by Dan Darling
“I don’t believe in paradoxes.” I left the window where it was.
“Open up anyway. It’s part of your destiny to talk to me about the universe.”
“I’m not impressed by the universe,” I said. “It’s a death machine.”
“You’re already exceeding my expectations of you, which were high. Come out. We need to talk.”
I could have waited her out. I’d waited out society for going on forty years. I was good at waiting. But I also had a job to get to back in Albuquerque. I swung my door open and stepped onto the hard winter soil. The woman took a few big steps back, as if retreating from a dinosaur that might trample her.
“You”―she looked me up and down―“you’re no disappointment.”
I started to get back in the truck.
“No!” She held up both palms. “Don’t go! We have a mystery to solve.”
I paused with the door halfway open. “I’m not a detective.”
“Yet here you are up to your knees in a mystery,” she said. “Mysteries are like quicksand. Once you sink past your knees, there’s no going back.”
“I guess I should lift my feet and walk away.”
“You could,” she said, “but you won’t.”
“The only mystery I care about is how you know who I am.”
“I saw you yesterday, and I said to myself, ‘that man is part of this mystery.’ “
“You’re wrong,” I said. “I’m doing a favor for a friend.”
“No, you’re wrong!” she yelled and poked my sternum. Human beings didn’t touch me very often. Every now and then, an amphibian excreted defensive fluids through its skin onto me. I’d been bitten by several species of snake. The week before, an iguana had licked me for mysterious reasons. But people usually steered clear. Tanis Rivera’s finger on my chest―it troubled me. I didn’t like the way it made me feel.
“You’re the most remarkable human I’ve ever met and this is the most remarkable event I’ve ever witnessed―even if only after the fact. There’s a rule in detective work: when two events happen simultaneously regarding the same object of interest, we must pay strict attention.”
“I’m not an event,” I said. “I’m a guy with a plastic bag.”
“You’re modest. It’s cute. I would pinch your cheeks if I could reach them.” She pinched the air between us instead and made a cutesy face. “Two people meeting is an event.”
“We haven’t met yet.”
She stuck out her gloved and muddy hand. I ignored it. She pulled the glove off and whacked it against her thigh, throwing mud everywhere. She stuck her bare hand out. I ignored it.
“Tanis Rivera.” The woman mimed a handshake in the air. “I’m so pleased to meet you―now tell me everything about yourself!”
“I’m in a hurry,” I said.
“I’ll tell you a little about myself to break the ice.” Tanis Rivera ticked off the fingers of her non-gloved hand with the muddy digits of her other hand. “I’m an animal theologian. I like ice cream. My dad was a seer and my mom was a truck driver. I have a doctorate from Harvard Divinity. My favorite color is vacuum.”
I stared at her. I probably wore the same expression people did when they saw me for the first time.
“And I’m here to figure out why twenty thousand five hundred and sixty eight birds died for no reason at the same instant. And counting.” She smiled, showing perfect straight white teeth. The wider she smiled, the more her eyes sparkled, and the more the world twinkled with goodness. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever talked to. I just wanted it to be over.
She held out a hand. “Now you.”
“I’m a zookeeper,” I said. “And I’m late for work.”
“But this is your work. You are here to solve this great theological mystery.”
“This mystery isn’t theological,” I said. “Animals die all the time. Didn’t your mom tell you about dog heaven when you were little?”
She kicked me in the shin. “Of course it’s theological! It’s either random―they all happened to die at exactly the same time―or there is a single agent behind their deaths. Similarly, either you, one of the most unique beings on the earth, have also come here by pure chance, or there is some design behind your presence. Of course, the laws of probability state that anything can and will happen, however unlikely. But, given the nature of reality, it’s very hard to tell chance from purpose. Distinguishing the difference and proving it―that’s my job.”
“Sounds like a tough job,” I said. “I hope the money’s good.”
“Worldly riches are for moneylenders. I’ll let the Lord handle them.”
