family crammed into the old Ford and began our way
home from the beach after swimming and a picnic.
When my father suggested we stop at the zoo to see the
newly acquired buffalo, Grandma’s jaw set itself into a
hard line. She was tired after a full day of family frolic,
but said nothing.
Soon the hot, sticky smell of animal waste blew through the windows to greet us as the car bumped its way into
the parking lot in a swirl of road dust and humidity.
The family toppled out of the Ford and walked to the
buffalo’s pen, tripping over tufts of grass on the way.
Unannounced visitors should always be prepared for anything, and the buffalo had evidently been too busy to finish his toilet before we arrived. However, he was enthusiastically unburdening himself as we began to assemble along the rail. My parents reacted by observing the blue jays in the trees, while my brothers attempted to partially imitate the beast. Grandma swooned, steadied herself on the fence rail for a few seconds and then grabbed my hand and marched the two of us away.
Grandma habitually rescued me from one déclassé
situation or another. She regarded me as a sensitive and
intelligent 9 year old. “You’re the only other inquisitive
mind in the neighborhood,” she said, “and that’s not
saying much.” We frequently discussed cultural
matters like Margaret Truman’s voice or conundrums
like Arthur Godfrey’s refusal to wear a parachute, and
mysteries such as whether Desi Arnaz could really play
an instrument or if he was faking it while Lucy sang and
danced. Grandma said we walked a narrow civilized
path together through the jungle of our working class
neighborhood. For a woman interested in the social
ladder, she was not very sociable.
Although quite different in age, my grandmother and I
shared a variety of interests. On family outings, we
might wander off together to spy on the birds or inspect
an unusual plant or flower, while the others threw a ball
back and forth endlessly or nearly drowned themselves
in the lake. We often carried on a spirited dialogue, my
Timaeus playing to her Socrates. But it was decidedly
limited in scope, since neither of us had finished the
fourth grade.
We left the group as they ogled a steaming pile of dung
and hunkered up the hill to the zoo’s Animal House to
see the monkeys and whatever the hell you call those
things that look like giant rats. Dimly lit, the menagerie
baked like an oven inside, and smelled much worse than
the buffalo pen. Strolling down the aisle past the caged
jackals and vermin, Grandma began to chatter through
her complete zoological body of knowledge, which
would have taken no more than eleven seconds.
But time moves slowly for a child. I wanted to get home
and change into dry clothing. All my squirming around
in the back seat on the drive here had done nothing to
shake the sand loose in my britches. For reasons still
inexplicable to me, the Irish did not allow themselves to
disrobe in public bath houses and so we always arrived at
the beach with swim suits under our clothing, and went
home the same way. We were sometimes dry when we
put our pants back on for the ride home, but more often
our bathing suits were wet and sandy and terrifically
uncomfortable … in places on the body we were told to
seldom touch in private and never scratch in public.
As we came to a cage smelling so bad the breath caught
in my throat, an eerie huffing sound issued forth and
echoed around the concrete interior of the building. A
huge form lay at the back of the darkened cage.
Attached to the railing in front of the heavy bars, a small
sign identified the inmate as a male North American
Timber Wolf, one of the largest of the species. I
couldn't see well into his shadowy den, and the smelly
behemoth gave us no sign of recognition. Easily bored,
my attention turned to the monkeys across the aisle. I
soon became enthralled with the frisky little fellows, but
a little puzzled by the intensity of their play. I glanced
over at my grandmother only when I noticed her attempts
to entice the Goliath out into the light by leaning over the
rail and swinging her purse wide to swipe at the bars.
My grandmother was a wonderful woman, but
somewhere in her past the fairy of self-importance had
touched her a little too hard with the uppity stick.
Grandma could stand insult and injury, but never
disinterest. You could not purposely fail to notice the
old woman and live to tell about it. Unbalanced by the
beast’s inattention, Grandma opened her purse, pulled
out a pack of Tums, peeled one off and flung it through
the bars at the animal. She certainly hit him, because I
heard a loud grunt, but he remained at rest. She shouted
at him, but got no reaction.
Something now snapped in my grandmother’s soul and she became infuriated. If her mind had been able to make a sound, I would have heard the click-clack of a bullet being chambered. Spittle formed in the corners of her mouth and her breathing grew short. She hauled off and fired the entire pack of antacids at the huge shaggy beast. A sharp crack sounded inside the cage and the Tums could be heard bouncing around in the dark. The entire zoo suddenly went silent, and even the monkeys came to a dead stop.
A feeling of fright ran down my spine. In my mind’s
eye, I saw Mr. Wolf thwacked hard on a large canine
tooth jutting out from his jaw. This is the main dental
hardware a wolf uses to tear apart his victims, like poor
innocent kids and annoying old women. My grandmother succeeded in her quest. The beast reacted, but Grandma got about 400 pounds more than she had bargained for.
Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe he was fed up
or maybe his tooth had a cavity. Maybe the big cat
didn’t like being moved into the cage of a long departed
wolf so his own cage could be re-painted. One thing for
sure, the King of the Jungle did not gladly suffer an old
lady hitting him in the head with a pack of Tums. When I heard the roar, it was unmistakable. This was not the howl of a wolf. It was the awful sound of something an awful lot bigger ... big enough to shake my vision like a train was crashing through the zoo. Mr. Leo Lion lunged off the floor of the wolf cage with a great tearing scrape of his cigar-length claws and flew forward into the light, slamming against the bars in a huge orgasmic rage of roaring, spit and very bad breath. Grandma wet her pants.
Lions have an uncanny sense of smell, perhaps 20 times
more sensitive than humans. Grandma didn’t know it,
but her aggression and urine produced the best imitation
of a mating overture this 600 pound male lion had seen
in a long time.
Big guys like Leo make certain movements when they
are ready to mate. These are obvious to any species,
even humans, unless you’re a youngster whose attention
is elsewhere. Despite Leo’s heavy breathing, the
monkeys still grabbed my attention and I lost interest in
the Big Bad Boy-Toy. Grandma didn’t. When the
family joined us in the Animal House, they found my
grandmother had taken out her glasses and was standing
at the cage in rapt attention, chewing nervously on her
fingernails in time to the lion’s grunting. Across the
aisle, I stood transfixed by the monkeys. The little guys
and girls were sure having a lot of fun, but their games
were getting more and more peculiar as they paired off and began climbing all over each other. If we kids had done that in school at recess Sister Mary Pharsalia would have had heart failure.
My father joined me at the monkey cage.
“What’re they doing, Dad?” I asked.
He looked at the monkeys, then at me. He looked a second time at the monkeys and again back to me.
“A War Dance,” he said. “We’d better leave before they
attack.”
My mother led Grandma away from the lion. I was sure I saw a look of disappointment in his eyes.
The following Christmas I found a copy of “Animals Of The Jungle” on the discount rack at Woolworth’s for twenty five cents. I wrapped it up in used Christmas paper and gave it to Grandma. She quoted it often to friends, her eleven seconds of zoological knowledge now exponentially expanded.
I don’t believe my parents ever fully understood
Grandma's feelings of loss and desperation in her first
years with us. But they had the good sense to give her
more attention after our day at the zoo.
Eventually my grandmother came to accept her new life with us. She even began to speak to the neighbors. Life went on. My brothers and I inadvertently discovered Mom and Dad liked stripping naked in the bath house. But for whatever reason, they never took us back to the zoo.
David Griffin copyright 2010
