Zoo Story (23 page)

“This cat hates me,” Murphy told Lex.

Knocking out Enshalla would be dangerous. Tranquilizers don’t always work instantly, as in the movies. Their effects depend on unpredictable variables—the animal’s emotional state, the exact place the dart enters the body. In 1974, at the Knoxville Zoo, a veterinarian had fired a tranquilizer dart into an escaped Bengal tiger. The tiger, approximately twenty-five feet away, leaped onto the vet and mauled him.

“It happened so fast,” one witness said, “he didn’t have time to move.”

News of the Code One was out. A guest, herded inside a building, had apparently phoned the media. Reporters were calling. In the sky, a news helicopter hovered. The weapons team hoped the chopping sound would not set the tiger on edge. Soon Enshalla was moving again. She walked to the edge of the exhibit, then jumped down into the tall grass inside the moat, making it harder for the weapons team to see her. She had found the perfect place to disappear.

By now it was close to six o’clock. Enshalla had been out for roughly an hour. Dusk would be falling soon. If the team was going to tranquilize her, they knew they had to do it fast, or they risked losing her in the darkness. Murphy stepped onto the boardwalk that lined the exhibit, trying to stay out of the tiger’s sight. Lex got out of the car, armed with the shotgun, to cover the vet.

Enshalla was still in the moat. Unable to get his shot with the tranquilizer gun, Murphy climbed to the top of a platform draped with ivy—a platform where, many years earlier, children had climbed onto the backs of elephants for rides. The platform was roughly seven feet high, giving Murphy the angle he needed. He aimed and fired. The dart hit Enshalla’s neck, but the drugs did not knock her out. Instead Enshalla was enraged. She lunged toward the vet, clawing up the ivy. She was only a few feet from Murphy when Lex fired.

Enshalla dropped into the elephant grass, but was still moving. Lex fired three more times.

Finally the tiger was still.

That Tuesday evening, as Carie finished her shift at the animal shelter, strange messages from friends at Lowry Park flooded her cell phone’s voice mail.

“I’m sorry,” they told her. “You need to watch the news.”

Then they hung up.

The lack of any explanation was unsettling enough. But even worse was the urgency that Carie detected beneath the voices. On her drive home, when she finally had a moment free, she phoned someone at the zoo.

“What’s wrong?” Carie asked. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you,” said the friend, “but you have to pull over first.”

At first Carie didn’t want to stop, but her friend insisted. She stopped the car on the shoulder, her sense of dread growing. “What is it?” she said. “Is Enshalla dead?”

The friend paused, then said yes.

Carie began to scream.

The next morning,
Lowry Park was all over the front page again. Even so, the zoo was open, and the canned jungle drums were beating their familiar message, and couples and families were lined up at the ticket windows. A bloody death, it turned out, was a good draw at the front gate.

Despite the attempts at normalcy, the staff was visibly reeling. The deluge had already begun: news conferences, tearful interviews, petitions for Lex Salisbury’s firing. The furor grew when Lowry Park confirmed that Chris Lennon was new to the zoo and had apparently never before worked with large carnivores. By all accounts, Chris was so devastated by Enshalla’s death that he was holed up at his apartment, not even answering the phone. Lowry Park placed him on leave, then promptly fired him. A state wildlife inspector recommended that the young keeper be charged with improper handling of captive wildlife, a misdemeanor. Ultimately, though, the Hillsborough County state attorney’s office declined to press charges, saying there was no evidence of criminal intent.

Lowry Park itself was reprimanded. The Tampa Police Department expressed frustration that the zoo had not immediately called 911 to report the escape of a dangerous animal. An inspector from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who visited the tiger night house after the shooting, declared the zoo’s training and safety procedures inadequate. The new keeper’s inexperience had been a safety hazard, the inspector said. So was the policy that had allowed one keeper, working alone, to shift dangerous animals from their exhibit into their dens. The inspector’s report concluded:

Correct: Immediately.

Outside the zoo, Enshalla’s shooting was more fodder for the endless debate over the ethics of keeping animals captive. Many were incensed at the CEO, calling him “Wild West Lex.” Others wondered why the zoo hadn’t found another way to pacify the tiger. Couldn’t someone have thrown a net?

When asked these questions by reporters, several current and former keepers from Lowry Park all agreed that the zoo had done the only thing it could in an impossible situation. They explained how long it could take tranquilizers to kick in, how a net would not have contained an angry tiger’s teeth or claws. Once Enshalla leaped, they said, Lex had no choice but to pull the trigger.

“That’s his only option,” said Brian Czarnik.

