by Jon Lymon
Wesley Bear
Escapes From The Zoo
© 2013 Jon Lymon
ALSO FOR CHILDREN BY JON LYMON
The Bird Who Flew A Bit Too Far (A Handwritten Tale)
Gloria Goldfish Searches For Lost Gold
One
Wesley, the grizzly bear, was feeling extra grizzly. He’d had enough of being in his cage and wanted to get out. And although he didn’t know it, he was twenty minutes away from doing exactly that.
He had been pacing back and forth all morning long, his mother watching him, shaking her head when she got the chance to, her paws being busy with Wesley’s younger brother, Joel.
‘What is it?’ she asked her eldest son, irritably.
Wesley just shook his head and continued walking backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, glancing at the children looking at him, some pressing their faces up against the glass, flattening their noses and cheeks. Normally, some of the funny faces they pulled made Wesley laugh. But Wesley wasn’t in the mood for laughter today. He really wanted to get out.
‘Come away from there,’ said Wesley’s mother, as she heard him growl at the children. ‘You’ll have to learn to ignore them,’ she said, as some of the children growled back at her son. ‘Why don’t you come over here and play with your little brother?’
But Wesley didn’t want to play with his little brother. He really, really, really wanted to get out.
Two
At two thirty two almost on the dot, the keeper opened the cage and walked in carrying a tin bucket Wesley knew would be full of the same old food that looked like meat but tasted of bucket, all tinny and sharp. Why couldn’t they bring something different for a change, he wondered. How about some of that chocolate so many of the children who stared at him seemed to get out of their lunchboxes while they sat on the bench opposite the cage, happily swinging their legs and pointing and sometimes laughing at some of things Wesley and Joel got up to.
Wesley watched the keeper close the cage door and huffed, taking no notice of the slabs of meat the keeper threw onto the floor, each landing with a moist ‘SLAP’.
Wesley didn’t want to eat.
The keeper didn’t want to be there either by the looks of it. She sulked and huffed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and after she’d emptied the bucket, she stopped and stared first at Wesley, then his mother. There was definitely something wrong, Wesley thought.
‘I don’t want to feel trapped anymore,’ the keeper said.
Wesley’s mother didn’t know who the keeper was talking to, but sincerely hoped it wasn’t her. Wesley thought it all sounded a bit too grown-up for him and turned his attention back to the locked gate.
‘When shall I tell him?’ The keeper was definitely talking to Wesley’s mother, but Wesley’s mother had no idea what to say.
The keeper wandered back to the gate, opened it, then turned around to look at Wesley’s mother again. There was a clang as metal hit the floor. The keeper heard it and looked down to the ground. Wesley heard it and looked over to the gate.
It was slightly open.
Something glittered on the ground and the keeper saw that her golden wedding ring had slipped out of her pocket and rolled along the floor.
She took a few steps back into the cage and bent down to pick up the ring. As she did, Wesley leapt to his feet and bounded toward the gate.
The keeper was taken by surprise and fell back onto her bottom, shouting ‘Nooooooo’. She tried to reach for Wesley to stop him from getting out. But he was too determined.
‘Come on mummy, come on Joel,’ he screamed in delight, running as fast as his stumpy legs would let him. He squeezed through the gate and out of the cage.
At last! He was free.
Three
Wesley had never run so fast or dived through so many bushes or leaped over so many walls. Children screamed, shouted and pointed at him like they always did, only this time they weren’t laughing. They were jumping into their parent’s arms, hiding behind their legs, or just standing open-mouthed, unable to believe what they were seeing.
‘Is it a real bear?’ someone asked someone else.
They watched as Wesley ran out of a side gate toward the woods that surrounded the zoo on three sides, drawn to the trees and the shelter and cover they’d provide. That’s where his mother would want him to go, he thought, imagining her running behind him, holding Joel in her mouth.
Wesley felt sharp branches and moist leaves brush against his face and body, while the soft, cool grass underfoot provided a welcome change to the concrete and wood chippings of his cage. But not everything felt nice. He kicked something hard and metallic.
CLAAAANNNNG!
It was an empty can of drink, like the ones he’d seen children gulping from while they watched him in his cage. His toe throbbed but he knew he couldn’t let the pain stop him running. The keeper would be chasing him for sure. All the zookeepers would be chasing him. So he kept running, calling over his shoulder to his mother and Joel to keep running too, not daring to look back in case the keeper was catching up.
Soon the wood ran out of trees and gave way to open land that was green and brown for as far as Wesley could see. The sun was getting tired of the day, and Wesley knew that meant settling down time and snuggling up time were getting near. He slowed his run to a trot to give his mother a chance to catch up. She was carrying Joel after all.
While he waited, he wondered why there were no people around. He was used to seeing loads of them at the zoo, all day until closing time.
Then Wesley realised he quite liked the fact that there wasn’t anyone pointing or laughing at him. But after a while he began to worry about his mother and Joel. Where were they?
