Which is why we should have started training before it was critical, Jessi thought, but she did not say it aloud.
It didn’t matter, because Freeman rolled to the next objection anyway. “And training is unnatural, invasive, the opposition of preservation. We are a reserve, not a circus, and we’re trying to save this species, not debase them and turn them into public playthings.”
“They wouldn’t be playthings, they would be participants in their own healthcare,” Jessi said despite herself. “It could save their lives.”
“What about the lives of the people trying it? Who’s going to wrestle a dragon down and stick it with a needle?”
“There wouldn’t be any wrestling. All kinds of species have been trained for cooperative care, even big ones, elephants and bison—”
“Elephants have thousands of years of history with humans.”
“Tigers don’t, and they give voluntary blood draws.”
“Tigers don’t breathe fire when they get irritated. And you don’t know how to train a tiger, much less a dragon.”
“I feel like I’ve heard this before,” Jackson interrupted. “Possibly a dozen times.”
Jessi didn’t answer. There was no point.
Jackson sighed. “Look, Pamela’s right; we’re trying to preserve a species, not run a dog and pony show, and there’s no protocol for teaching a dragon to submit to invasive procedures.” He hesitated. “But we are probably under a deadline, and we don’t have another solution. If you can get this started, get it working before it gets critical and we have to dart—I’ll give you a chance.”
Jessi’s heart leapt. A chance! This could mean real checks, not just guesses from scat and trail cam footage. This could enable care before it became critical. But how could they establish a program so quickly? “I’ll get started right away.”
“We can’t afford to lose time on this.” Jackson looked at the screen, where the dragon was scraping a talon across its jaw, scoring the scales. “If we don’t see progress in two weeks, you’ll have to dart.”
“Two weeks? Do you—that’s not possible. We don’t have even the minimum—there’s not the equipment—do you know how long this takes in an established facility with specialized trainers?”
Jackson pointed at the distressed dragon. “Do you know what will happen if that dragon drops dead?”
Jessi bit down her protests. It wasn’t possible. Not in two weeks.
“This isn’t my field,” she said, not as an excuse but as a plea for help. “I don’t know how to start, much less how to make progress so fast.”
“You just said all that about elephants and tigers.”
“I’ve seen video at conferences! I know it’s done, but that’s not what I do. You want to diagnose a skin infection or set a bone or something, I’m your woman. You want a whale to give you flukes for a blood draw instead of flipping you the flipper and swimming away, you need a trainer.”
“Fine, we’ll get you help. Pamela, you find an expert, so you can feel comfortable about the goals and make sure this isn’t going to be a circus when we’re done.”
Jessi gave Freeman a sidelong glance. Would she sabotage this? No; she wasn’t so petty, and the stakes were too high. Sabotaging the training meant risking the dragon’s life as well as the reserve. No matter how they bickered, they were united in their goal to preserve a near-mythical species, and that goal came before any individual ego.
Freeman looked at Jessi and nodded. “I’ll email some of the safari parks and big zoos tonight.”
Jessi slammed the microwave door, punched the start button, and slid into the chair in front of her laptop. She had several tabs open, showing various designs of protected contact walls for use with elephants.
Though Hollywood liked to depict herbivores as complacent and tolerant, in fact any creature could be startled, could be in pain, could have a bad day. When it weighed six tons or more, it didn’t take much of a reaction to maim or kill a human even unintentionally. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums required protected contact for elephants—and elephants didn’t have predatory instincts, six inch teeth or fire breath.
Jessi watched video of an elephant sidling sideways toward a high opening in a steel-barred wall, working its ear through the gap in response to the cues of its handler, who spread the ear for thermal imaging and then a blood draw. The handler reached through the bars to scratch the elephant as her partner drew blood.
Jessi closed the tab.
Jessi was a veterinarian. Pamela Freeman was a herpetologist, Sam Lackland an ornithologist, and Neil Jackson had worked his way up through decades of zookeeping to administration, one hand on animal programs and the other on public relations, fund-raising, community integration, and the delicate web of facilitation. Each was expert in their field, which was why they were here. None were trained to do this.
The microwave dinged, and she retrieved her cardboard-tray lasagna. She should contact some people from the conferences, ask for help with the training, even help with the tranquilizers. Maybe someone would have some new ideas.
No moss grew on Dr. Pamela Freeman, Jessi had to give her that. Forty-eight hours after the meeting, she had a trainer to introduce in the conference room. “This is Milo Firenze. He’s been a master trainer for thirty years, and he’s come to help us with our dragon.”
“Excellent! We’re glad to have you,” Jackson said, extending a grin and a hand. “What’s your background?”
“I’ve been all around Europe and North America,” Milo answered. “I’ve done some work in Asia too.”
“Zoos?”
“Yes, lots of zoos.”
“Good, good. Our ultimate goal is AZA accreditation.”
“Sorry?”
“The Association of Zoos and Aquariums?” Jackson’s welcoming grin held steady.
Milo’s smile faltered and then resurged. “Oh, right. Well, not so much with AZA zoos, but after all they’re only a few.”
