Did Not Survive

by Ann Littlewood

  Damrey wasn’t cooperating, and he was withdrawing his offer to trade a treat for pee. We walked into the work area, where Sam was measuring quarts of grain into five gallon buckets.

  “No pee?” Sam asked. “We haven’t got all day.”

  Ian didn’t say anything.

  We stood around for three or four minutes watching Sam work and went back out. Damrey stood at the far end of the stall next to the bars with one hind leg stretched behind her and rocked, shifting her weight from front to back. “What’s she doing?” I asked.

  Sam answered from the doorway behind us. “She does that when she’s upset. She spent years in a circus, and they chain their elephants most of the time when they’re on the road. She’s pretending she’s chained by that leg.”

  It was weird, watching her tug on that invisible chain over and over. For the first time, I noticed the faint pink line circling her ankle. An old scar.

  Ian said, “Damrey. Pee.” Damrey stopped her repetitive motion, came right on over, and started in with the smelling again. Her deep-set little eyes seemed filled with suspicion, the long, sparse lashes waving as the wrinkled gray eyelid moved. Sam stepped up to the bars to our right, where they were wide enough apart for a person to slip through sideways.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” I said.

  “She doesn’t know you yet,” Sam said.

  “And I’m associated with Wallace’s body.”

  Neither elephant keeper said anything.

  Damrey turned toward Sam and draped her trunk over his shoulder. He rubbed the trunk, his hand moving firmly over the rough, wrinkled hide. It looked like old friends comforting one another in a tough time, trying to get each other through. Would she really turn on a person she knew, who’d been careful and gentle with her? It could happen, I knew it could happen. But this particular elephant? “See?” Sam said. “She hasn’t got a mean bone in her body. Wait till you get to know her.”

  Huh. So that was why Sam tagged me for this job. I was the chief witness against her, and he wanted a chance to show me the Damrey he knew. I didn’t like being manipulated, but I wasn’t going to hold it against him. The facts would speak for themselves. But I wished he’d get out of her reach. Hadn’t Mr. Crandall forbidden physical contact? Had I misunderstood that?

  “Pee,” Ian said quietly, holding out the raisins for her to smell again.

  “Have Iris give her the raisins, and we’ll try again tomorrow,” Sam said, still touching the elephant.

  Ian ignored him.

  I kept my eyes on Damrey, trying not to feel the tension between the men, trying to conceal my uneasiness.

  Sam stepped back out of her reach, and I relaxed a little. After a few more moments of watching the swaying and tail swinging, he commanded, “Enough. Drop it. We need to get this place cleaned up.” He was talking to us, not Damrey.

  Ian didn’t move. I glanced nervously at Sam and, while I focused elsewhere, Damrey swung her rear toward us and unleashed a flood of pee. Ian stuck the stick through the bars into the deluge and pulled it back. He blew a toot on the whistle he had on a string around his neck and handed the raisins to me. Damrey stepped away from the puddle and stuck her trunk in the bottom of the hay rack, fishing around. “Toss them in,” he said. I calculated the trajectory through the bars and tossed. And missed. The clot of raisins hit the floor. Damrey searched the hay rack thoroughly while I winced. She gave up on that, swept her trunk over the floor beneath it, and soon sucked them up. She stuffed the lump in her mouth and chewed it with huge teeth.

  Sam said, “If Nakri gives you any trouble, cut it short. I mean it. This has got to be quick or not at all.”

  Ian carried the stick and cup to the work area, put a standard plastic coffee lid on the cup, pulled it out of the wire loop, wiped it off with a paper towel, and pressed a piece of tape over the sippy opening. He handed me a pen. I wrote “Damrey” and the date on the cup. He nodded and pointed with his chin toward the fridge.

  On to Nakri. I pushed a fresh cup into the wire loop. “Dried mango slices,” Ian said. “You use the pole.” We walked through the work area to come up on her stall from the back. The hay rack in the back stall was similar, also with closely-spaced bars, and Nakri seemed ready for business.

  “Nakri, pee time,” Ian said.

