The Koala of Death

by Betty Webb

  I arrived promptly at six and went straight to Flamingo Lagoon, the wedge-shaped enclosure situated across the visitors’ walkway from Gunn Zoo Lake. A four-foot wire fence is all that separated the birds from the public, but since our flamingos’ wings have been pinioned so that they can’t fly, this fencing is more than adequate. At the northern end of the enclosure stood an eight-foot-high masonry wall that kept the birds from pecking at their neighbors, the alpacas. Other than that one high wall, Flamingo Lagoon offered the birds all the comforts of home: an acre to roam in, plenty of shade, and a shallow pond where they could fish to their avian heart’s content.

  Today the birds were sharing their enclosure with fourteen humans. Three vets had already set up at a series of tables, their syringes gleaming against white cloth. Next to the vets, technicians from the Animal Care Building, their faces a mixture of excitement and dread, counted out vials of serum as they eyed the flamingos.

  The flamingos eyed the technicians even more warily.

  This was all to the good, because it kept the flamingos’ eyes off the southwest corner of the enclosure, where a group of keepers stood holding the four plastic panels used to corral the birds. At Manny’s signal, the keepers would march forward with their panels in a pincher movement, eventually trapping the birds against the high masonry wall. Once at the wall, waiting keepers would pick up the birds one by one, carry them to a vet for inoculation, then turn them loose. Easy does it, no muss, no fuss. Everybody healthy and happy.

  That was the plan, anyway.

  As a nonbirder with no flamingo experience, my job was to stand on the visitors’ walkway outside the enclosure and act as an outfielder in case one of the birds made it over the fence and headed for the lake. No flamingo had ever escaped since the Great Flamingo Round-Up was initiated several years back, so no one was especially worried. I had plenty of backup, too. Several yards to my right stood Robin Chase, the big cat keeper who for some reason had decided to hate me, and Myra Sebrowski, who disliked any woman she saw as a rival. Equidistant away on my left stood Gunn Zoo hunk Lex Yarnell, who kept casting flirty glances Myra’s way.

  Once we were all assembled in our proper places, Manny Salinas raised his hand and the line of panel-bearing keepers moved forward. They walked so slowly it took the flamingos a minute to figure out what was happening. By then it was too late.

  You seldom see a lone flamingo, because flamingos flock. That’s their inbred defense mechanism. This “don’t grab me, grab the other guy” strategy works well on the coastal lagoons of Chile, where it helps individual birds defend themselves from predators. It doesn’t work so well at a zoo, because it makes them easy to catch. As the keepers and their plastic panels advanced, a tightly packed pink sea flowed ahead of them, honking in irritation.

  Chilean flamingos are tall birds. They can grow to five feet, but they weigh only five to seven pounds; their height is comprised mainly of legs and neck. This lightness of being makes them easy to haul around, which the keepers started doing as soon as all the flamingos were trapped in the makeshift plastic corral. But the birds’ spindly legs made them extraordinarily fragile, so I admired the care with which the keepers handled them. They grabbed the flamingos while their wings were still folded around their body, the best way to avoid breaking fragile wing bones. Most birds were carried away, long yellow legs dangling, with little struggle, but not all went peacefully. Several long pink necks snaked around keepers’ backs as vicious hooked beaks attempted to find purchase on human flesh.

  The noise was deafening, because flamingoes don’t chirp—they honk.

  Imagine, if you will, a forty-car traffic jam with each driver leaning on his horn in frustration. That’s what forty trapped flamingos sound like. Add to that the yelps from keepers when flamingos did manage to bite them, and you had one heck of an atonal symphony.

  “Some racket, huh?” I called to Lex over the din.

  He flashed white, perfect teeth at me. “Anything that pretty has to have a downside.” Then he winked at pretty Myra.

  Robin, hunched over like a female wrestler ready to rumble, ignored us all.

  The Great Flamingo Round-Up was going so smoothly that I relaxed. Let’s see, as soon as we were finished here, I’d go over to Tropics Trail and take care of Lucy and Baby Boy Anteater, then I’d…

  “Watch out!” someone shouted.

  When I snapped to attention, I saw a flurry of pink cascading over the fence.

