Menagerie

by Bradford Morrow

  Wanted you kids to have the best you could have, but that didn’t happen. We were just too poor. I worked like hell, but it wasn’t enough. Things got better later, but those early years—! The only good thing was, we lived in Millersport. We lived on the old man’s farm. You loved those animals. Remember your pet chicken—Happy Chicken? God, you loved that little red chicken.

  Daddy brushing tears from his eyes. Daddy laughing, he wasn’t the kind to be sentimental, Jesus!

  She was thinking of how they’d found the rooster—not Mr. Rooster then, but just a limp, slain bird—beautiful feathers smudged and broken—out back of the barn where something, possibly a fox, or a neighbor’s dog, had seized him, shaken him, and broken his neck, threw him down and left him for dead. Poor Mr. Rooster!

  Seeing the rooster in the dirt, horribly still, the little girl had cried and cried and cried.

  And several hens, limp and bloody, eyes open and sightless. Flung down in the dirt like trash.

  And there came the time, not long after this, or maybe it had been this time, when Happy Chicken disappeared.

  The girl was stunned and disbelieving and did not cry, at first.

  So frightened, the little girl could not cry.

  For it seemed terrifying to her, that Happy Chicken might be—somehow—gone.

  She’d run screaming to her mother, upstairs in the farmhouse. Her mother, who claimed to have no idea where the little chicken might be. Together they searched in the chicken coop, and in the barn, and out in the fields, and in the pear orchard. Calling, Happy Chicken! Happy Chicken! Wildly calling, Chick-chick-chick-chick-CHICK!

  Other chickens came, blinking and clucking. Yellow eyes staring.

  And not one of these was me.

  That morning the Mother had taken the little girl into Lockport to visit with the Other Grandmother, who was her father’s mother, who lived upstairs in a clapboard house on Grand Street just across the railroad tracks. The Other Grandmother read books from the Lockport library, never less than three books each week. And these books smelling of the library in plastic covers. And these books smartly stamped in dark green ink LOCKPORT PUBLIC LIBRARY. The Other Grandmother took the little girl hand in hand into the children’s entrance of the library, to secure a library card for the little girl. For now the little girl was old enough for a children’s library card: six. And the little girl was allowed to take out children’s books, picture books. Such beautiful books! The little girl could barely speak, to thank the Other Grandmother. And the little girl and the Other Grandmother read these books together sitting on a swing on the front veranda of the gunmetal-gray clapboard house on Grand Street.

  In all that day, the little girl did not once think of me.

  Those many hours, blinking and staring at the beautiful brightly colored illustrations in the books, turning the pages slowly, as the Other Grandmother read the words on each page, and encouraged the little girl to read too—the little girl did not once think of Happy Chicken.

  But when the Mother took the little girl home again to Millersport, in the late afternoon of that day, and the little girl ran out into the barnyard to call for me, there was no Happy Chicken anywhere.

  They went to search the chicken coop, the barn, the orchard … Where was Happy Chicken? The little girl was crying, sobbing.

  The Grandmother insisted she had not seen Happy Chicken.

  The Grandmother had never distinguished Happy Chicken from any other chicken. How ridiculous, to pretend that one chicken was any different from any other chicken!

  The Grandfather too insisted he hadn’t seen Happy Chicken! Wouldn’t have known what the damned chicken looked like, in fact.

  Anything that had to do with the chickens—these were the Grandmother’s chores, and of no interest to the Grandfather, who was worn out from the foundry in Tonawanda and couldn’t give a damn, so much fuss over a goddamn chicken.

  When the father returned from his factory work in Lockport in the early evening, he was in no mood either to hear of Happy Chicken. He was in no mood to hear his little daughter’s crying, which grated on his nerves. But seeing his little girl’s reddened eyes, and the terror in those eyes, the Father had stooped to kiss her cheek. The Father had not laughed.

  She is calling him—Happy Chicken! Her throat is raw with calling him—Happy Chicken!

  She has wakened in a sick, cold sweat tangled in bedclothes. The little red chicken is somewhere in the room—is he? But which room is this, and when?

