Big Game (2 page)

“Good morning, gentlemen!” he called, waving to both of us. Athmani spoke with a lilt in his voice, the way many native Africans did, which made his words sound a bit like a song. His skin was so dark that the whites of his eyes seemed to glow against it. “What brings you out here so early this morning?”

“Getting a little exercise.” Dad shook Athmani's hand. “How about yourself?”

“I'm making sure my elephants are safe.” Athmani held up his hand to me for a fist bump. Fist bumps were new to him, and he seemed to find them amusing.

I knocked my knuckles against his. “Do you think they're in danger?”

“Well, they're not while I'm around.” Athmani grinned, but it didn't last long. “To be honest, I'm not crazy about them walking around the park like this. Lots of things could go wrong.”

“We've got them under control,” Bonnie said, trotting back over. Her pooper-scooper was considerably heavier and smellier now, though neither she nor Athmani seemed bothered by the stink. Their years around the elephants had made them immune. “And they love the exercise. They can't just sit in their exhibit all day.”

Athmani frowned. “I'm not that crazy about their exhibit either. I have concerns about security in that part of the park.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Before Athmani could answer me, a rifle shot rang out. It sounded like it was coming from close by, loud and clear, shattering the morning quiet.

I know what a rifle sounds like. There were lots of hunters in that part of Texas. Our trailer sat right on the edge of the woods, and I'd heard plenty of rifle shots from there.

But I'd never heard one this close to FunJungle before.

Dad, Bonnie, and the rest of the keepers instantly went on alert. So did all the animals. By now we were close to Monkey Mountain, and the air was suddenly filled with startled whoops and cries from the primates. Elsewhere, birds squawked, zebras brayed, and big cats roared.

But the elephants responded most dramatically of all.

It's not a myth that elephants never forget. They have tremendous memories, particularly of emotional moments. Eleanor had been born in the wild and orphaned by poachers. When the rifle sounded nearby, she panicked. She trumpeted loudly and ran, leading her herd toward safety. The other elephants dutifully followed. They veered away from their keepers, off Adventure Road, stampeding in the opposite direction from the gunshot.

Unfortunately, Dad and I were right in their path.

“Look out!” Dad yelled, as though maybe I hadn't noticed twelve elephants bearing down on me and trumpeting at the top of their lungs. He grabbed my arm to drag me away, though I was already moving.

An elephant can run twenty-five miles an hour. Dad and I dove out of the way just in time. The herd thundered past us, then plowed right through some decorative landscaping. A group of topiary animals was flattened into mulch within seconds. One of the bigger females sideswiped a large oak tree, which toppled as though it had been hit by a truck, crushing a souvenir kiosk.

“Eleanor, stop!” Bonnie shouted, but her words were drowned out by the ruckus the elephants were making. Bonnie and the other keepers ran after the herd, but keeping up with it was hopeless. The elephants were too fast, and to make matters worse, they—like most animals—responded to fear by emptying their bladders.

The evolutionary reason animals (and in many cases, humans) do this is that it's hard to run with a full bladder. Plus, all that pee and poop weighs quite a lot—especially when you're an elephant—and when you're fleeing for your life, every last bit of weight you can leave behind helps. Within seconds, the ground was a minefield of elephant poo, with an ocean of pee around it. Understandably, the keepers were in no hurry to run through it.

Ahead of them, the panicked elephants stampeded onward—even though the Gorilla Grill, one of the most popular restaurants at FunJungle, sat right in their way. In the wild, there's not much that elephants can't plow through, except for the occasional baobab tree, so when they're on the run, they tend to go in a straight line, flattening anything in their path.

The restaurant was no match for them. The front of it was floor-to-ceiling windows. The herd smashed right through them, shattering the glass and splintering the support beams, then stormed through the dining area, crushing tables and chairs as though they were made of paper. They crashed through the far wall, trampled the outdoor furniture, and raced off toward Monkey Mountain.

I picked myself up off the ground and surveyed the wreckage. The restaurant was totaled. The service counter had been pounded into toothpicks. The grills had been upended and jets of flame flared from where the gas lines had snapped. Geysers of soda erupted from the previous site of the soft-drink dispenser. Then, with a shriek of rending wood, the roof caved in.

Bonnie and the other keepers kept after the herd, desperately yelling commands at them as though they were Labrador retrievers. “Stop! Stay! Bad elephants! Bad elephants!”

My father and Athmani both looked extremely concerned—although they weren't watching the elephants. In fact, neither seemed to be aware the restaurant had collapsed. They were staring off in the opposite direction, the way the rifle shot had come from. Both started running that way.

“Wait!” I called, chasing after them. “Shouldn't we help with the elephants?”

“Bonnie will get them under control,” Dad told me. “Right now I'm more worried about whoever fired that shot.”

“You don't think it was only a hunter?”

“No,” Dad said. “Whoever fired that gun was too close to FunJungle. I don't think they were going after deer or rabbits.”

“You mean . . . ?” I began.

“Yes.” Dad looked back at me, and I could see the worry in his eyes. “I think someone just tried to kill one of our animals.”

I kept right on the
heels of my father and Athmani as they raced through FunJungle. Somewhere around World of Reptiles, it occurred to me that maybe running
toward
someone with a gun wasn't the brightest idea in the world. But then, if I stopped running, I'd end up alone in the park with a herd of stampeding elephants on the loose, which wasn't exactly safe either. I decided to stick close to my father, figuring he wouldn't let any harm come to me.