  “Get her before she reaches the lake!” Manny yelled, as someone nearby called into a radio, “Code Blue! Runaway flamingo!”

  I opened my arms to grab the bird but she saw me and swerved to the right. With what seemed like a sneer on her beaky face, she rushed by, wings flapping, honking like a Hummer.

  Did I tell you that for short bursts, flamingos can run twenty miles an hour?

  There was no way I could outrun her, but I could redirect her course. Except for the meandering dirt path she’d found, access to this side of Gunn Lake was obscured by brush. If I could manage to steer the flamingo off the path, she might get caught up in the weeds. But reaching the lake wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Flamingos are shallows waders, preferring not to get deeper than their knees in the wet stuff. Once they’re in the water, though, they’re just that much more difficult to catch.

  When I yelled my intentions to Lex and Robin, they and three other keepers charged through the brush from opposite directions. They reached the lake ahead of the flamingo, and shooed her back up the path toward me. Letting her reach the wide visitors’ walkway wasn’t an option. If she did, it would turn into Girl’s Day Out. She might even be able to wander the entire zoo until a feral raccoon—the bane of zoos everywhere—chewed off her spindly neck.

  More worried about her safety than my own, I waved my arms and drove her away from the dirt path and into the deepest part of the brush.

  It worked. Not only did the weeds slow her down, but they stopped her dead.

  The moment I went into the brush after her, I discovered why. The ground here was morass of mud, standing water, and cattails. Bullfrogs and minnows fled before me as I sloshed along, up to my shins in muck. With her thin legs, the flamingo might have been able to elude me, but she’d somehow managed to get entangled in the cattails.

  Now was the time for caution. If I spooked her further, she could struggle and break a leg.

  Cooing softly, I moved toward her.

  “Pretty Bird wants to go back to her friends, doesn’t she? Oh, yes, she does. Pretty Bird is soooo lonely out here.”

  Through eyes almost the same color as her pink plumage, the flamingo shot me a mean look.

  No skinny bird was going to scare me. “Just let me untangle those lovely legs of yours, honey, and we’ll be out of here in no time.”

  I could swear she sneered.

  By the time I reached the flamingo, she seemed ready to accept her fate and stood calmly, wings folded around her body. All I had to do was strip the cattails away and pick her up. Piece of cake.

  As soon as I bent down, I was rewarded by a nip to my fanny. Because of my thick cargo pants, it didn’t hurt too much, so I just kept working on the weeds until I got her untangled. One cattail, two, three, four…Finished!

  “Goin’ home, Pretty Bird.” I wrapped my arms around her torso.

  Not to those needles, Pretty Bird honked, hooking her neck around.

  “Hey, what are you…?”

  Pretty Bird’s beak grabbed my earlobe.

  “Ow!” I screeched.

  “Don’t scare her!” Robin yelled, as she and Lex sloshed toward me, and I didn’t think she was talking to the flamingo.

  “She’s got my ear!” I howled, leaning toward the bird’s head to take some of the pressure off. The wily thing just pulled back and tightened her hold.

  “Ow, ow, ow, ow!” Don’t hurt the bird.

  What do you do when a five-foot-tall flamingo has you by the ear? When you’re a zookeeper—nothing, that’s
what. Defending yourself could hurt the bird, so you just endure and wait for rescue. At least I wasn’t wearing ear studs; Pretty Bird might have choked.

  “Oh, ow!” Don’t hurt the bird, don’t hurt the bird.

  Half out of my mind with pain, I leaned forward again, but this time I leaned too far, because my feet slipped in the mud and I started to fall. Yet I didn’t let go of the flamingo. Somehow I managed to twist my body around so that I landed on my back with the flamingo on my chest, still attached to my ear.

  “Ow! Ow!” Don’t hurt the bird, don’t hurt the damn bird.

  “Honk, honk!” The flamingo increased her hold. If she’d been human, I’d have slapped her.

  “Somebody get this bird off me!”

