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When I did call the zoo, a woman with the deepest, huskiest voice I have ever heard picked up. Perhaps it was some measure of trepidation on my part, a measure of anxiety that I felt about finding a job in an enormous metropolis, but I immediately conjured up some fever-driven animation footage of an enormous 1940’s era cartoon Boss Lady, sitting behind an enormous cartoon desk. In my mind, she had a cross-hatched 5-0’clock shadow, beady solid black pupils, a gnawed cigar stub sticking out from between her rear molars, and when she looked at me, little menacing emissions of dashed lines shot from her eyeballs towards my diminutive little self on the killing floor. As her gaze bored into me, I would shrink, the soundtrack a reductive “EEEeeewwwww”, until I collapsed upon myself, diminished to the size of a Smurf doll. She would shake her head in disgust, reach for the Big Red Lever next to her desk, and drop me through the trapdoor that I had so unfortunately chosen to stand upon. I would hover for second, scrambling for purchase in mid-air, before I disappeared with a freehand scribed “whoosh!” and a cloud of beige dust in the shape of microwaved marshmallow.
I was only a fraction right. As it turns out, she was stick-thin, but she did smoke Marlboro Reds at an alarming rate, hence the gravelly voice. In a rehearsed but friendly diatribe, she told me I would get a quick tour of the premises and an introduction to all the animals, and then would be put immediately on a show, basically to see if I could deal with it. She turned me over to a demure looking Asian girl for the tour*.
When I was introduced to her, she was wearing a cute but modest black tank top, and a tasteful Indian-print skirt, just above her knees, She looked nice and considerate, and I felt safe under her mentorship.
“What you need to do is,” as she stradled the larger of the two alligators to the ground- the six footer, not the four footer-and wrestled it to the ground,“ you have to clamp its jaws shut with one hand and duct-tape his jaws together with the other.”
It sounds trite, but I was young, and I realized that first impressions can sometimes be deceiving. Just watching her was an education in itself. I’d tell you more about how she handled the animals, but, in fact, she didn’t. She made me do it. A brief play-by–play:
THE BINTURONG
It’s probably safe to say that most people have no idea what a Binturong is. I certainly didn’t when I met it . It was housed in a converted walk-in closet, with an old dead tree branch serving as its jungle gym. This was a big animal.
“Go on. Go in and get it.” She said.
The Binturong, also known as the Asian Bearcat, is a peculiar animal. It looks something like a cat, with a splay of whiskers on either side of its nose, but its ears and eyes, as well as body language, are more like those of a bear, hence the name. Its incongruous feature is its long prehensile tail. It accounts for up to half the length of its body, and can grasp branches, limbs, whatever, with sufficient strength to support its entire body weight, not unlike a brachiating primate. In fact, it is an arboreal species, spending almost all of its life off the ground. It grows to over 3 feet in length-without the tail- and can cut off the circulation in your fingers- with the tail- although it has too gentle a disposition to do this maliciously. I didn’t, however, actually know this at the time.
“Don’t be shy.” Said Cyndi.
“You need to be comfortable with the animals if you want the job.” She explained.
I’m looking at this Bearcat, hanging out in its tree, wondering how on God’s good earth I’m going to ‘get’ it. It turns out, it wasn’t a problem. He was a curious fellow, and slid down his from his perch to sniff my toes.
“He said WHAT!?!” exclaimed the Asian girl, muffled, from around the corner.
“I KNOW, girl I couldn’t believe it…” Said Darlene, through puffs of Marlboro smoke, her voice getting softer as they plodded downstairs.
They were leaving me.
Alone.
With this animal.
Fuck.
He gingerly probed at my ankle, grabbed my trouser leg, and with sloth-like patience, began its ascent up this new, pliable tree. It must been unique to have the bark on these new branches give a little, and move to suit your trajectory. He made his way up to the top and settled on my head, much like the raccoon hats Daniel Boone wore, except that, as an accessory, he was far too big. I had to support him across my shoulders, while his prehensile tail wrapped beneath my armpit and around my bicept, leaving me to wonder how I was going to avoid dropping him while my fingers were slowly turning blue** . The other assistants were elsewhere in the complex, and so I walked out of its cage, binturong aloft, down the stairs to find someone who could explain to me how to remove him.
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*Before I go any further, before I even introduce the demure-looking Asian girl, I need to claim a caveat. What transpires beyond this paragraph should be taken with the understanding that I was in a mild state of shock. I can’t explain how jarring it is to be thrown into the arena of a working traveling zoo point blank, with no experience whatsoever. In the remainder of this histoire, I may color this as if that the people who ran this business had no inkling or idea about what they were doing, and that is patently false- you can actually take a three-flat apartment on the west side and make it a working zoological park where the vast majority of the animals are happy, healthy, and well cared for. The immediate shock of seeing that this actually exists initially offended my sense of equilibrium, if only because I didn’t think any of this was even possible. But, with hindsight, it clearly is possible, and what seemed at first glance like chaos actually turned out to be a sensible tolerance for a little entropy in the name of flexibility. If you saw the place, or take any of what I say at face value, you might get the impression that things were crazy, and you would be right. But it was also a necessary craziness; a sort of acquiescence that any parent realizes is needed to get their charges to college/mating age/capable aviator, etc. Just know that these recollections occurred when I was still in the upstanding moral idealist phase that only the young and never-employed can afford to entertain.
**On a side note, 9-foot Burmese Pythons have a similar effect on your fingers.
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