Dad and Athmani both thought that the gunshot had come from the SafariLand section of FunJungle, so we headed that way. FunJungle wasn't a traditional zoo. It was designed more like a theme park, but instead of rides, it had innovative animal exhibits—and SafariLand was one of the most impressive. It consisted of several enormous open-air paddocks where dozens of different species could coexist together, giving guests a decent idea of what the wild might look like in certain parts of the world. For example, the African Savanna section had giraffes, zebras, Cape buffalo, waterbuck, impala, kudu, eland, flamingos, ostriches, and crowned cranes—more than four hundred animals in all—in an area larger than most entire zoos. SafariLand was so big, there wasn't any way to see it all from one spot, but Kololo Lookout offered the best vantage point for much of it. It was right at the place where the African Savanna and the Asian Plains met, so we went there first.

While I could still hear elephants trumpeting from elsewhere in FunJungle—as well as the occasional crash of another souvenir kiosk being trampled—life at SafariLand looked exactly like it usually did. The animals were grazing calmly. Unlike the elephants, they either hadn't been upset by the gunshot—or they'd already forgotten about it.

The humans in the area were doing considerably worse. Five people had already gathered at Kololo, and they seemed far more freaked out than the animals. Two of them were keepers, two were security guards, and one was a maintenance man. They were all arguing about what should be done. Everyone looked relieved to see Athmani arrive, pleased that someone in authority was there to make decisions for them.

“Were any of the animals hurt?” Athmani asked.

“We don't know,” admitted one of the keepers. The name patch on her uniform said S
ANDRA
, and she had short blond hair. “We haven't seen anything, but we haven't had a chance to search the whole exhibit yet.”

“Did anyone see the shooter?” Dad asked.

Everyone started talking at once. None of them had seen the shooter, but each had a completely different idea of where they might have been.

Athmani had to whistle to get their attention. “We need to do a thorough sweep of this exhibit right now, end to end, before the park opens. The Fitzroys and I will start in the Asian Plains.” He pointed to the keepers and told them, “You start at the north end of Africa and work your way across.” He then turned to the security guards. “You two get a rover and go check the outside perimeter of the park. See if there's any breaches in the fence—or, who knows, maybe you'll even spot our hunter out there.”

Everyone nodded and ran off, except the maintenance man, who asked, “Need anything from me?”

“Stay up here,” Athmani told him. “Keep your eyes peeled. If you see a wounded animal or someone down in the exhibit who doesn't look like they're supposed to be there, radio me.”

The maintenance man saluted as though Athmani were an army general, then went to the railing and stared vigilantly across the exhibit.

Dad and I started toward the employee entrance to the Asian Plains, but Athmani held up a hand to stop us. “Wait,” he said. “Can you see all the rhinos?”

Dad and I turned back to the exhibit. It might seem odd that, out of the dozens of species of animal in SafariLand, Athmani was concerned about only one, but the Asian greater one-horned rhinos were among the most endangered animals in all of FunJungle. There were fewer than twenty-five hundred of them left in the world. Sadly, there are rhino species that are even more endangered—the Javan and Sumatran rhinos are extinct in the wild, and there are only five African northern white rhinos left on earth—but still, every Asian greater one-horned rhino is extremely precious. We had five at FunJungle.

Luckily, the rhinos were also the biggest animals in the Asian Plains and thus the easiest to spot.

“There's two,” Dad said, pointing. From where we stood, the rhinos were merely dark lumps in the distance, but I could still tell they were up on their feet and grazing, alive and well.

“And there's two more,” Athmani reported, pointing at another pair of lumps under a distant tree.

“That just leaves Rhonda,” I said.

Dad and Athmani looked at each other, suddenly worried. “Rhonda!” they exclaimed, and took off running as fast as they could go.

I did my best to keep up with them, aware why they were so concerned. Rhonda was even more precious than any of the other rhinos. She was pregnant.

The public didn't know this yet. FunJungle was keeping it a secret. An Asian rhino is pregnant for almost sixteen months, and the publicity department feared that the public's interest would fade if the news was released too early. It was better for park promotion—and luring tourists—to make a surprise announcement once the baby was born. In truth, no one was exactly sure how long Rhonda had been pregnant. It's not that easy to tell when a four-ton animal is getting a little heavier, and unlike pregnant humans, pregnant rhinos don't suddenly start feeling nauseated. A pregnant rhino behaves exactly like a nonpregnant rhino. However, it was now evident that Rhonda was in the later stages of pregnancy. Her belly was swollen and dipping so far down, it was only a few inches above the ground.

Normally, Rhonda was allowed out with all the other animals in the Asian Plains, where rhinos were the most popular species on display. While all rhinos are fascinating, Asian ones are surprisingly docile and can be quite friendly. You could pay extra at FunJungle to feed them apples, which was fun—as long as you didn't mind ending up with a hand covered in rhino slobber. However, to keep Rhonda safe and relaxed during the end of her pregnancy, she had been taken off exhibit. She was now living in a special building inside the Asian Plains, rather than out in the open.

Dad, Athmani, and I ducked down a path behind the SafariLand Snack Shack, slipped through a gate marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY
into the backstage area of FunJungle, then arrived at a far more secure gate that led into the Asian Plains. This one was topped with barbed wire and had an electronic lock with a keypad entry. Athmani entered that day's code, and the lock clicked open.

The Asian Plains was the second-largest animal enclosure at FunJungle, after the African Savanna next door. It was two hundred and fifty acres of grassland, dotted with a few groves of trees and populated by more than three hundred and twenty separate animals. Despite this, it was one of the most ignored exhibits at the park. The Asian Plains residents were mostly antelope and deer, and for some reason, tourists didn't seem nearly as interested in them as they were in the giraffes, zebra, and Cape buffalo in the African Savanna. Sure, they rode the SafariLand monorail around the exhibit, but that was only because they had to do that to get to Africa. There were rarely ever crowds at the viewpoints unless an Asian rhino happened to be close by.