Brian was the keeper who had been fired from the Asia department not long before Enshalla’s death. He was more critical of the events that had led up to the tiger’s escape. Like Carie, he believed the zoo had been stretched too thin for too long. To him, Enshalla’s escape as a result of a new keeper’s mistake only proved it. In interviews with the
St. Petersburg Times
and other news outlets, Brian listed his complaints. He didn’t understand why the zoo had only one staff veterinarian for approximately eighteen hundred animals—a question many others had asked as well. He believed Lex’s constant push for expansion had worn people down and driven a wedge between the keepers and management. And he was critical of the zoo’s eagerness to market the arrival of new baby animals such as Tamani.

“If it’s nice and fluffy,” he said, “they’ll use it.”

Brian said he’d been fired because he spoke up about problems and pushed for change. Other keepers, he said, had been dismissed after they protested. All of these firings, combined with the departures of Carie and Dustin and others who had left on their own, had created a vacuum of experience.

At a news conference after Enshalla’s death, Lex was asked about Czarnik’s firing.

“Our policy is not to go into employee matters,” said the CEO. “But the guy was fired for good reason.”

Still, Lex confirmed that his reputation as a tough boss was well-deserved. “I am demanding, and I want this place to be the very best,” he said. “If people don’t perform, they generally are unable to stay here.”

Looking into the news cameras, Lex maintained the calm exterior that had served him so well with mayors and governors and kings. A day after facing an escaped tiger, he was more than ready to stare down a room full of reporters. He said that Lowry Park hadn’t reported Enshalla’s escape to Tampa police because the zoo’s weapons team had the situation under control. He pledged that the zoo would call 911 more quickly, should such an emergency ever arise again. But his comments about the police were far from apologetic.

“We don’t call them unless we need them,” he said. “We really don’t want people storming in with guns who don’t really understand animal behavior.”

Someone asked Lex why he had insisted on being the one to put Enshalla down. Why hadn’t he let a member of the weapons team take the shot? Lex explained that he saw it as his job. He hadn’t wanted somebody else to be forced to gun down the tiger. Throughout the press conference, Lex tried to dial down the emotions of what had happened. Though he had known the tiger all her life, he avoided referring to her by name. The effect was disturbing. Suddenly Enshalla was no longer the fierce beauty who terrified and enthralled the public and her keepers and even her lethal suitors. Now she was simply the animal in question. It felt as though she were being erased.

Lex acknowledged that her untimely death was unfortunate. But as the press conference went on, he did his best to move the conversation from the dead tiger to the ongoing mission of Lowry Park.

“The thing that makes us want to keep going on is that we feel like we have a moral purpose, that we’re making a difference,” he said. “And I think we are.”

The high-minded words did not stem the torrent of criticism. On the Internet, Lex was accused of murdering Enshalla. Lee Ann was stunned. She had seen Lex moments after he shot Enshalla, and no matter how controlled he’d appeared in front of the cameras, she knew how much the incident had shaken him. What was he supposed to have done when Enshalla attacked? she wondered. Just let the tiger kill Dr. Murphy? If anything, Lee Ann was grateful to her boss for taking on such an awful responsibility.

“Lex did us a favor,” she said. “This is his zoo, and he cares about this place, and he had to make a difficult decision.”

What almost no one noticed, in the fog of questions, was the way Lowry Park’s history had circled back on itself. But Lex saw it.

On the afternoon of the press conference, Lex guided two reporters to the boardwalk above the rhino moat to show them exactly how he had ended up shooting Enshalla. He was not being boastful or defensive. The reporters had asked him to walk them through the complicated sequence, so they could describe it more accurately in their coverage, and he was simply granting their request.

Away from the glare of the TV lights, Lex let down his guard. Enshalla’s death, he said, was the second most heartbreaking moment he had ever known at Lowry Park. The only thing worse had been the morning in 1993 when the elephant killed Char-Lee Torre. Both tragedies had unfolded in this corner of the zoo. When Lex fired at Enshalla, in fact, he had been standing beside a plaque memorializing Char-Lee’s death. He pointed to the plaque now, so the reporters would see it. Not to linger on the coincidence. Just to note it.

In the years to come, as generations of new visitors strolled through the zoo, they would have no idea that a keeper and a tiger had both died in this spot. Once the exhibit was remodeled, it wouldn’t look remotely the same. But the history would still roil underneath.

Two terrible days, thirteen years apart, now framing everything in between.

In the primate department,
there was talk of a statue. The keepers wanted some way to remember Herman, and the zoo was considering a plaque or perhaps even a bronzed figure to be erected in front of the chimp exhibit. Something respectful that honored his decades in this place and would allow him to reign on.