He bounded back into the woods and over to a bush that was just big enough for him to squeeze under and decided to wait there. He had no idea how far he’d run or in which direction. All he knew was he was tired and getting cold, despite his thick coat. He couldn’t wait to snuggle up to his mother and see how excited Joel was to be free. Their mother would have to calm the brothers down, they’d be that excited. Then she’d have to read them a bedtime story and cuddle them until they drifted off into their first sleep as free bears.
But Wesley wasn’t sure how well he’d sleep. He was so excited about all the possibilities, all the adventures they could go on, all the world they’d see and all the people they’d get to meet.
Wesley waited. And waited some more. And a little more.
‘Mummy’ he called out softly whenever there was a rustle of a leaf, or a crack of branch on branch. But it was never his mother. It was usually the wind, or sometimes a night creature wondering what a bear was doing out in the woods.
‘Mummy, Joel, is that you?’ he called out several times. An owl answered once, but Wesley didn’t understand what he was going on about so ignored him.
As the last of the day’s light was swallowed up by the night, Wesley curled into the smallest possible ball under the bush and cried himself to sleep.
Four
It was still dark when Wesley woke up. His fur was damp in places so he shook himself down and looked around. All was quiet, even that troublesome owl who’d been twit-twooing all night had fallen silent.
Wesley figured out that whoever was after him, hadn’t seen him come this way. He was also beginning to realise that his mother wasn’t coming after all.
He crawled out from under the bush and took several sniffs of his surroundings. He knew going back the way he’d come was a bad idea. That was where they’d be waiting for him. Waiting for him to come back home to his mother and Joel. But Wesley wanted to see the world, and he’d already seen that bit, so it made sens
e to head in a different direction to see a new bit.
It was dark enough and the grass was long enough for him to leave the wood and head across the open land. As he walked he realised there wasn’t much going on in this part of the world at this time of day, but that was OK, he knew he’d find some excitement eventually. All those people who came to see him at the zoo had to come from somewhere.
He wandered awhile, ducking behind trees whenever he heard or smelled something strange, but usually it was just a field mouse muttering to himself as he searched for food, although once it was a grumpy wild boar who called himself Nigel (when Wesley asked), but who didn’t seem to want to say any more than that, so Wesley left him alone.
The fields soon started to run out of grass and more fences started to appear. Not the twenty foot high ones he was used to at the zoo. These were a fraction of the size and easy for Wesley to crawl under or climb over. They obviously weren’t designed to keep bears like him in or out, he thought.
Behind one such fence was something Wesley recognised as a road. Cars used roads, and cars hurt. That’s what his mother had told him, though he didn’t believe her. They didn’t look that big, and they had no teeth, although some of them did make strange noises, like growls and roars and screeches that would probably frighten off most bears. But not bears called Wesley. He scampered across the road as fast as he could all the same. There was no point looking for trouble, was there?
The green surroundings soon turned grey and brown. Buildings, the like of which Wesley could sometimes see from his cage in the distance far over the trees, began to appear, most with cars outside that looked like they were all sleeping. Wesley assumed this is where all the children who visited him at the zoo came from.
The sky was beginning to get light again when Wesley noticed that the buildings were getting a lot taller. When a car pulled to a halt by the pavement on the other side of the road, Wesley ducked behind a rubbish bin that smelled worse than zoo dinners.
‘Excuse me, mate.’ The driver was calling out to someone walking along the path.
Wesley missed what the driver said next, but heard what the other person said, loud and clear. ‘Bear right, then bear left.’
The driver smiled, gave a thumbs up then drove off.
Wesley stood, wide eyed in excited amazement. He started to run in the direction the man had pointed and the driver had driven, taking a right turn down a long road and then a left turn down an even longer road. That’s where his mother had to be, he thought. He couldn’t wait to tell her and Joel everything he’d been up to.
He ran the whole length of the road until it ended in a crossroads, but there was no sign of his mother or Joel. He couldn’t have missed them, Joel maybe as he was still little, but certainly not his mother. She was a grizzly bear, and there weren’t many of her kind around here.
‘Where are you, mummy?’ Wesley called out.
Another car pulled up by the road and someone carrying a mop got out and jangled some keys and opened a door and walked in. The door banged shut behind them but didn’t catch and bounced back open. Wesley saw a light go on inside and thought how warm it looked in there. Without thinking, he bounded through the gap into the building.
Whoever had got out of the car and gone into the building was good at leaving doors open, Wesley thought as he crawled through what looked like some kind of post room, with parcels and letters of all shapes and sizes stacked against plain grey walls. Wesley didn’t much care for the smell of the place, all stale and old, so he was glad to get out. He trundled along a corridor that was carpeted red and slipped through another open door.
What he found inside took his breath away. It looked like the zoo, with all manner of animals sitting on shelves and standing on the floor and lying in boxes. They all looked wide awake but all were totally silent, which seemed strange to Wesley.
As he looked around, passing the orange dogs, the mice dressed like people, the frogs, the pigs, the fluffy white bunny rabbits, Wesley’s eyes fixed on something.
‘Mummy!’ he called out.
