The Ropes

January 1^st, 11:01

Today we woke up to an early morning Arkansas chill. 8:00 AM, to be exact. We rolled out of bed to layer on clothes, excited for the day ahead; annoyed to be up so early. We met in the cookhouse, poured ourselves cheap coffee and sat in wait. 10 minutes. 20 minutes. Turk’s car pulled up. One applesauce cup, two slices of banana bread and several large gulps of coffee later, we were in the infamous blue truck and off to start the day. We went to Asian barn to set half a bale of hay out for Peggy and Booper for when they were let out of the barn and into their enclosure. We then drove to African barn, where I was shown the ropes on all the how-to’s of barn-cleaning. Who’da thunk such a technique existed? You shovel the poo, sweep out the hay, sweep out the dust, wheel it all out, turn on the hose and spray that sucker clean until she shines. Until the red mud is out of all its comfortable knooks and crannies and all of the foam from the piss and mineral deposits is washed clear. The “foaming floor” rule, they call it. If it’s still foaming, you ain’t done. And wasn’t that the truth. A cage no larger than 30 by 30 feet, if that, and how long does it take? Oh, an hour if you’re good. Turk later boasted, “On a good day, 1 hour and 17 minutes. Alone.” She beamed, a glint of pride momentarily overpowering the sheen of dust plastered to her face. It was an art. An art I prayed I would learn, lest I tromped back to the cookhouse soaked every day. Lesson Learned #1: Rain boots in the morning. Work boots in the afternoon.

Just before we cleaned African barn, Toby and Max were let out into their enclosure. And, as if they knew what was coming, they each left a good basketball-sized dump, steaming, on their cage floors. That and a jet stream of piss unlike any other I’d ever seen. After we finished up, mucked the grates and swept out all the rest of the hay, we met up at Asian barn to finish up some more dirty work over there, cleaning out Hank’s enclosure.

“Hank, Jesus…why’d you have to shit in the puddle?” Zoe cursed. She was the complainer of the bunch, but a fun one, nonetheless. Pete cast her a sideways glance. After that we unloaded and loaded and unloaded 72 bales of hay. This is where I learned the bump n’ jump, as I like to call it. In order to get the bale successfully onto the truck, you must “bump” it up with your knee as high as you can and then push it to send it flying. I added jump and omitted push for both rhyming’s sake and the importance of jumping so as not to lose your balance in the crevices between bales that were busy swallowing Zoe whole. There was also hay humping. This is a refined technique used to straighten out a wayward and crooked bale of hay, essentially returning it back to its normal rectangular shape, as it should be. The act, in and of itself, was entirely difficult not to both laugh and blush over. The sight of a small but spunky 22-year old blonde humping a bale of hay.

“Looks like you’ve had too much practice, Stilts,” Pete called to Stacey. Classic.

We later got to watch as Hank reentered his barn, eager for his bread, tree branches, and hay awaiting him inside. But before he was allowed to eat, he had to prove his worth. Scott stood in the corner, barely audible, but somehow Hank knew all the mumblings by heart.

“Kneel,” he said. Hank knelt.

“Down,” he said. Hank lay down.

“One knee,” he said. Hank got back up onto one knee.

“Up,” he said.” Hank got up. “Wave.” Hank waggled his trunk back and forth in the air.

“Shake,” he said. Hank shook his whole body, starting at his head, rippling down to his back and huge belly, like a wet dog.

“Speak.” Hank raise his trunk so that we could see his enormous mouth, letting out the sound of 100 seals barking in chorus, mixed with the blasting trumpet of an elephant.

“Alright,” Scott said. Hank turned to his food, glad to be done with it all, and proceeded to wrap his trunk around the food in front of him like a snake constricting its prey, grabbing as much as he could before raising it to his mouth to be devoured. From floor to mouth, a giant 12 feet. From floor to shoulder, 16 feet. This elephant was enormous.

They all went for the bread first. Today there were blueberry bagels. Other days there were Moon Pies. The next day there would be a belated birthday party for Betsy, the new African baby. They had made her a fruit popsicle to be presented to her on Saturday, visiting day for the county. Later we all went to Wal-Mart and got her a watermelon of our own.