  I lay half-buried in mud, slime, and run-off lake water while tadpoles swam around my head and bullfrogs croaked. When you’re in misery, the strangest things pop into your head. Such as…When I was ten, my parents had taken me on a trip to London. Dad wanted me to learn about history, Mother wanted me to meet the Queen. On the final day, we had wound up at the British Museum. I’d been fascinated by the body of the Bog Man, who’d been found in amazingly intact condition after more than two thousand years. He’d been buried in a peat bog, with a rope garrote around his neck. Was that how I would eventually be found, with a preserved flamingo?

  I heard splashing from my right. Please, Lord, don’t let it be Robin. She’d just finish me off.

  “Love your flamingo earring,” Lex said.

  Rescued! “Get her off!”

  “Hold tight. I’m workin’ on it.”

  As I lay there muttering imprecations in the slime, Lex oh so slowly and oh so carefully pried Pretty Bird’s jaws apart. After that, he gently lifted Pretty Bird out of my arms and hurried off with her to a waiting vet.

  I struggled to my feet just before Robin arrived. Was it my imagination or was she smirking?

  “You better not have hurt that flamingo,” she said.

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, after showering and putting on the clean uniform I always kept in my locker for situations such as this, I plodded over to First Aid and had my ear seen to. That took another ten minutes, so by the time I arrived at the giant anteater enclosure, I was almost forty-five minutes late and Lucy was furious. From behind her holding pen gate, she threatened me with four-inch claws.

  “Hssssss!” she added for emphasis.

  “Now don’t you start,” I said, stuffing a starter helping of termites into a faux log. “Just hold on…”

  “Zoo One to Keeper Fifty-Two. Report to the office immediately.”

  Zorah’s voice squawked so loudly over my radio that it sent Lucy scurrying for cover with Baby Boy Anteater clinging to her back. The two would have to wait for their second helping of termites.

  After arriving at the Administration Building, I parked my cart and wove my way through the maze of desks to Zorah’s office. “Keeper Fifty-Two reporting for duty, Ma’am,” I announced, saluting.

  She stopped shuffling papers. “Don’t get cute with me, Teddy. We have a lot to discuss.”

  “And I have hungry mouths to feed.”

  She looked at her watch. “You’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes. Lucy can hold on that long. Sit.”

  I sat.

  Wrinkling her nose, she said, “You smell like cheap soap. And what’s that bandage doing on your ear?”

  When I told her about my morning’s adventures, she smiled. “Man, I would have given anything to see that, but…” She waved a hand at the mounds of paper on her desk. “Those Chilean flamingos are wonderful animals, aren’t they?”

  “Divine. What did you want to see me about?”

  “Aster Edwina called this morning…”

  Remembering the conversation at Caro’s party, my mood soured even further.

  Oblivious, Zorah continued, “…and she wants you to take over Kate’s job permanently.”

  I knew where this was going. “Temporarily, like I agreed yesterday. Permanent, no way. I like working with animals, not paper.”

  She ignored me. “So in addition to some of the Down Under animals and the TV segment, in the future you’ll be the editor of ZooNews, keep our website up to date, and generate at least one press release a week. Don’t look at me like that, Teddy. Aster Edwina has approved a hefty pay increase, and besides that, you’ll make a fortune in overtime. You used to be a teacher, so I’m sure your writing is at least grammatical. You already have some computer skills, but I know there’ll be a learning curve, especially with the web site. Helen will help with that.”

  “Helen Gifford? Your executive assistant? But isn’t she..?” I was about to say that Helen was pushing seventy, and couldn’t be any more Web-literate than I already was, but Zorah must have read my mind.

  “Don’t be ageist. For the past ten years, Helen’s been teaching Web site design in the evenings at San Sebastian Community College. Several of her students have even won awards. And in case you didn’t know, she’s the very person who designed the zoo’s web site. Kate just kept it current.”

  “Then Helen should take over Kate’s job.”

  “A good executive assistant is too valuable to lose. Besides, part of Kate’s job was to take care of the koalas, and Helen can’t do that. She’s allergic.”

  Not for the first time, I opened my mouth before I engaged my brain. “But Bill…”

  “Bill’s in jail, and the way things are going, he may be there a while. Now, here’s how it’s going to work.” Zorah outlined a schedule that had other keepers taking over various Down Under animals, as well as some of my own. “So you’ll just be left with the koalas, the wombats, the numbats, and the wallabies.”

