Princess Angelica, Part-time Lion Trainer

by Monique Polak

  Leopold suggests we sit on the bench outside Mwezi’s enclosure.

  Mwezi is lying in the sunshine at the back of her pen.

  “You should show Leopold your trick for getting Mwezi to come over,” Joon says. She slides to the end of the bench, making room for Leopold and me. I am about to tell Joon and Leopold that I think it is best to let Mwezi rest so she can recover from her toothache when there is a loud thunk.

  Joon is lying flat on her back beside the bench. Her legs are up in the air like an upside-down table.

  I help Joon to her feet.

  She shakes some dry leaves from her hair. “I don’t know what happened,” she says.

  “Here!” Leopold says. “Let me try!”

  There is something wrong with the bench, because Leopold slides off too. He lands with a thunk in the same spot.

  “This bench is dangerous,” Joon says. “We should tell Hilda about it.”

  Hilda is the custodian.

  Joon points across the way to the porcupine’s enclosure. “Isn’t that Hilda over there?”

  Hilda comes over when we call her. “Hmm,” she says as she kneels down to examine the bench. “I don’t think this bench can be fixed. I will tell Ms. Jessup to order a new one. I will also need to make a sign warning people not to sit here. While I am gone, could you three make sure no one uses this bench?”

  Joon and Leopold sit on the ground, a safe distance from the bench. I decide to take a better look.

  Leopold shakes his head when he sees what I am up to. “Hilda told us to make sure no one uses the bench,” he says.

  “I am not using the bench,” I tell him. “I am inspecting it.”

  “Did I mention Jelly is good at fixing things?” Joon asks Leopold.

  “Hilda said the bench cannot be fixed,” Leopold says.

  “No,” I correct him, “Hilda said that she did not think the bench could be fixed. I have a different opinion.”

  It does not take me long to figure out the problem. One of the bench’s wooden legs is cracked. If I could find an object about the height of one of the legs, I might be able to prop up the bench. If my repair was solid, this old bench would be safe to use until the new one arrives.

  I look up at the sky. Sometimes ideas come to me when I am gazing at the clouds. But today the sky is perfectly blue. There are no clouds to inspire me.

  Sometimes I get ideas when I am moving. So instead of staying in a squat on the ground, studying the problem, I get up and stretch my arms.

  “What in the world are you doing now?” Leopold asks.

  “Thinking,” I tell him.

  “I have never seen anybody think while they are stretching,” Leopold says.

  I walk to the oak tree that grows outside Mwezi’s enclosure and press the sole of my foot against the tree’s thick trunk.

  That’s when I notice the tin pail. It is the sort of pail animal keepers use to bring food to the animals at the center. Someone must have forgotten the pail here. I take it back to the bench. It is about the same height as the legs of the bench.

  I flip the pail over. That way the wider end will be on the ground, making the bench more solid. I wedge the pail into place. It fits! I push on the other three legs and on the pail to make sure the bench is solid.

  “Don’t!” Leopold shouts when he sees me sit down on the bench.

  “Don’t what?” I ask him. I wave from the bench. It does not wobble, and I do not slide off.

  “I told you Jelly was good at fixing things!” Joon tells Leopold.

  “I see that,” Leopold says. “Jelly, call Mwezi over. Then you can show us how you put your head in her mouth!”

  Chapter Five

  “Today’s not a good day for me to put my head in Mwezi’s mouth,” I tell Leopold. The three of us are sitting on the newly fixed bench. “You know, Mwezi’s toothache. Poor thing.”

  But I can show Leopold my trick for getting Mwezi to come over. I get up from the bench and blow hard against the bars of the enclosure. In the distance we can see Mwezi’s golden ears turn up, but she does not come bounding over.

  Joon sighs. “It usually works,” she tells Leopold.

  “Maybe Mwezi is tired. Toothaches can tire a lioness out,” I say.

  Joon raises one finger in the air. “There’s something I’ve been wondering about, Jelly. And maybe Leopold will want to use the answer in his article. When did you first know you wanted to become a lion trainer?”

  “That is a good question,” Leopold says.