Jackson had not become the chair of a cutting-edge conservation effort by letting his reactions show. “Well, Pamela and Jessi can take you around, let you get the lay of the land and start planning. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.”
A few minutes later, when Milo had excused himself to the restroom, Jackson turned on Freeman with a whisper of rage. “What did you bring us? Is he some second-rate animal show trainer who is going to get us into hot water? I thought you were going to bring in someone with a reputation that would help us, make it obvious we’re doing the best we can do for these animals.”
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to get someone here on zero notice?” snapped Freeman.
“What about that guy who trained the butterflies?”
“He’s in Africa, retraining a thousand-year-old migration to avoid poachers. They spent years prepping their ten-day window, so he’s not just going to drop it on a phone call. All the people with the credentials and reputations are booked, so we had to take the guy who could fly out the next day. But at least he’s a trainer, which puts him ahead of anyone else in the room.”
Jackson looked at Jessi. “What do you think?”
Jessi shrugged. “I think he’s here, and we don’t have a lot of options. Besides, he’s going to try his best; this will make his reputation. First dragon trainer? He’s going to bust everything for this.”
Jackson nodded. “All right. Take him out and show him what he has to work with.”
Chavah saw the Land Rover bouncing along the track toward the trail cams and observation points, and she ran to wave it down, her other hand supporting her camera backpack. “Hey! Mind giving me a lift out toward Window Rock area?”
“We can do that.” Dr. Freeman gestured, and Chavah climbed in the back seat beside Dr. Kemuel, tucking her camera bag between her feet.
A stranger was in the front. He turned with a flash of teeth. “Hi, I’m Milo.”
She shook his hand. “Chavah Abeles. I
’m the photographer.”
Her photos allowed for more detailed observation of dragon physiology and boosted their social media into enviable engagement rates, and the framed prints provided additional income. Spending days in the field taking photos of dragons was the kind of work that didn’t have to pay well, and Chavah was an intern, having completed a previous internship at a more traditional aquarium but not yet leveled up to full conservation employment.
“Milo’s here to help us with Kiba,” Freeman said.
“Oh?”
“Jackson has said we’ll try training, so Jessi doesn’t have to dart anyone again.”
Chavah’s heart jumped. “Training?”
“What’s wrong with darting?” Milo asked. “Seems pretty straightforward.”
“It’s not,” Kemuel snapped.
“Shoot it with a needle, shoop!” He mimed using a long gun. “I guess you have to be a pretty good shot.”
“Watch a lot of movies, do you?” Kemuel challenged.
Milo’s grin wobbled.
“Most drugs cause disorientation before the animal finally goes down. I’ve seen animals freak out hard—I had a gazelle with a broken leg try to run on its stump, lower leg just flopping behind. You remember when that kid climbed in with the rhino last year and everyone was angry because staff didn’t just dart the rhino? You want that kid to face ten or thirty minutes of panicky defensive rhino? That would have been a death sentence.”
“I—”
“And sedatives work by suppressing the central nervous system, which is important for things like heartbeat and breathing. Dose too little, and the impaired animal runs away, maybe hurting itself, or maybe he runs to water before he drops and he drowns. Dose too much, and he drops dead. “
“I didn’t know,” Milo said apologetically.
“And,” Kemuel continued, looking as if she knew she should stop but not stopping, “there’s the stress. Sedatives reduce exhibited stress—but all the physiological effects are there, and sometimes that can kill on its own. And all this is assuming you even started with the right drug. We’ve had fifty years to figure out you can’t dose a rhinoceros like a buffalo, even though they’re both African mammals of similar size. This is a whole new species with no data and crazy physiology we didn’t even believe in ten years ago, and we don’t know if we should be using haloperidol or carfentanyl, or how much, and experimenting on a population of a dozen known specimens is wildly irresponsible at best.”
Milo raised his hands in surrender. Kemuel sat back against the jolting seat and crossed her arms, looking out the window. Chavah wanted to put a hand on her arm but didn’t know if she should.
“But this species is in crisis,” Freeman interjected, “and the animals we know about are under immense pressure, and there’s not enough of a population to risk a completely hands-off approach. We let the last situation go, because we didn’t want to risk chemical capture again, and the animal died.”
“Ludwig’s angina,” Kemuel supplied, still looking outside. “Treatable, but we weren’t treating. Probably died of either sepsis or asphyxiation when it swelled into the airway.”
Milo tried to paste on his charming smile once more. “But then you had one to examine for science, yes?”
“It was on fire,” Chavah offered, trying to shift the focus.
“We left the body for a day,” Freeman said. “Dragons are a social species, not so tight as elephants but definitely social, and we wanted the others to be aware of the death so they wouldn’t go searching or something. We don’t know yet if they mourn like elephants or chimps or crows, but they did come by the remains. Then about twenty hours after death, best estimate, it spontaneously combusted.”
“So I guess we know why there wasn’t much in the fossil record,” Chavah volunteered. No one laughed.
“Ooh, there’s one!” Freeman slowed the car.
Chavah pulled her camera.
“Where?” Milo leaned forward, scanning, but clearly saw nothing.
Freeman pointed to a rocky jumble about seventy feet away, but it took even Chavah’s practiced eyes a moment to pick out the dragon camouflaged against the boulders.
