At the zoo, my job was to give a short lecture during the Humboldt penguin feeding and help out in the Family Farm. I had gotten quite friendly with the goats and llamas. I fed them little food pellets and stroked their soft, hairy necks and told them how good-looking they were. I didn't mind if they chewed my sleeves or slobbered on me. I was always glad to see them.
Sometimes my job was to muck out stalls (only for farm animals, not for anything wild), and sometimes I wore a stupid-looking button that said "Ask me." Then school groups and inquiring kids could pump me for information about the names of the llamas (Laverne and Shirley) or the way to work the food dispensers so you could feed the goats.
Doctor Z thought all this was good for my mental
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health. Working with animals got my mind off the badness of life in the Tate Universe and prevented me from using all my free time fixating on things like
1. Why Noel made out with Ariel if he didn't like her, or
2. Whether Noel would start liking Nora on the ski weekend, or
3. Whether it was wrong to encourage Nora to win Noel's heart with cinnamon buns when I didn't really mean it, or
4. Why the suddenly single Jackson was telling me I looked bad and then drawing me a Frog Laden with Meaning, or
5. How insane I must be to scope Mr. Wallace's chest hair when he was trying to talk to me about sports and literature.
When I got to the zoo, Anya, the intern supervisor, waved to me from her office as I signed in. "Hope you had a good vacation, Ruby," she said, shrugging on her coat. "I'll walk you halfway to the Farm, if you don't mind."
Anya was freckled and burly, with braces on her teeth even though she was maybe thirty-five years old. I liked her fine, although she had an air of never, ever leaving the zoo.
As we walked, Anya told me the news about the Family Farm creatures. For example, there was now a box where kids could write notes to the farm animals, plus a box of zoo stationery and minipencils. I was supposed to encourage patrons to write to their favorite goat, pig, llama, whatever. Robespierre, one of the pygmy goats,
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had had a hoof infection that was being treated, so I had to keep an eye out and inform someone if I noticed a limp or anything else unusual. The pig named Lizzie Borden was in a different pen than she used to be.1 And so on.
I pinned on my "Ask me" button and said goodbye to Anya. The next hour I spent patting the goats and the pig, writing a note to Robespierre and pretty much killing time until a huge after-school group came into the Family Farm yelling and annoying the llamas. The kids were pelting me with questions and then not listening to the answers, and while I was busy with them this dad arrived with a toddler. The dad seemed kinda drunk, but I didn't pay him any attention because the school group was milling around and jostling each other to pet Lizzie Borden.
In the Family Farm area, the animals live in pens. The fences are low-you can reach right over them. While I was at the other end of the enclosure, surrounded by after-schoolers, this drunk dad lifted his two-year-old and stuck her on Robespierre's back for a ride. Robespierre bucked. The little girl fell off.
All that happened in about two seconds. "Excuse me," I said to the crowd of six-year-olds around the pig, and ran over to the goat pen. The toddler stood up, whimpering.
***
1 Aside from Laverne and Shirley, most of the Family Farm animals are named after criminals, which is a problem when you are asked to explain their origins to a camp group of six-year-olds. Robespierre, I learned in History of Europe, was a leader of the French Revolution who killed ginormous numbers of people during the Reign of Terror. Lizzie Borden was famous for killing her parents with an axe.
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She didn't look hurt. Her dad had forgotten about her because he was distracted trying to get food out of the dispenser, which is kind of hard to use, especially if you're drunk. Robespierre's infected foot must have hurt him, and he must have been scared, because he started chasing the toddler with his little pygmy horns lowered. The girl started running and screaming, and the drunk dad turned around. I leaped the fence, grabbed Robespierre by the neck and yelled at the dad to jump in and get his toddler.
He fell over as he was climbing in, cursing all the while, and stopped to brush the straw off his body before he picked up his crying kid. We all climbed out of the pen, and as we got our feet on the ground, he said, "You should have that thing put down, it's dangerous."
"What?" I couldn't believe what he was saying.
"It's not friendly. You saw that. It was chasing my kid!" he argued.
"Zoo guests aren't supposed to get in with the animals," I told him. "That's common knowledge. And I saw you put your kid on his back. What were you thinking? He's a tiny pygmy goat and his foot is infected. You hurt him."
"You!" The dad stuck his finger in my face and shook it. "You were not doing your job, which is to keep this family area safe and keep control of the animals!"
"I was too doing my job," I cried. "You weren't doing your job. You shouldn't be drunk and failing to watch your daughter. You shouldn't be sticking a little kid inside a pen."
"How old are you?" the man yelled. "How dare you talk to me like that?"
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"You have no respect for the animals that live here," I yelled back. "You have no respect for your own kid and her safety. What kind of person does such a thing?"
"Your job is to watch the kids and keep the area safe!"
"You smell like beer!" I shouted. "I hope you're not driving your kid home."
I turned in disgust away from him--and then I saw Anya angrily striding toward us.
She gave me a harsh glare. "Sir, I'm the supervisor here. Is there any way I can assist you?" Her voice was exceedingly calm and polite.
"This worker is belligerent," he said, scooping up his crying daughter. "I asked for help with the feed machines and she started harassing me and my child."
"That's not true!" I said-but Anya held her hand up to silence me.
"I'm so sorry you had a negative experience here at the Woodland Park Zoo," she said soothingly. "Here." She dug in her pocket and pulled out a red lollipop. "Is it okay for her to have this?"
The man nodded and the toddler stuck out her hand for the candy.
"I apologize for the behavior of our intern here," Anya continued. "Please rest assured we will take the matter seriously."
"I want Mommy," said the toddler, sniffling.
Anya smiled. "Can I help you locate the rest of your family? Are they here at the zoo?"
"Yeah, that would be great, actually," said the man, wiping his forehead. "I have no idea where they got to."
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Anya made an announcement over the zoo loudspeakers, which located the guy's wife, who had been over at the penguin exhibit with their older children.
As soon as they were gone and someone else arrived to wear the "Ask me" button at the Family Farm, Anya walked me back to her office. There, she demanded an explanation, but when I gave one, she didn't seem to listen to it. "You told him he smelled like beer, Ruby," she reprimanded. "There is no situation in which commenting on someone's smell is an appropriate response."
"But he-"
"No situation," she repeated.
Then I had to sit through a long lecture on how to treat zoo guests.
Then more lecture on how it was imperative that I keep an eye on the whole area even when there were school groups present.
Then guilt over how the zoo would now have to deal with news reporters questioning them and writing headlines like "Baby Mauled by Cranky Pygmy Goat."
And after all that, Anya fired me for negligence and abusive behavior toward patrons.
Really, she could have fired me without the lectures. Why remind me how to do my job if I'm not going to be working there, anymore?