The Zoo at the Edge of the World

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Authors: Eric Kahn Gale
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Mala said. “Not mine.”
    â€œThis is Bashtee,” I said, astonished. “He’s yours. I watched it happen.”
    Mala shook her head and turned away from me.
    Kenji whispered, “The cub doesn’t have the right smell. That’s why she thinks it’s not hers.”
    Bashtee was in my arms, sucking a bottle of milk.
    â€œWhy don’t you smell right?” I asked him.
    â€œBecause of Master Marlin’s brother!” Kenji said, grabbing my ear. “Kenji saw him take the cub out of the cage.”
    Tim knows not to touch newborn mammals. Father lectures us every time one is born. Mothers sometimes abandon their cubs if we touch them when they’re too young.
    â€œWhy would he do that?” I asked Kenji.
    â€œThere was a tall girl with him,” Kenji said.
    That was all I needed to know.
    So Tim’s scent on the cub prevented his mother from recognizing him, and now the workers and I were in there bottle-feeding him five times a day and making it worse.
    â€œThis is your cub!” I told Mala. But she only sulked in the corner of the cage.
    If I’d learned one thing from Tappet that morning, it was that animals saw things differently than I did. If I wanted to live with them and help them, I’d have to look at the world from their point of view.
    I told Kenji to fetch me a big fluffy towel from the bath house and meet me at the river. I had nearly finished washing Bashtee when Kenji arrived. Then I rolled him in mud and picked him up with the towel, careful not to make contact with my skin. Finally, I dropped Bashtee in a bucket of dung from Mala’s den. Not the most civilized solution, but it was the best I could think of.
    After he was good and covered, I picked him up with the towel and carried him back to the Bear Den. I slipped him through the door of the cage when Mala wasn’t looking and snuck off with Kenji.
    We sat for nearly half an hour on the roof of the Butterfly House with a pair of binoculars. Mala finally padded across the length of cage and sniffed Bashtee. The mother bear hesitated for a moment, twitched her ears, and then relaxed her body and rolled over.
    Bashtee climbed onto his mother’s tummy and started to nurse.
    Â 
    There was one place in the zoo Kenji wouldn’t go: the Snake House.
    It was a big sturdy building down near the base of the pyramid. Its walls were made of stone and its roof was wood and tar, but we thatched it with leaves for a rustic feel. It was kept dark for the comfort of the animals, but it created a rather frightening environment for the guests.
    It was Dead Eyes that scared them.
    Inside the Snake House, we had species ranging from four inches all the way up to six and a half feet, but Dead Eyes was the star of the show. We kept him behind a wide panel of triple-thick glass. His exhibit was dim, and he rarely moved. On tours, Father would stop at his display and ask guests what they saw. They’d point out rocks, mounds of dirt, and logs. Then Father would reveal that every bump and texture and curve and rise that they thought was decoration was really thirty feet and eleven hundred pounds of giant anaconda.
    Dead Eyes was already blind when Father found him, but he often snapped at the guests through the glass. He’d slam his head into the barrier and hiss. Nothing would get through the triple-thick glass, but it scared people so badly that Father laid rugs on the floor to muffle vibrations. This day, though, Dead Eyes was unusually still.
    It was late afternoon, and Kenji had gone off to brighter quarters of the zoo. I decided I didn’t need her help to talk with the animals, so I just walked up to a tank of iguanas and said hello. They didn’t respond, so I opened the lid of their tank a crack in case they couldn’t hear me.
    â€œHello there!” I said again.
    They didn’t respond, and neither did the other lizards, or any of the snakes. Perhaps they didn’t

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