“So you’re trying to figure out if God or chance killed the birds. Seems to me like you’re missing the most likely culprit of all.”
She nodded vigorously. “That’s the obvious choice. Humans did it. But humans are a small part of a big question. Why do humans do what they do? Are we part of chance or design? Is the universe, and thus humanity, fundamentally chaotic or fundamentally orderly? Is there a God or not? Is there good and evil? If the universe is fundamentally chaotic, implying that there is no God behind it all, does that mean that good and evil do not exist? Maybe this mass death is just a symptom of a chaotic, senseless universe with no rules and no purpose―a system that organizes itself by happenstance without a God-skipper at the helm. Maybe humans are just animals born of this chaos.”
“All I can tell you is that behind every bad thing that happens on this earth, there is a white guy raking in a lot of money.”
“A cynic,” she said. “Of course, we know humans are selfish and bad. My primary investigative focus is this: Are animals also selfish and bad? Can animals commit acts of evil? If there is a God, then animals should be part of the moral design; if not, then animals are just part of the chaos. If we figure out whether animals are part of God’s moral compass, we can figure out if God exists.”
“You think an animal did this?” I asked.
“No, but animals are involved, so here I am.”
I didn’t like the idea of dragging animals into our moral rationalizing, but I didn’t tell Tanis Rivera. Saying words to her was like poking fingers through a dam. But I felt I had to say something. “Things die. Whales beach themselves. Lemmings throw themselves off cliffs. Dinosaurs burn to death in lava flows. There’s plenty of life on this planet to go around―and it’ll keep on killing and dying until the sun blows up.”
Her exuberance had gone behind a cloud. “Talking to you is no fun.”
“I’m not here to have fun,” I said. “And I’m not here to figure out if God exists.”
“Then why are you here?” Tanis asked.
“I’m an errand boy.”
“And what are you here to fetch?”
“A wasp. A crane I collected had some bites.”
“A bug bite.” Tanis crossed her arms over her Fish and Wildlife windbreaker. “That’s what you’re focusing on.”
I shrugged. “You have to follow every lead.”
“Ha!” Tanis rammed her finger into my sternum again. “You admit it! You’re hooked! You’re a part of this mystery just like me.”
“Fine. You win. Can I do my job now?”
“Give me your phone number first,” she said.
“Look it up.”
“You’re unlisted,” she said. “I already checked.”
“Call the zoo.”
She smiled. Her teeth were too white and too straight. “I don’t believe in coincidence.”
I stepped around her. “I hope you have the evidence to back that up.”
“I’m still in the data gathering stage,” she hollered at my back. “It could go on for a very long time.”
“Well, good luck.” I walked into the forest. She didn’t say anything else, but I felt her eyes on me until I was well into the trees.
Once I’d moved considerably away from her, I returned to the problem at hand: tracking and trapping a flying insect. I knew ways around
using traditional trapping equipment. Many traps are built into nature.
I started for the line where the woods met the marsh. Along that line, I checked every spider web in the lower branches of trees, woven into stands of shrub, or between two rocks. The Bosque is temperate in winter, meaning that the bug population remains somewhat active. I inspected mosquitoes, a dozen species of fly, a few wasps and bees, a dragonfly that had collapsed half a web, and galaxies of gnats suspended in silver threads―nothing I hadn’t seen before. I retraced my path at the water’s edge, examining the gummy amalgamation of algae, vegetation, and mud that builds up at the edge of a healthy marsh. All sorts of insects had mired themselves there, but again, nothing unusual. Few horseflies. No tarantula hawks whatsoever. It wasn’t a surprise. Tarantula hawks lived in the desert where their prey, tarantulas, were plentiful.
As I tramped through the last few yards of muck, I nearly stepped on a bullfrog the size of a cat. It lay on its back, bloated, the tongue hanging out, the eyes bulging from their sockets. All signs of a painful death.
