Read Online Poached by Stuart Gibbs - Free Book Online Page B

network and score his own reality show. Therefore he kept provoking the animals so they’d be more exciting. He never hurt them, but he’d invade their personal space, make direct eye contact, and do other things they found threatening. Then they’d lunge or snap at him and Freddie would leap away and the audience would gasp in excitement. In theory. Unfortunately, Freddie sometimes lost his focus on the animals—which resulted in him losing other things, like fingers. (A gelada baboon had bitten one off, while the Komodo dragon was responsible for the other.) He’d also lost an earlobe (thanks to an ocelot) and a toe (Nile crocodile) and the tip of his nose (golden eagle). Each time, Freddie had managed to be surprisingly calm for a manwho’d just lost a body part, but many audience members had freaked out. They had fainted, vomited, and stampeded for the exits—and those were the adults. (Most of the kids had thought seeing a man lose a finger was pretty cool, but many parents had threatened lawsuits against FunJungle anyhow, claiming their children had been traumatized.)
    FunJungle had shut The World’s Most Deadly Animals down and sent Freddie back to being Baron Wasteland. Freddie was devastated by the demotion. Ever since, he’d been ambushing tourist groups in the hopes of being recognized.
    â€œHey, kids!” he shouted to the school group. “How’s everyone doing today?”
    Not a single kid responded, although the teacher gasped in fright at the sight of Freddie. Close up, the patchwork of scars on his face could be a bit disconcerting.
    Freddie was obviously disappointed, but he soldiered on valiantly. “I can understand your reserve. It’s not every day you get to meet a real celebrity. But you don’t all have to be so shy around me. I don’t bite. Although some of the animals I work with do!” At this, Freddie held up the hand that was missing two fingers.
    The joke had never been that good when Freddie used it onstage. Here it was worse. The sudden reveal that his hand was maimed made several kids scream in terror.
    One boy now actually recognized Freddie, however.“Hey!” he exclaimed. “You’re that crazy guy who gets attacked by animals all the time!”
    â€œEr, yes,” Freddie said, then whipped out some glossy photographs of himself. “Would you like an autograph?”
    â€œNo,” the boy said. “I want to see Kazoo.”
    The rest of the class eagerly echoed this, and the teacher quickly led us past Freddie, who sagged with disappointment. I almost felt bad for the guy. But then I remembered my father saying that FunJungle had done Freddie a favor by closing his show. If they hadn’t, he would probably have provoked an animal into biting his head off by now.
    The school group hurried into the koala line. From inside the exhibit I could hear the standard thrum of excited tourists, as well as Kristi Sullivan dispensing her standard koala facts over the loudspeaker. (“A newborn koala is only the size of a jelly bean!”) Though I was desperate to get in and see what on earth was going on with Kazoo, I stayed at the rear of the class. A dozen kids were arguing over who got to be first, drawing the attention of all the chaperones, and I figured it was safer to remain off their radar.
    An excited young couple in matching Kazoo T-shirts joined the line right behind me. They seemed to be in their midtwenties and were so excited they couldn’t stand still.
    â€œAre you here to see the koala?” the woman asked me.As if there might have been another reason I was standing in the koala line.
    â€œYes,” I said.
    â€œUs too!” the man exclaimed, as if this were the most incredible coincidence. “We’re so excited. We’ve never seen a koala before.”
    â€œExcept on TV,” the woman added. “We just love them, though. They’re so adorable. We came all