  “But Lucy…”

  “If you insist, you can keep the giant anteater and her baby. As I was saying, Aster Edwina has already approved overtime for up to fifteen hours a week. Isn’t that generous of her? You’ll have that old boat of yours in ship shape—ha!—in no time.” Zorah stood up, signaling that our meeting was finished. “On your way out, stop by Helen’s desk and have her show you where Kate kept her ZooNews file. Take it home, and this evening, log onto the zoo’s web site and blog to familiarize yourself with the material. Tomorrow, as soon as you finish feeding everyone, come back here and get started. Don’t look so glum, Teddy. It’ll be fun!”

  With that, she came around the desk and ushered me out the door.

  ***

  That evening, after studying the zoo’s Web site on my laptop and deciding that yes, with a little help I could keep it updated, I went through the ZooNews material that Kate kept in a manila folder. Helen had explained that Kate did most of her writing at home, but fortunately the file included a rough draft for the next issue. From what I could see, the newsletter needed a serious rewrite—the syntax was all over the place, and the accuracy was slipshod. The snow leopard we were getting was a male, not a female. The Egyptian geese were in the African Veldt enclosure with the giraffes and ostriches, not on the Serengeti Plains with the Grevey’s zebras. Our zebras, zoo-born, hand-raised, and spoiled rotten, weren’t big on sharing.

  Kate was also a believer in the power of Post-it notes. Every other page in the file was plastered with them, in various colors that had seemingly nothing to do with their subjects. Some looked old, some new, some were zoo-related, some not. Sorting through the mess, I shuddered at the clumsy phone text spelling.

  Koal, mayb Tues. Koala, maybe Tuesday. Possibly a reference to the TV segment she had never lived to appear on.

  Frilld liz & snk? Frilled lizard and snake. Back-up animals in case the koala didn’t work out, or possibles for a later show.

  Frshn sho wi dangr anmals. Kate wanted to freshen up her segment with dangerous animals, instead of a parade of cute and cuddly. As if Zorah would allow such a thing.

  Tel Z re prob wi Bill? Uh oh. It looked like Kate was considering telling Zorah about some problem with Bill. What could that have been? A personal problem, or a probl
em with the koalas?

  Emu egs, mt b gd. Emu eggs might be good. On toast, or on Good Morning, San Sebastian?

  Mnks? Minks, or more probably, monkeys.

  Bengl cb pos. Bengal cub a possibility on the TV segment? Over Robin’s dead body, I bet. But Kate was the one who had turned up dead.

  C Robn Tues. A meeting with Robin planned for the day after Kate died?

  T Doris t at party? Talk to Doris Grimaldi at the boat party? Tell Doris “t”, whatever that meant. The truth, maybe? But about what?

  C Lex. It sounded like she was going to console herself with the park ranger. Or something.

  Cst 4 teak? Cost for teak? I had almost forgotten that Kate owned a boat and that it was berthed right here in Gunn Landing Harbor. It had escaped my mind because she didn’t have a liveaboard permit and was seldom at the harbor, but the boat was the Nomad, a twenty-seven-foot Newport sloop with a hull painted in an incongruous, orange-and-blue psychedelic pattern. Come to think of it, how had Kate, on little more than a zookeeper’s salary, been able to afford it?

  None of us made much at the zoo; we worked with animals mainly out of love. Altogether, the combination of slip fees on a purely-for-pleasure craft, plus the rent on Kate’s Castroville apartment would run a pretty penny. And upkeep, my God! These days the upkeep on a boat was enough to send a millionaire to the poorhouse. My father had given me the Merilee, otherwise I’d be sharing a tiny inland apartment with another keeper or living with my mother. Perhaps Kate had inherited Nomad, too. Maybe her parents were deceased, which was why no one had been able to find them.

  I frowned. Once the medical examiner had declared Kate’s death a homicide, surely Joe and his deputies would have already searched her apartment, as well as the Nomad, for clues. He would also have looked for family records in order to contact next-of-kin. But at the party last night, Aster Edwina—who was always the first to know anything—had stated that Kate’s next-of-kin remained a mystery.