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He was always very emotional at the zoo.
First, the lump in his throat burned. Then, the corners of his mouth drooped like the smile of a sad clown. The bouncing children clambered around him, fighting to get to the front of the sloth enclosure, where he stood. With wide eyes they looked up at the man whose face was streaked with tears. It was at this point mums whispered, and dads tugged at collars, pulling their children away. Away from the man. The man always crying at the zoo.
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The Director of the Zoo told him to have his breakdowns in the Nocturnal House. Go blubber to the bats in the dark, she snapped, throwing a Zoo map without looking up. It smacked his round stomach and flopped to the ground. He never spoke to the Director, despite being shooed from her office multiple times a week. It wasn’t because the Director was a powerful woman in the Zoo world and he felt intimidated, but because she never looked at him. Not once had she lifted her chin to meet his eye. He stood sobbing in silence as tears spotted her carpet. She intently watched these dark circles form around his shoes. She was unwilling to look up because she knew what was wrong. And she didn’t want to get into all that now.
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When he swept the porcupine pen, he rolled around in the dirt and wailed. Sometimes it was due to the sadness, other times it was due to the rodent’s shed needles pricking his soft skin. A visitor heard his cry and glanced over for a second before turning away, distracted by her melting ice cream. Everyone notices a melting ice cream, no one notices a melting ice cap. Thoughts like this scared him. Because they isolated him. They weighed him down like giving a piggyback to a fat kid. Sometimes he’d pull himself together and dust off his knees. Other times he’d sink under the load. This happened yesterday when he saw an ugly visitor lick then drop their single-use plastic ice cream spoon. As he watched, the Groundskeeper was shouting over at him, waving her arms, yelling to get out the f*cking pen as she’s about to release the porcupines back in. But the incident was too much. He coiled into himself, collapsing slowly into the soft ferns to later be treated for porcupine bites.
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His colleagues talked about him behind his back. They assumed things about him because he was quiet. They felt he judged them in the staff canteen when they feasted on microwavable meat burgers in single-use plastic. They felt he made a point of unwrapping his cucumber salad and eating alone in the middle of the room. When he left the room, they all agreed he was very bad at his job. And they were right.
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It took all day to work himself up to feeding the elephants. Critically endangered. He took a left at Penguin Palace and darted through the uncomfortably warm butterfly house to stand for hours outside their enclosure. In the distance he heard the jangle of keys as Security locked up for the day. Alone in the quiet, he’d hear the almighty sigh of a sad elephant. When he couldn’t bring himself to face them, he closed his eyes and lobbed the bamboo branches into their pen like he was throwing a Wellington boot at the local summer fete. Most nights he missed, and the Zebras welcomed the second supper.
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He always worked late due to the sadness slowing him down so on the way home he’d swing by KFC and feast on salty battery hens. Before bed he bathed in beautifully scented palm oil soap and cranked the heating right up to stay cosy while the window remained ajar. Before drifting off he’d weep into his pillow until it clung to his face. He’d think of 100 different ways to change his life and save the planet, to then be overcome with sleep, and do nothing.