  Nakri didn’t waste any time checking me out or working through performance anxiety. She swung her rear around and let go. I wasn’t expecting such rapid production and was lucky to catch the last of it. Ian tooted and handed me a big sticky slice of dried mango. I flicked it into her hay rack, spilling some of the urine in the process. About an inch was left in the cup. We looked at it and shrugged. Nakri chewed her treat and scratched an eyelid with her trunk tip.

  “As good as we’re going to get,” I said, and carried the cup into the kitchen to process like Damrey’s.

  I heard the squeal and grate of the big doors operating. Sam was opening Nakri’s door so that she could join Damrey and also opening the outside door. The two buddies greeted one another and ambled outside. Sam shut the door to lock them out so the keepers could clean the stalls.

  “Be consistent with Damrey,” Ian said quietly. “Routine-bound. May take a week to get used to you, like with Kayla. Faster if you do everything the exact way I do. Nakri’s not so fussy.”

  “Will you walk me through it again tomorrow?”

  Ian nodded. “They’ll be together.”

  That should make my task even more interesting. I was late to my real job, stressed out from close contact with an animal I’d seen almost kill someone, and tomorrow I’d need to avoid getting swatted by both elephants at the same time. “Why back together?” I asked.

  Ian looked surprised. “Nakri had an abscess on her hip. Damrey messed with it at night. Healed up now.”

  Of course. The elephants would want to be together. They were herd animals, social, and were separated only for a medical reason. That was why the door between was left a little ajar at night, so they could visit with one another.

  Sam caught me as I was on my way out. “Iris, this situation with Wallace is a misunderstanding as far as Damrey goes. You’ll see when the committee gets here, and we have all the facts. Just don’t go calling her a rogue, okay?”

  “Of course I won’t call her that. But come on, Sam!” I softened my voice. “No wild animal is totally reliable. You taught me that. They have their bad days and pet peeves like we do, except that when an elephant gets crabby, somebody ends up smashed flat because humans are small and breakable. You know that way better than I do. Everyone wants the real story, everyone wants the best for Damrey. And there isn’t much you can do to steer this.”

  “All I’m asking for is an open mind,” he said, not quite snapping at me. “I’m not asking for the moon, only a little help saving an animal’s life. She didn’t attack Wallace.”

  “Sam, if you’re wrong and you keep giving her the chance, she might kill you.”

  Sam’s shoulders sagged. “Iris, you’re not hearing me. You are not hearing me.”

  This was so not worth Dr. Reynolds’ gratitude.

  Outside the barn, I stopped to view the yard where the two cows he cared so much about were enjoying the morning. The pink tops of their ears glowed from the low sun shining through, a benign contrast to their other-worldly silhouettes. They really were something else. Strong, smart, sociable, complicated. I loved big cats, which were at least as dangerous. I could appreciate elephants as well.

  Wallace might wake up. The NAZ committee would figure out what happened. Sam would be proved right or not, and we would all cope. Calvin must be wondering what was taking me so long.

  “Don’t you wish you could do better than this?”

  My head jerked around. Two scruffy men, both with picket signs, stood near me. The one that had challenged me said, “Every day you work here is a day these elephants suffer. Isn’t it time you took a stand for better living conditions?”

/>   He spoke from a thicket of beard, another bush radiating out from his head. He was a little shorter than I. Whether that was fat or muscle filling out the denim overalls and dark red jersey shirt, I couldn’t tell. His sign said, “Sanctuary from Suffering,” and a blue and gray backpack sagged on his shoulders. The other man was a boy, maybe eighteen, in regulation jeans, dark sweatshirt, and muddy running shoes. His black hair was too straight to make a good bush, but he was trying hard by leaving it long and not combing it. “Prisons drive animals Insane” proclaimed his sign. He looked familiar.

  “How did you get in? The zoo’s not open yet.”

  Bushy Hair said, “The front gate’s unlocked. I know you’re not an elephant keeper, so maybe you can be objective. Is this any way to keep those majestic animals?” His arm sweep took in Damrey and Nakri minding their own business, idling about the yard. “Wouldn’t you rather see them roaming grassy hillsides?”

