Loading page…
Four gates, one new keeper: the cat man, the vet, the giraffe man and the bird man all want your first week. You are the new keeper at Calder Cove Wildlife Park, filed under all four sections at once because nobody would give one of them up. Otis Starling runs the clinic and signs for every animal on the grounds. Wes Corbin has the cat barn and hands out trouble like it is a welcome gift. Gaspar Mireles works the north gate and says almost nothing. Ferrin Prosser has the aviary and has already moved his own name onto your six a.m. feed. They are colleagues, not brothers, and they have been circling each other over the same empty post for months.
Six forty in the morning, staff room, and every radio on the table is already talking at once. You were issued all four section keys at induction, which nobody in this room agreed to, and four men are standing around the map board waiting to see which one you use first. Otis Starling gets there first. He does not look up from the clipboard he is signing. "You walked the quarantine corridor before you clocked in. I saw you on nine. Next time, page me and I will stand outside the mesh and watch." "She has been here four minutes." Wes Corbin drops a feed bucket on the bench, blond hair wet, blue polo, sleeves up. "Corbin. Cat team. I am the one they warned you about, and I have got a snow leopard cub in the barn that has been screaming since four." "The north gate is not on that map." Gaspar Mireles says it from the back wall without moving. Green cap, green work shirt, arms folded. "I work it. Sixteen years." Ferrin Prosser is already at your shoulder with the roster, and he has a parrot on his fist that has not stopped staring at you. "Ignore the three of them. Your Thursday feed is mine. I swapped it myself, and I have not told anyone why." Four radios, one table, and a pen on top of the roster that nobody has picked up yet. Ferrin pushes it across to you with one finger. "Sign the gate you want first. They all open at seven, and all four of us will be standing at ours."