  “I knew the minute I found Mwezi trapped in the snare. It might have been the way she looked at me with those orange eyes of hers. Like we were already friends.”

  “Is that the way I look at you?” Joon asks.

  “Exactly. Except that your eyes aren’t orange.”

  This conversation reminds me of another interesting thing about lions. “The fact that Mwezi’s eyes were orange helped us figure out her age. When female lion cubs are born, their eyes are bluish-gray, but when the cubs are two to three years old, their eyes turn orange,” I tell Joon and Leopold.

  “You sure know a lot about lions,” Leopold says.

  I am so pleased by the compliment, I nearly roar. “That’s because in today’s world, lion trainers don’t just teach lions to do tricks. Another important part of a lion trainer’s job is teaching people about lions—and about what we can do to protect lions who live in the wild and in refuge centers. Big-cat keepers like Ms. Jessup do that too.”

  “So you’re a lion trainer and a people teacher,” Joon says.

  “Exactly.”

  “A group of lions is called a pride,” Leopold says. I guess I’m not the only one who knows lion facts—although that one is pretty basic.

  “Correct,” I say. “But do you know who in the pride hunts for food?” I ask Leopold.

  “I bet it’s the male,” he says.

  “Wrong!” I call out. “It’s the lioness!”

  “How interesting,” Joon says.

  At that moment Hilda marches over. She is carrying a long sheet of plywood. On it she has written the words:

  Hilda drops the sign to the ground when she spots us. “What are you three doing?” she asks. “I asked you to keep people from sitting on that broken bench.”

  “Jelly fixed it,” Leopold tells her.

  “She is good at fixing things,” Joon adds.

  Hilda makes a harrumphing sound. “Get off that bench on the double so I can check if it is safe!”

  We scramble off the bench. When Hilda looks at the bench, she harrumphs again. At first I think she has found a new problem. But then she looks up at me and says, “Nice job, Jelly!”

  Hilda walks over to the enclosure. “Good afternoon, Mwezi!” she calls out.

  “Mwezi is resting in the sun,” Joon tells Hilda. “She has a toothache.”

  Hilda harrumphs for the third time. “A toothache?” she says. “That’s odd. Nobody told me anything about that.”

  Hilda’s radio goes off. We hear Ms. Jessup’s voice crackling on the other end of the line. She needs Hilda to report to the main building.

  Leopold scrunches up his eyes as he looks at me. “Are you sure Mwezi has a toothache? Hilda seemed surprised to hear about it.”

  “Of course I’m sure. Besides, I’m the part-time lion trainer. Not Hilda!”

  Leopold scrunches up his eyes again. “Maybe, Jelly, you’re afraid to put your head in Mwezi’s mouth.”

  “Of course I’m not afraid!”

  That is when I realize it is time to come up with another story. And it had better be a good one! Otherwise, I may really have to put my head in Mwezi’s mouth. And though Mwezi likes me, there is always a chance that she could eat me. Not that she has ever harmed a human being. But Mwezi is a lioness after all—so I’d rather not put my head in her mouth.

  “Did I ever tell you about Mwezi’s airplane ride to Canada?” I ask Leopold and Joon.

  “Did she travel in cargo—in the belly
of the airplane?” Joon asks.

  “Of course not! Mwezi had her own seat,” I say. “Two seats, in fact!”

  Chapter Six

  Sometimes I plan my stories in advance, like when I tricked my best friend, Maddie, into thinking there was an elevator in my house. Other times, I can feel a story growing in my head.

  That’s what happens with my story about Mwezi’s airplane ride.

  “The seat belt was a bit of a problem,” I tell Joon and Leopold. “Airplane seat belts are not designed for four-hundred-pound lionesses.”

  Joon claps her hands. “I bet you found a way to fix that problem!”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. I borrowed my dad’s belt. His pants were loose without it, but he didn’t mind. And when I attached my dad’s belt to the seat belt, and it still wasn’t big enough for Mwezi, I went to the flight deck and asked the pilot if I could borrow his belt too.”

  Leopold scrunches up his eyes again. “Passengers are not allowed on the flight deck,” he says.