  “I assume you mean an unaccredited sanctuary with no oversight, where the public has no idea what’s going on. No, that doesn’t sound all that wonderful.”

  “I could show you pictures. It is wonderful,” he said.

  “Why don’t you put your energy into saving elephants in the wild? Do you realize how endangered Asian elephants are?” Mr. Crandall had forbidden us to get sucked into this debate, but still…somebody had to push back.

  “It’s irresponsible to keep two elephants in an exhibit this size. They’re meant to roam miles every day, not hang out in a space the size of a backyard.”

  The younger one nodded and scowled.

  I said, “That’s why we passed the bond measure to build them a bigger, better exhibit. Why is it I don’t see you demanding that construction get started?”

  “Because there is no way you can build an exhibit large enough to keep them healthy and happy. They’re sure to get foot and leg problems, and there isn’t room for a normal size herd.” He’d had this debate before, and he was enjoying it.

  I wasn’t. I was getting pissed off. “People work night and day to keep them healthy and happy.” I remembered a discussion from a keepers’ meeting. “Do you see the sand two feet deep in that yard? That soft surface inside the stalls? That’s why their feet are fine, even though Damrey is over forty years old.” I couldn’t remember exactly how old she was. “How about the full-time veterinarian, the top quality hay and produce, all the effort that goes into environmental enrichment for them? I do not see two sick, miserable animals. I see two busybodies who are wasting time here when they ought to be working for sanctuaries in Thailand and Cambodia and India, that is, if you really do care about elephants and not just about getting your pictures in the paper.”

  That fired up the young sidekick. Eyes flashing, he half-shouted, “Next I suppose you’ll claim that these two are ‘ambassadors for their species’ and that all their suffering is so that the wild ones will survive. But you said yourself that it isn’t working! You drive them crazy in zoos and then you blame them for turning on people!”

  I had no idea where to begin with this jumble, but before I could try, the younger one said, “If everyone here is so nice to these elephants, where did Nakri get that gash on her thigh? Could it be that someone took an ankus and ripped her open?”

  “No,” said a quiet voice. Ian. He must have seen the altercation through the window and come to back me up. “They get browse. Each week. Maple, maple and alder branches. She lay down on one. Poked herself. It abscessed.” He turned to me. “Sam called Security.”

  “Of course he did,” said the junior activist. “You can’t stand having the truth come out, so you evict us.”

  “Enough, Dale,” said Mr. Bushy. “We’ve made our point. Let’s go look at zebras. See you later, Ian.” He turned away, and I stepped back from his sign and backpack as they swung toward me.

  “I don’t believe that about the branches for one minute,” the sidekick called over his shoulder as they retreated.

  The security guard rolled up in a little electric cart. I pointed at the retreating signage. “They went thataway.” The guard spun the sluggish little vehicle around and did his best to roar off.

  I gathered myself back into bird keeper mode. “Thanks, Ian. Stinks to be the target.”

  He nodded.

  “What’s with those two?” I asked. “They can get into the zoo before it’s open, and the big-hair guy knew I wasn’t an elephant keeper. How do they know all this?”

  “Don’t know how they got in. They know you don’t work this area because they watch. All day.”

  “Watch elephants the entire day? Why?”

  “Short guy talks to visitors about sanctuaries. Young one hopes we hit one of them. Get it on camera.”

  “That’s disgusting.” I was mad all over again.

  Ian shrugged and started back toward the barn.

  “Ian, he knew your name,” I said to his back.

  He didn’t turn around or slow down. “It’s on my shirt.”

  That was true. I watched him disappear into the barn. But the senior sign-waver sounded as if he really knew Ian, not as if he’d just read his name. I shook it off and got on with my real work.

  A little before noon, I dropped by the office to see if Jackie wanted to join me for lunch, hoping for news of Wallace. Mr. Crandall was exiting the Administration building as I approached the door. He brushed a hand over his silver hair and straightened his tie, gave me the briefest of distracted nods, and stepped toward the zoo entrance. I watched him through the gate. He positioned himself in front of the Finley Memorial Zoo entrance sign, facing a cluster of media types who bore an assortment of cameras and microphones. A press conference.

