him from…doing that. I mean, that cannot be healthy…”

“I suppose we could try and stop him…but he is grieving though, I mean, it’s important for him to get the grief out somehow. If he feels the need to emotionalise things in this way, maybe we should just let things take their course. I mean, he could be in shock or something, if we try and separate him from Luciano, he might faint or have a fit or something…” Samaria replied.

“Well, if he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’ll probably get bird flu, so I really think that one of us should take that thing away from him.” Said Ryan.

“Well, alright, I suppose, if you want to stop him, go ahead, but I think maybe we should let him carry on until, you know, he feels able to stop.” Samaria fiddled nervously with one of her necklaces of hand-carved wooden beads as she spoke.

Ryan winced as Victor’s hard grip on the corpse caused a jet of warm blood to arc out of its right flank and fall, hissing, onto the grass. “No. No, we can’t let him carry on with this. It’d be totally irresponsible. He’s likely to get sick as it is. We really do have to intervene I think.” 

At this point, Victor suddenly drew his bloodied face out of the dead spoonbill and whispered: 

“I know who did this. I know who did this to him.”

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