Nature’s traps: spider webs, bog-muck, an early freeze, even a heavy rainfall. All of these things could kill and collect specimens for a scientist. If these failed, nature provided you with an alternative: the stomach of every living animal. You want a specimen? Find out what eats the thing you’re looking for, kill or capture that, and take a look in its belly.
I crouched. The air near the ground was cold and moist, shaded by the grasses that ringed the marsh. The frog’s abdomen was taut with pent-up gasses, its limbs stiff. It stank of rotting death. I examined it for wasp stings, snake or spider bites. I flipped it over. The flesh of the frog’s back was mucky with the early stages of decay. I had to turn my face away until I became accustomed to the stench. No abrasions on either side.
The frog looked like it had died from envenomation. I could have been wrong. Maybe it was disease or stress. Maybe it had died of the same mystery that had killed those thousand birds. Either way, it was the closest thing I had to a lead.
I took a sample bag from my backpack and slid the frog inside and strode back to my truck on a path that kept me concealed in the woods as long as possible. Normally, the woods would have been filled with the warbling of a thousand geese. Now, the trees stood silent. The wind scraped a few branches together and rustled some grass. Traffic droned on the interstate, far away. It would take decades for the bird levels to recover. Knowledge of wintering grounds passed ancestrally, parent to hatchling.
I made it back to my truck without anyone accosting me. It was not normal for people to talk to me. Usually, they stared. A baby might cry. A kindergartener might ask his mommy what I was. An old person might pronounce the name of God. But that was it. Tanis Rivera was an exception. I didn’t see her either.
In the parking lot near the marsh observation deck, a middle-aged Chicano man sat in the driver’s seat of a dark sedan reading a newspaper with a fedora on his head, a beard on his face, and spectacles over her eyes. He was the same man I’d seen reading a newspaper at the University. He stood out because he’d ignored me.
I drove on by. I got on the freeway and motored toward my city. After a few miles, a dark sedan eased into my rearview mirror. It held a distance of a quarter mile or so, but it was the same car. I tested it by slowing down and speeding up. It lingered far back, barely within sight.
No doubt about it. Someone was following me.
had no idea how to react to being followed. I considered faking a flat tire and hoping he’d pass me. A private detective in the movies would probably lose his pursuer in a parking garage, trick them into driving over one of those spiked barriers, or simply burn rubber and outrun them. I wasn’t a hero.
I drove to the zoo. In the parking lot, I smacked myself in the forehead for not going straight to Melodía’s. The man with the newspaper already knew I’d been there. I sat in my truck and considered driving to her lab right then to deliver the bullfrog and pick up the egg she wanted incubated. It would be pointless. My pursuer already knew I visited the zoo. Maybe he knew before any of this. Maybe he’d been following me for days―or longer―although his motive was beyond me. Maybe he was doing a study on boredom.
Trying to be subtle about it, I got out of my truck and looked over the tops of all the cars in the parking lot. I spotted the dark sedan with the telltale rectangle of newspaper a few rows away. I thought about approaching it. I thought about calling security. I thought about just going to work and hoping it was all a coincidence―chaos, like Tanis Rivera had talked about.
As I stood there thinking, the man folded up his newspaper, started his engine, and drove away. I stared after him until a school bus rounded a corner, heading toward the zoo. Since the last thing I needed was a bus full of children dropping their jaws at me, I grabbed the frog and made for the employee entrance door to the back corridors that led to the Reptile House.
Marchette was in the front room. It was, again, not his day to be there.
“Mr. Stick!” he said. “Have you brought me a present?”
I brushed by him, retreating to the farthest of four rooms in the back area of the House. I’d staked that one out as my own, where no one would talk to me.
“Tally-ho!” he said at my back.
Some days I hated Simon Marchette.
Another of my coworkers was in the feed storage room. I walked by her and through the door into my lab, put my frog-bag into one of the large refrigerators, and hung my jacket on a peg.