  “The plane was still on the ground, and the door to the flight deck was open. The pilot was really nice about it. He even asked me to take a photo of him and Mwezi so he could send it to his wife and children,” I say. “But then the funniest thing happened.”

  “Tell us!” Joon says.

  “While the pilot and Mwezi were posing for the photo, the pilot’s pants fell off! So in my photo, he is in his underwear!”

  Leopold laughs so hard he snorts. “I’m not sure your story is true, Jelly, but it sure is funny,” he says.

  Joon is a better audience because she believes all my stories. “Weren’t the other passengers nervous?” she asks. “I’d be nervous if I was sitting next to a lioness. Even if she was as well behaved as Mwezi.”

  “I was the one sitting next to her. There was only one passenger on the airplane who objected. An older man. It was because he had a severe cat allergy. He sneezed the whole way home,” I say.

  “If…and only if your story is true,” Leopold says, “it must have been a very long flight from Africa to Canada. So what did Mwezi do during all that time?”

  Leopold is trying to spoil my fun. But I won’t let him. Besides, Leopold is no match for me and my imagination!

  “You’re right,” I tell Leopold. “It was a long flight. In fact, it was two flights. First we had to fly from Kilimanjaro to Amsterdam. Then there was a six-hour layover before the flight to Montreal.”

  Joon puts her hands on her waist and looks Leopold in the eye. “Jelly wouldn’t know all that if this was a made-up story.”

  “Maybe,” Leopold says.

  Maybe is progress. That inspires me to continue my story. “The flight from Kilimanjaro to Amsterdam took over ten hours. But Mwezi spent most of that time sleeping. Lions love to sleep. It’s another thing they have in common with house cats. Of course, I brought Mwezi’s pajamas for her to wear, and I made her floss her teeth.”

  “Mwezi wears pajamas?” Joon sounds surprised.

  “Only when she’s traveling,” I say. “They’re blue flannel. She didn’t like the pink ones.”

  Leopold raises his palm in the air. “Wait a second! Are you saying Mwezi speaks English?”

  Leopold’s question makes me realize that perhaps I have gone too far with my story. So I laugh—as hard as I can. “You’re so funny, Leopold!” Every kid I ever met likes to hear that he or she is funny. “I wasn’t saying Mwezi speaks English. But Mwezi and I communicate without words. She hissed when we were at the store and I showed her the pink pajamas. She roared when she saw the blue ones.”

  “What did you and Mwezi do during the layover in Amsterdam?” Joon asks.

  “That was my favorite part of the trip,” I tell her. “We took the train from the Schiphol airport”—my parents visited Amsterdam last year, so I know the name of the airport—“to downtown Amsterdam. Mwezi wanted to see a windmill.”

  Leopold raises his hand again. “How did Mwezi tell you that?” he asks.

  “At the Schiphol airport, Mwezi kept looking at a poster with a windmill on it. That’s how I knew she wanted to see a windmill.”

  “How did she behave on the flight to Montreal?” Joon asks.

  “That was no problem at all. We watched movies the whole time.”

  “What movies?” Leopold asks.

  How can one person think of so many questions? Maybe that’s what makes Leopold a good reporter for his school newspaper. “The Lion King, of course. It’s Mwezi’s favorite. We watched it three times.”

  “I thought you said you watched movies. Not just one movie three times!” Leopold says.

  I am trying to come up with an answer when Hilda and Ms. Jessup come running toward us. “A little boy said he saw a lion loose in our rescue center!” Ms. Jessup shouts. “We think he was just making up a story—you know how kids are—but we’ve come to check on Mwezi all the same.”

  Ms. Jessup and Hilda press their faces up against the wire of the enclosure.

  “I don’t see her. Do you?” Hilda says to Ms. Jessup.

  “No, I don’t see her either!” Ms. Jessup sounds worried.

  Joon taps on Ms. Jessup’s elbow. “Mwezi was lying in the sun before,” Joon says. “We saw her.”

  “Why don’t you ask your new part-time lion trainer to call her?” Leopold says.

  Ms. Jessup raises her eyebrows. “New part-time lion trainer? What in the world are you talking about?”