“I don’t see it,” Milo admitted.
Freeman tried to trace the dragon for him. “See that big boulder with the orange streak? Just below that is the hip. Go forward—left—and you’ll see a shoulder. See the sweep of the wing?”
Chavah had her telephoto lens up. “It’s Sombra.”
“That’s the youngest female,” Freeman added. “See her now?”
But Sombra decided to help by stepping away from her concealing rocks. She moved gracefully, more like a cougar than a crocodile, to endless taxonomic debate. She was lithe, her head and neck possibly mistakable for a large serpent on their own, with just a fringe of horny frill to mar the impression. As she gave up her predatory concealment, she spread her wings wide to catch the sun, and her drab coloring vanished in the brilliant display of her under-wings. She was enormous, a man’s height at the shoulder and with a wingspan of fifty feet.
Milo swore under his breath, and Chavah smiled. It didn’t matter how many photos you saw, the actual animal was always stunning, and dragons were still hardly more than a myth to those who had seen them only online, just as before their discovery. She slid onto the Land Rover’s door and began snapping rapid photos.
“That’s the female?” gasped Milo.
Sombra swung her head toward them, her tail rising behind her.
“Not happy to see us,” Chavah observed, still taking photos. “Might want to back off.”
“We’re not moving,” Freeman said. “We’re no threat. She’ll be fine.”
“Looks kind of rigid for fine,” Chavah said.
Sombra made a sound like the purr of a twelve hundred pound cat, and Chavah noted the apparent flare of the horny fan as she arched her neck.
Kemuel said, “I think Chavah’s right. Maybe we should back off a bit. We don’t want her feeling defensive.”
And then Sombra convulsed her torso, like a cat bringing up a hairball, and spat fire at them. The flames roared out about fifteen feet, much too short to be dangerous, but there was always an involuntary flinch and Chavah hunched toward the car. Milo yelped.
“Right,” Freeman agreed, and she put the Land Rover in reverse.
Sombra watched them go, wings extended, and then lost interest as they moved away.
“Should have backed up sooner,” Chavah said. “Now she knows her mild threat didn’t work but an escalated threat did. She’ll be more likely to throw fire the next time.” Should she have said that? She tried to distract. “But I got some sweet shots out of it. Look at this one!”
She proffered the view screen with a close shot of the orange fire, licking and curling and dramatic, with Sombra’s open mouth and eyes just visible at one side, all six-inch teeth and dark pupils. Kemuel nodded appreciatively. “That’s fantastic.”
Chavah tried to hand the camera up front, but Milo was still staring forward. “Tell me what equipment you have for the dragons.”
“What?” Freeman asked.
“How do you tether them? Are there big and small cages? Do you use prods or bullhooks?”
Chavah caught her breath.
Freeman didn’t like it either. “We don’t have cages or bullhooks. We’re a preserve.”
“Oh, hell, no. You want me to just walk out to that in an open field? No tether, no hooks, no nothing? No way, man. You build me a proper facility to hold it, I’ll get there, but with nothing? No way.”
Freeman put the Land Rover in park and turned to him. “I bought you a day-of plane ticket because you said you were a trainer. You knew what you were coming to work with.”
“I work with all kinds of animals, but on my terms! I have equipment to keep me safe! It works because they don’t have a choice; you can’t just hope it all works out.”
“So that’s it? You�
�re quitting before you start?”
“If you’re asking me to take an animal that threatens a car at seventy-five feet and hold it down for a root canal without any proper tools, hell yes I’m quitting.”
Freeman’s lips compressed, but she didn’t speak. She just put the car in gear, spun it on the road, and headed back to the Quonset hut that served as their center.
Chavah cradled her camera as they jounced faster than usual. Kemuel asked her, “Anything new?”
“Not much. I do have new photos of Kiba’s jaw. I’ll send them when we get back to internet.”
Freeman and Milo did not speak on the way home. They did not speak as they entered the hut. They did not speak as they entered Freeman’s office and closed the door.
Chavah turned to Jessi. For a moment, her secret clogged her throat, climbing, wanting to escape—but she thought of facing the others, of losing this dream position, and she swallowed it down.
She forced a smile. “So, can I get a ride out again?”
Jessi slouched in her chair, ate her frozen dinner, and glared at her computer.
Onscreen, a cheetah pressed its neck against a chain link fence, chin upward, with all the space of its enclosure behind it. A man squatted opposite the cheetah, sliding a syringe through the fence and up into the animal’s jugular, drawing out blood. “Gooooood,” he praised in a long, low tone. “Look how relaxed you are. Super chill. Good girl.” He finished the draw, pressed a cotton pad to the site, and gently scratched the throat. Then he clicked with his tongue and the cheetah pulled back, eyes bright as he picked up a bucket of meat cubes and began sliding them into the feeding chute.
In the next tab, a grizzly extended its massive paw through an opening so that a keeper could grind its nails. In the next, a shark floated on its side, rostrum lightly touching a small buoy on a stick while the trainer watched a vet examine an ugly contusion on its side. In the next, a sea lion inserted its head into a device so an ophthalmologist could check for retinal damage.
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