  But here I am—suddenly—crouching at her feet. Eager, quivering little red-feathered chicken at the little girl’s feet. The little girl kneels to pet me, and kisses the top of my hard little head, and holds me in her arms, my wings pressed gently against my sides. And the little chicken head lowered. And the eyelids quivering. Red-burnished feathers stroked gently by a little girl’s fingers.

  Where did I go, Joyce Carol? I flew away.

  One day that summer, my wings were strong enough to lift me. And once my wings began to beat, I rose into the air, astonished and elated; and the air buoyed and buffeted me, and I flew high above the tallest peak of the old clapboard farmhouse on the Millersport Highway.

  So high, once the wind lifted me, I could see the flock of red-feathered chickens below scratching and pecking in the dirt as always, and I could see the roof of the old hay barn, and I could see the top of the silo; I could see the farthest potato field, and the farthest edge of the pear orchard, and the rutted dirt lane that bordered the orchard leading back to the Weidenbachs’ farm.

  For it was time for Happy Chicken to fly away.

  Animal Care and Control

  Paul Lisicky

  WARNING BEWARE OF ALLIGATOR

  I’D GIVE YOU A SWAMP if I could, but I have no swamp to give. Do not assume I will bite you just because I’ve let you feed me fish. Who would you be if everyone thought you’d want to eat them? You don’t want to know that I differ from the crocodile, with his narrow snout and taste for human flesh. I have no taste for humans, but please don’t take that personally. Your little dog will do just fine. I’ll drag him down to my house of muck. I’ll kill him with such tenderness that he’ll wonder why I haven’t done it sooner. How wonderful he’ll be inside me, a house inside a house inside a house. You think that’s where you want to be. That’s why you go behind the fish shed and pick up the bucket of remains. If you’ll let me commune with Snoopy and see you once every Tuesday, I’ll be just fine. Controlling? I beg to differ. I only ask that you look fondly at the top of my head, see my snout and my beady eyes and know I’m not going to destroy you. Could you say the same? Don’t you think it’s awful to watch you waiting for my jaw to spring open? The mechanical is no fun. I was just kidding about Fido, or whatever it is you want to call him. You make me feel irreverent and I’m as holy as they come. Jesus had a thing or two to say about that, but let’s keep him out of it for now. Too hungry for sacrifice, I fear, and you miss the finer points. Your attention is so heavy on me right now it’s a wonder I can open my eyes. I want to take the world in just like you. I want to sun myself on the dock, though I fear you’re going to flinch if I take one of my famous steps. This is not about what you think it is.

  GRIEG

  Grieg’s back leg was sore, but he kept pace beside his human, because she thought he needed his seven o’clock walk. He looked up at her bewildered face, her frowsed hair, her nicked-up glasses. He knew she’d have preferred to sit down with a glass of wine after work, the laptop open on the blue stool beside her, but she wanted to be a good mother, which was why she was out here on the marsh’s fire road, walking two times faster than he could possibly walk. Blackbirds sprang from tree to tree. Grieg didn’t have the sounds to tell his human he needed to turn back. To cry would be to seem weak, and he’d known of another dog who had seemed weak, shunned by the other cocker spaniels in the dog park because she’d started peeing on human laps. He would never be that weak. He’d keep trudging through the world war in his leg before
he’d let it come to that. Grieg’s human needed to think of herself as a good person, but no one wanted a weak dog, no one.

  Grieg did not shake on the examining table. He kept his gaze up on the lights, and when the vet announced that Grieg did not have cancer, that he’d merely been suffering the consequences of too much enthusiasm, he did not feel his relief right away, nor did his human. They stumped out into the day, a little stunned and queasy, in need of breakfast, and walked for a while past the cedars. Up ahead they saw a church and animals. There was a priest in walnut-colored robes amid the animals, a bullmastiff, a hen, a cat held over the shoulder like a baby, a ferret, and instantly Grieg felt relief warm his sore leg, though not as much relief as his human obviously felt. She walked faster, and tugged Grieg along until his leash was taut at his neck.