  Now Leopold and Joon will know that I’ve been making up stories!

  Except that at this very moment, we have a bigger problem to deal with.

  “Oh no! Look at the back of the enclosure!” Ms. Jessup says. “The gate is open. One of the animal keepers must have forgotten to close it. Mwezi is on the loose!”

  Chapter Seven

  “Code red. I repeat, code red. All visitors to the animal refuge center must report immediately to the main building. This is NOT A DRILL! All visitors, report IMMEDIATELY to the main building.”

  The announcement comes booming through the loudspeakers. Code red means a potentially dangerous animal has escaped its enclosure.

  “What’s going on?” I hear a woman ask.

  Somewhere else, a dad is shushing his baby.

  Several people are running down the path to the main building.

  “A lion has esc—” Joon starts to shout, but when I squeeze her hand, she stops. It will only make things worse if people start to panic.

  Joon spins around and glares at me. “You shouldn’t have lied to us about being the new part-time lion trainer. I can’t believe I fell for another one of your stories!” she says.

  Leopold shakes his head. “I didn’t believe her. Not for a second.”

  “Look,” I tell them. “I’m really, really, super sorry. Believe me. I can explain more later. Right now I have to help find Mwezi!”

  I do not realize that Ms. Jessup is standing behind me until she taps on my shoulder. “Angelica, you will not be helping to get Mwezi back. You and your friends are to report to the main building along with all the other visitors. Now!”

  I can tell from Ms. Jessup’s tone that there is no arguing with her.

  Hilda is standing near the door to the main building, directing people inside.

  “Can we get into our cars and go home?” a woman asks her.

  “Absolutely not,” Hilda says. “You’ll have to wait inside until we can secure the perimeter.”

  “Has there been some kind of crime?” a man asks.

  “There has not been a crime. But I’m afraid I can’t provide any more details at the moment,” Hilda tells him.

  Ms. Jessup is huddled with two of the keepers who feed the animals. Though I cannot hear what they are saying, I know they must be coming up with a search plan.

  The keepers scatter in different directions, and Ms. Jessup comes inside to address the crowd. The room goes quiet. Ms. Jessup clears her throat.

  “I don’t want anyone to panic, but the news I am about
to share is rather disturbing. One of our rescue animals, the lioness Mwezi, has escaped from her enclosure. We have no reason to believe Mwezi is dangerous—in all the time she has lived in captivity, Mwezi has never hurt a human being—but as a precaution, we are asking all of you to stay inside here until the situation is under control. You can get drinks and donuts at the cafeteria—for no charge, of course,” she says.

  Leopold nudges me. “That’s good news about the donuts.”

  Ms. Jessup does a head count of all the people gathered in the main building. “Thirty-one, thirty-two…hmm. According to our ticket-sales records, two people are missing.” She takes her radio out of her pocket. “We need to locate them immediately and get them here.”

  Just as Ms. Jessup is about to speak into the radio, a woman in a flowery dress raises her hand. “I think I know who’s missing. I saw an elderly couple by the beaver dam. The woman was in a wheelchair. They’re not here.”

  “A wheelchair?” Ms. Jessup says. “Are you sure? Because this building is not wheelchair accessible.” Ms. Jessup wipes her forehead. She lowers her voice as she speaks into the radio, but I’m close enough to hear her. “Two individuals are unaccounted for. I have reason to believe it’s an elderly couple, and the woman is wheelchair bound. We need to locate the pair immediately—and deal with the wheelchair situation.”

  “I can help!” I call out.

  “How can you help, Angelica?” Ms. Jessup asks.

  “I can build a wheelchair ramp!” I say.

  “That’s not all Angelica can do!” Joon says. “She knows a trick for getting Mwezi to come over to her.”

  Ms. Jessup sighs. “I don’t have time right now for any more of Angelica’s stories.”

  I’m glad Ms. Jessup did not use the word lies. I would not want everyone here thinking I am a liar. I see myself more as a storyteller who sometimes gets swept away by my own stories.

  Joon has something else to say. “You don’t understand, Ms. Jessup. This isn’t a story. I’ve seen Jelly get Mwezi to come over. I swear I have!”