My day should have been about two tarantulas: a blond female and a dark male. Tarantulas have a mating ritual that is highly contingent on geography. They mate only at night. The female stays below ground, feasting on whatever victim she’s poisoned and dragged into her den. The male, come sundown, leaves his burrow and treks across the land. He can range up to a mile or more. He searches for the burrows of other spiders. The female can feel vibrations through the walls of her den. Anything that moves across the ground―she senses it. She can tell what kind of being it is, whether it’s prey to be hunted or predator to be evaded. And when that distinct eight-legged creep comes tapping along, she knows it’s a suitor.
Replicating that ritual in captivity was a challenge. My blonde tarantula’s two-by-three-foot terrarium had no room for a trek. And since the male and female had to live separately―females tend to kill males they don’t care for―one has to choose one’s moment to place the male in the terrarium. The female must be well fed, but not be in possession of a corpse she’s currently eating. The female must not be in a state of stress―which I’m sad to say is often the case at the zoo, where children yell and tap on the glass. The male must also be stress-free, or he’ll hide in a corner of the female’s terrarium instead of creeping around in exploration. Finally, there’s that incalculable factor: love. When the female hears the male’s legs tiptoeing around on her roof, she sticks her head out. If she likes him, she’ll hover there, egging him on. If she doesn’t like him, she’ll retreat into her den. Often the male, enticed by the sight of her head, will venture to the mouth of the burrow. If the female doesn’t like him, she’ll spin a web in his face, barring him from entrance. If he tries to get through, she’ll leap out and sink her fangs into his neck.
Then you have to find a new male.
I didn’t like losing a spider. I was close with my spiders. I kept several males in non-display terrariums, all of which had gotten used to me and would quite happily sit on my shoulder or my knee while I worked. This meant that they didn’t feel stressed when I transferred them from their terrariums to the female’s. It also meant that I didn’t want her to murder them.
I’d solved a few problems with getting my tarantulas to mate in captivity. The males trusted me. My female felt safe in her den. The design of the Reptile House allowed me to manipulate day and night. So, I didn’t have to stay up all night to facilitate the mating process―an unacceptable break in my routine. Still, the blonde I was working with had exhibited only threatening beh
avior. I’d been forced to rescue every male I’d put in with her. Usually, they didn’t even try: they took one look at her fangs and aggressive posture and cowered in a corner.
Lately, I’d been trying a new tactic: I’d place a cap over the mouth of the female’s burrow. Then I’d put the male spider in her terrarium and let him walk around for a while. I thought that a few weeks of hearing the erotic tapping of male feet on her roof might tantalize and tease her to the point where she’d be desperate for a mate. Then, one day, when I left the cap off and lowered a male into her cage, she’d welcome him in.
I was getting all set for day three of my plan when the phone rang.
I ignored it.
A few moments later, Marchette walked into my lab. “Mr. Stick, you have a telephone call from, I surmise based on the vocal qualities of the speaker, Dr. Melodía Hernandez.”
I growled. Several of the creatures in the non-display terrariums lining the walls twitched. Marchette shrank back a little, too.
“Stick,” she said once I’d picked up my extension, “did you go to the Bosque?”
“I’m busy,” I said.
“Did you find anything?”
“I found that I’d run down my gas tank.”
“The University will reimburse you,” she said. “Come to my lab and tell me what you saw.”
“I have a couple hundred living animals here that rely on me to keep them alive. I can’t just take the day off whenever you say so.”
“You also need to pick up that egg and incubate it for me.”
I growled again. The creatures arrayed around the room scampered for shelter. Marchette still hovered nearby, peering into the terrarium of my giant forest scorpion, a jet-black creature I’d acquired recently from Phoenix. I wanted the little scientist to leave.
“Stick,” Melodía said, “I need you.” Her voice broke. It made me feel emotions. This was probably a big deal for her. If she could figure out why all those birds had died in mid-air, her work might get real press. She’d publish in major journals.