  “What’s up?” I asked Jackie. “The cubs?”

  She shook her head, busy with the phones. I waited while she put three callers on hold and looked up, her face tight with strain.

  “Not the cubs. Wallace’s sister let the hospital disconnect his life support. He died an hour ago.”

  I flinched in dismay. Dr. Reynolds was right. Kevin Wallace wasn’t going to resolve anything.

  Chapter Six

  Damrey was not acting in her own best interests. She paced in the front stall, tail stuck out behind her, ears flat to her head, trunk waving around. She rumbled and blew long gusts and generally announced that she was upset, unhappy, and having a really bad day. Nakri wasn’t as wound up, but neither was she the picture of pachyderm passivity. The cows milled about the barn, scuffling through straw and wood chips, pacing in and out of the two stalls.

  This was a change from their calm cooperation half an hour earlier in the morning. Ian had stood by while I wielded the cup on a stick, tooted the whistle, and pitched out dried fruit. Damrey was no dummy and had searched the floor in front of the hay rack for her raisin reward before realizing that this time I had managed to dunk the wad properly into the hay rack. Nakri was the soul of cooperation. Anything for dried mango seemed to be her operating principle.

  But now people were gathering inside the barn, in clusters by the service door and in the aisle along the viewing window. The zoo was not yet open, so no visitors or activists would be observing, or so I hoped.

  Damrey was apparently not pleased to have all these strangers nearby. I relaxed my jaw and opened my fists. No one was at risk. It was only an excited elephant safely behind bars. I joined our team—Sam, Ian, Dr. Reynolds, Hap, Kayla, and Mr. Crandall. Two uniformed police officers, the two who responded to my emergency call when Wallace was first injured, stood with Detective Quintana to make the second team. They all stayed well clear of the elephants.

  Mr. Crandall introduced three strangers who had to be the National Association of Zoos committee. Ed Berchtold was a small, handsome man of about fifty, the senior elephant keeper at a major Eastern zoo, wearing jeans, a thick green chambray shirt, and steel-toed boots. Dr. Barry Morgan, a veterinarian specializing in elephants, was casual in boots, shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt. The third
, Dr. Lorene Rasmussen, was a research biologist. Mr. Crandall said she had spent twenty-five years studying Asian elephants in zoos and in the wild. She sported khaki safari pants with cargo pockets and a short-sleeved blue shirt with snaps. The three seemed to know each other well.

  Mr. Crandall announced the Finley Zoo staff’s names and roles. He said, “Having us all here is an opportunity for a complete review of the events that led to Kevin Wallace’s death, with all interested parties present.”

  I heard no gasps. Word had gotten to us all that Wallace had died.

  Mr. Crandall continued. “The police are here because every unattended death requires an investigation. I am grateful they agreed to participate with the committee instead of requiring another disruptive session with the zoo staff. Unfortunately the OSHA representative has the flu and can’t make this meeting. I’ll address their concerns at a later date.” He folded his hands in front and stepped back, ceding leadership.

  I assumed that the vet in the tropical shirt, Dr. Morgan, was in charge, but it was the tanned, weathered Dr. Rasmussen who led off with a second formal statement. “First, I want to express to those of you who worked with Mr. Wallace that the committee is very sorry for your loss.” She let that sit a beat. “Today we are here to determine, if possible, what led to the accident that occurred last Saturday and how to prevent anything similar from happening again. We will walk through background information and then the entire incident. We will follow up as needed tomorrow before we fly out in the afternoon.” She turned to Dr. Morgan, who knew his lines.

  He said, “I draft the report. Barry and Lorene review it. Fred Crandall should have the preliminary draft in about two weeks. We may or may not have recommendations for managing the elephants here. It may affect the process to get this zoo fully accredited. We’ll have to see.”

  Dr. Rasmussen picked up. “For now, our goal is simply to understand what happened. It is not our job to assign blame. We will begin with background information. Sam, could you describe the history of these two animals.”