  “The blessing of the animals,” she cried. “God be with us!” And dropped to her knees, and raised her hands to the sincere discomfort of all the animals assembled. The hen staggered to the periphery, as did the bullmastiff, even though the priest’s hand had just been upon their heads. The priest himself looked down at Grieg with a kind of mercy that said, Pity to those for whom God’s love was ever in doubt, and Grieg looked back up at him with a face that said, I’ve never seen this nutjob in my life, and joined the circle of the other animals until he returned to her.

  HOUSE SITTER

  On the final night of his ten-month stint as a house sitter, Asher lay on the sofa, the heat of the reading lamp working into his lips and brows. The question that had been goading him all day, through the hauling out and the cleaning up, needed to be spoken: What message do you have for me? He looked over at the boxes taped tight with maps and cups and weather instruments, his precious things. He’d lie up all night for an answer if that was what was being required of him. He’d stayed up all night before.

  The report did not come right away—reports rarely do. It came at the point when he felt himself going under. The smell of catbox, pungent and dusty, up from the cushions of the sofa. The smell was not constant. It came and went like a pulse. He’d never smelled cat-box before, not in this house, where no one took care of a cat, not even the owners, who coughed at weeds and trees and animals, most things that were alive. He did not know what to do with this message, as he did not know why he was moving on to another house where there wouldn’t be room for his furniture, not that he had any. He’d lived so lightly on the earth. Even when he’d tried to leave a stain of himself—in the tub, just as an experiment—the walls wouldn’t hold him. He could barely see his hands.

  The Snow Leopard’s Realm

  Vint Virga

  As we reach for the stars we neglect the flowers at our feet … For epochs to come the peaks will still pierce the lonely vistas, but when the last snow leopard has stalked among the crags … a spark of life will have gone, turning the mountains into stones of silence.

  —George B. Schaller, Mountain Monarchs

  A SNOW SQUALL IS HEADING our way. The bank of dark clouds presses closer. But for now the morning is impassively still—blue skies with the sharp chill of December dawn, which bites through my gloves at the tips of my fingers and slips under my scarf to the nape of my neck. My breath drifts before me in foggy, warm eddies that rest and then freeze on my eyebrows and lashes.

  The first blaze of sunrise hits the boulders above in a burst of burnt orange poised in a beam on the uppermost ledge that then swells, washing down the weatherworn faces of granite. With thick drifts of snow piled behind and beside me, I can almost believe that the path where I stand climbs eastward into the Nepalese mountains retracing Peter Matthiessen’s steps in search of the snow leopard he never found. Just as he did over four decades earlier, I catch traces of paw prints left in the snowbank, wandering up to the lowest rocks. Yet in spite of my training as a veterinary behaviorist and all my years working with leopards in zoos, my search at this moment is no more rewarding. I know all too well they most likely are perched right under my nose on the uppermost ledge, somewhere between all the fir trees and boulders, surveying the boundaries of their domain. As in the wild, Himalayan ghost cats.

  In this modern age with man’s untamed expansion and unbridled craving for more and more land, snow leopards remain one of earth’s most mysterious, elusive creatures. For though they roam freely in perhaps thirteen countries, from Afghanistan eastward to the Great Gobi Desert, only a handful of humans have seen one in the wild. In the lonely mountain ranges of Central and South Asia—amidst an unrelenting and frigid terrain of snowcapped pinnacles and secluded, craggy bluffs—with their smoky gray coats and softly blurred charcoal markings, snow leopards can vanish right within your gaze to nothing more than another rock, a scraggly shrub, a lifeless shadow.

  A purple finch flutters from the small grove of firs, and at the base of the trees I sense two shadows stir, alert to each detail of the tiny bird’s movements. Then, in a synchronized streak of sleek black and gray forms, both cats spring from cover out onto the rockfall—Bashur in the lead by a nose before Willow—vaulting a good thirty feet from the firs, just as the bird comes to rest on a boulder. Sharpened claws in a swipe reach to seize tail feathers as the finch flaps its wings once again to take flight, and for a moment I’m breathless in anticipation (wishing almost as much for Bashur’s success as for the finch in escaping its fate). Then, astonishingly, the bird soars up higher, far out of reach of the snow leopard’s grasp—from a halfhearted effort by Bashur, I am certain.