His mother was standing on a lower shelf amid a whole family of bears, none of whom Wesley recognised. She was staring straight ahead like she hadn’t seen him.
Wesley jumped into her arms. ‘Oh, mummy, I’ve missed you so much,’ he wailed. But her arms didn’t fold around him like they usually did. She felt cold.
She was probably too tired for a hug, Wesley thought. Come to think of it, Wesley himself was too tired for a hug. There’d be plenty of time for hugs when they’d all had a good sleep, he thought. So he nestled under one of his mother’s arms and fell into a deep sleep.
Five
It had been a sad couple of days for six-year-old Freya. The day before, her pet cat, Rona, had died. Today, to help her feel a bit better about it all, her dad had promised to buy her a present from the big toy shop in town.
‘I know nothing will ever replace Rona,’ he said tenderly as he bent down to zip up her pink raincoat. ‘But let’s buy a toy to remember her by, yes?’
Freya nodded while still sulking. In fact she sulked during all of the drive to the city, her father glancing in the rear view mirror just to make sure she was all right.
‘You can have whatever you like, darling,’ he kept telling her.
The toy shop was frantically busy, with screaming, laughing children running around, eyes wide with excitement. Freya couldn’t share their excitement. She held onto her dad’s hand and walked solemnly down the aisles and along the gangways between the shelves of games and toys.
They’d headed straight for the dolls, but Freya couldn’t see a dolly she liked in the toy shop. Even the ones that cried or soiled their nappies or drank thick fluid from a bottle didn’t interest her. They weren’t real. They weren’t Rona.
She walked straight through the board games section, showing no interest in any of the classics her dad pointed out and remembered playing. Games weren’t real either, were they? And Rona never liked playing games, did she?
Her dad started to despair. ‘There’s only the cuddly toys left,’ he told her as they walked into the busiest section of the shop. ‘And you’re a bit old for them, aren’t you?’
A sulking Freya shrugged and her dad led her into the department. There were fluffy toys of all shapes and sizes, characters from big films and TV series. Freya’s dad’s heart sank when her eyes lit up at the sight of the giant teddy bears lined up along the wall. They were way out of his price range. He prepared a ‘sorry, they’re too big to fit in the car, darling’ excuse in case Freya had a tantrum.
But he needn’t have worried. It was one of the smaller bears that had caught Freya’s eye.
‘Ahhh,’ she said, running toward the bear that was tucked under one of the arms of one of the big bears. It was a shade darker than all the other little bears that lay in a huge square box in front of the bigger bears.
Freya’s dad smiled. ‘You like that one?’ he asked.
Freya nodded and her dad breathed deeply, relieved that he wasn’t going to have to either break the bank or his daughter’s heart.
As they waited to pay in the queue for the till, someone’s grandma and grandad turned around and looked down at Freya and the bear she was holding.
The old lady smiled. ‘My, that looks very life-like doesn’t it?’ she said. Freya smiled and hugged the bear closer
‘Yes, he looks very real, doesn’t he?’ said the grandad.
‘Well, I suppose they have to these days, don’t they?’
A few minutes later, Freya handed the bear to the young lady at the till who seemed a bit surprised at how heavy it was. She turned it around and about and up and over but she couldn’t find a price tag or barcode anywhere.
‘Know how much this is?’ she asked the girl sales assistant standing next to her. ‘The price tag must have fallen off.’
The other assistant was too busy with her own customers to pay much attention and just shrugged her shoulders.
‘Did you see how much this was?’ the sales assistant asked Freya’s dad, not daring to leave the till to go and have a look at the shelves.
‘I think it was about thirty pounds,’ said Freya’s dad, handing her the cash.
She shrugged and took the money. As she tried to put the bear in a plastic bag, Freya shook her head and held out her hands. The sales assistant smiled for the first time at work that day and handed over the toy, which Freya hugged and stroked as she carried it out of the shop.
‘It’s nice and warm, Daddy,’ Freya said as they drove home. ‘And it’s breathing.’
‘It’s what?’ her dad said, frowning into the rear view mirror.
‘My bear. It feels like it’s breathing.’
Her dad muttered something about how many batteries it would take to make a bear do something like that, and how much replacing them was going to cost him.
Six
Freya ran straight upstairs when they got home, gently laying the bear on her pillow in her bedroom.
She looked at it and wondered when it was going to open its eyes, but it looked so peaceful she decided to leave it for a while and go downstairs to get something to eat.
‘Have a nice sleep, Rona,’ she whispered, as she tip-toed out of her bedroom and gently closed the door.
Wesley felt very warm and extremely comfortable when he woke up. But when he looked around, he had no idea where he was.
He soon realised he wasn’t where he had been when he went to sleep, snuggled under his mother’s arm. There was no sign of any of the other animals either.
Instead, Wesley found himself under a smooth pink duvet, his head resting on a deep pink pillow. There was pink wallpaper and pink curtains and pink carpet.
The shelves on the wall were pink with small cuddly toys with pink ribbons around their necks sitting on them and books of all shapes and sizes lined up along them, some of which were pink too.