The surviving chimps, meanwhile, had not fully recovered. They were still in transition, waiting for the next alpha to declare himself and take power. The primate keepers crossed their fingers, hoping it would not be Alex. Since Herman’s death, the adolescent male had been stirring things up. He had even claimed Herman’s throne, staking out the former alpha’s station beside the waterfall. Bamboo, content to sit on the rocks one level below, didn’t bother trying to knock Alex off the perch. But as summer turned into fall, it became clear that Bamboo had accepted the mantle of the alpha. Bamboo wasn’t as self-assured as Herman, but he seemed reasonably comfortable with his new role. The chimps seemed to have stabilized again, at least for the time being. Sasha’s introductions with the rest of the group had continued since Herman’s death. Rukiya had accepted the role of the infant’s surrogate mother; Sasha had bonded with Rukiya and now followed her everywhere. Sasha was also extremely attached to Bamboo. One night, she had climbed into his nest in the night house and slept beside the new king.

Those who loved Herman were still trying to decipher why he had been overthrown by Bamboo, the lowest member of the hierarchy. Clearly something had shifted in the group, something the keepers had not seen coming. But what had been the catalyst? Why would Bamboo have gone after Herman, who had treated him with respect? What had Bamboo stood to gain that wasn’t already available to him? He had a steady supply of food, and Herman had never tried to stop him from mating with the females. What could have set him off?

Now that some time had passed, Lee Ann was able to talk a little about Herman’s death. She admitted she was still mystified by what happened. But she had arrived at a theory. Whatever had transpired, she believed that Rukiya had been at the center of it. Lee Ann thought back to the earlier fight between Bamboo and Herman, not long before the fatal attack. She remembered Rukiya grooming Bamboo and how unusual that had seemed. She thought about the many times she had seen Rukiya manipulating Herman and Bamboo, redirecting the males’ aggression. Somehow, she believed, Rukiya had quietly orchestrated the coup.

“I think Rukiya instigated,” said Lee Ann. “I love her dearly . . . but I think she had a very big hand in starting the fight.”

To her, it seemed unlikely that Bamboo would have made a power grab on his own, without encouragement. Lee Ann didn’t believe that either he or Rukiya had meant to kill Herman. She thought it more likely that the attack had been launched to intimidate the alpha and force him to surrender, just as he had done years before when challenged by Chester. But then Herman had apparently hit his head, or the level of necessary violence had been miscalculated.

Lee Ann wasn’t even sure Bamboo had understood what he was doing. She remembered his fear grins that day, his obvious confusion. Somehow, Rukiya must have found a way to set him off. But why would Rukiya have shifted her allegiance away from Herman? Over the years he had been unusually kind to her. What could have been her motive for getting rid of him? Lee Ann had heard the rumors that Sasha’s introduction had triggered the attack, but to her that explanation seemed implausible. At the time, Sasha hadn’t even met any of the male chimps and had never even been in the same enclosure with any of the females. Lee Ann’s theory was that Rukiya was clearing a path to the throne for her adopted son. She wanted to make it easier for Alex to eventually become the king. Rukiya was smart enough to have calculated the odds. It was predictable that Bamboo would assume alpha status once Herman was pushed aside; he was the only other adult male in the group. But Bamboo was old and weak and not likely to hold on to his throne for long, especially in the face of a serious challenge. Alex was young and strong and growing stronger.

Lee Ann’s scenario was eerily reminiscent of
I, Claudius
, Robert Graves’s classic novel about the first Roman emperors. In the book, the Empress Livia, wife to Augustus, poisons and murders and plots against any rivals who stand between her son Tiberius and his succession to the throne.

Even if Lee Ann’s theory was wrong and Rukiya had nothing to do with planning the attack, it was not hard to imagine Alex taking over soon. Whatever happened, the old king would not be forgotten. At her desk, Lee Ann kept a framed photo of Herman and an urn with some of his ashes. In his honor, she had made a list of all the things she loved about him. To name a few:

He was a gentle soul.
He liked to have his nails done.
He loved to flirt with pretty girls in tank tops.
He always made up after a fight.
Even when he was mad he always gave warning and was never sneaky.
He was a good judge of character.

That fall,
the battle between the zoo and its critics escalated.

More former staff members stepped forward with criticisms, including Jeff and Coleen Kremer. Jeff had worked in security and visitor services; Coleen had worked in the education department and then outreach. Both gave interviews to news organizations, saying they loved Lowry Park but had quit out of frustration with the zoo’s direction. The Kremers echoed the complaints that Lowry Park’s staff was overworked and had become demoralized under Lex’s tyrannical management and his constant push for expansion. They insisted that Enshalla’s escape had not been the only serious Code One. From his stint as a security guard, Jeff reported that Tamani, the baby elephant, had gotten loose twice during his shifts. To the Kremers and others, these incidents—combined with Enshalla’s death—raised a serious question about how well the zoo was maintaining its growing animal population. To make sure their concerns were heard, the couple had launched a Web site called TampasZooAdvocates.com and had dedicated the site to the memory of Herman and Enshalla.