  The cats track the finch in its flight for a moment, then both pairs of eyes turn toward the trail where I stand. Notwithstanding the time I have spent with each leopard, I lose track of my thoughts in their calm, studied gaze. Looking into their world from my human perspective, I find mindfulness in their quiet contemplation, remarkable awareness in their sensitivity, and wisdom in their feline capability to exquisitely adapt to our endlessly changing world. As my breath matches theirs with each heave of their chests, it’s as if for an instant the glass wall has melted and I’m standing alone—just a mere leap away—held as if I were prey by my own fascination.

  The cloud bank rolls closer and an icy breeze stirs the leaves of the shrubs at the base of the boulders, and Willow turns her gaze to face into the wind. Her broad nostrils widen and twitch with piqued curiosity while a gust brushes through the long locks of her fur to reveal the thick down of her paler gray undercoat. She considers the news that the blast of air brings her—whiffs of the red pandas and Indian rhino swept from their habitats and carried downwind, their keeper approaching with fresh meat in her arms, the strength of the storm that is building above us and first whirl of snowflakes beginning to fall—then she stretches and wanders head into the wind. While Bashur stays in place to consider me longer, I catch Willow behind him a dozen yards off, pawing then rolling in a thick bed of straw that their keeper no doubt has laced with fresh scents of antelope, zebra, or elephant. Then Bashur turns, pads off, and joins Willow upwind.

  As the storm comes upon us, the snow drives down with fury, stinging my eyes and cheeks with small, icy flakes that quickly envelop the landscape around me. Through the thick veil of white, I can make out the leopards—Bashur standing by Willow as she rolls in the straw and its blanket of snow. And in spite of the bitter wind numbing my body, I smile at the chance to be out in this blizzard alone with the leopards.

  By this time most mornings, I can watch zoo guests strolling along the bend in the trail just above where I stand. Mothers meander with newborns in strollers. Young children excitedly tug at their daddies’ arms. Students with notebooks race in teams on scavenger hunts, hoping to answer all of their teachers’ questions. I see them rushing up to the windows to catch sight of the leopards, chatting and giggling while craning their necks, scanning the rock wall, the bushes, the pond.

  All the while, Willow and Bashur lie in hiding—sometimes in the fir grove concealed by the shadows, other times in the open, blending in with the rocks—camouflaged from all but the most
discerning eyes. Avoiding the babble and hubbub of humans, just as their cousins do out in the wild. Even researchers who have devoted their lives to snow leopards, spending years in the mountains at the top of the world on the trail of their paw prints, scratch marks, and scats, tell tales of nearly stumbling over them—not a hiss, not a growl, frozen in utter silence—before the large cats betray their disguise and bolt off reclusively into the distance. Never once has a snow leopard attacked a human in the wild. Instead, they retreat farther into the mountains, no matter how fervently we search for them, a vestige of nature untouched and unspoiled. Ghosts of the mountains in their last lonely vistas.

  Loose Lion

  Terese Svoboda

  THEY PITCHFORKED OLD GRAY ON account of his sleeping in the dark part of the barn.

  Don’t blame them. I would’ve thought it was a lion too.

  News like that makes the telephone here worthwhile. I was over at the Tickles’ last yesterday, the Tickle Tickles, not Avery’s bunch, when I heard that the lion was loose. Mabel Tickle tried to hush the operator but it was no good, she screeched and screeched, like the lion was on her lap.

  Creeping through the jungle like a golden track, boomalaya, boomalaya, boomalaya, boom.

  I don’t care for poetry but Vachel Lindsay has it beat.

  The boom makes all the little kids scream for mercy.

  Likely. They got a posse making noise in the cornfield now. They’ll find the lion and make mincemeat out of him, you’ll see.

  Mmmmm, lion sandwiches. I’ll bet you could make a good-looking lion purse with what’s left over from a rug. You know the governor’s going to want the rug.