Setting Free the Bears

'But Germany's losing the war,' my father said.

'Win or lose,' said Gottlob Wut, 'look at how much that little fart got going. Look at how far the fart has gone!'

The Fifteenth Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967, @ 5.15 a.m.

O. SCHRUTT HAS GONE too far!

Oh, my part was easy. When that sulking baboon came out on the prowl again, I tore around the Monkey Complex and broke cover - for a moment - going full-tilt for the children's drinking fountain. I didn't even have to cause a stir; the old gelada saw me coming before I got behind the fountain. He brayed, he barked, he crowed; in a frenzy, he chomped the chain of his trapeze. And, of course, the zoo joined in again.

And, of course, O. Schrutt left some small mammals in the midst of their various agonies and stormed out the door.

He went off the deep end this time; this time, he went inside the Monkey Complex. I waited only a second, horrified at the din O. Schrutt and the monkeys made; it all squeezed out a small, open skylight in the Monkey Complex, like one tremendous lungful blown in a flute and squeezed out through only one shrill finger hole. And before O. Schrutt came outside again, I dashed up the stairs and into the Small Mammal House.

I didn't stop to look in the cages. I pelted down the nearest aisle, took a left and then a narrower right - considered entering a chute, but thought against it - and finally stopped where I felt it quite safe; I was within listening distance of the main door, and I was around several corners from whatever way O. Schrutt might come; there were corners and turnoffs enough between us, so that I could hear him coming and have time to plot my next, avoiding move.

I saw briefly that I'd stopped alongside the aardvark's glasshouse. But it wasn't until I'd made an effort to control my panting that I realized the aardvark wasn't alone.

There was a stand-off! In one corner of his home, the aardvark backed himself up on the root of his tail - balancing, and holding his foreclaws out like boxing gloves; in the opposite, diagonal corner, facing the aardvark, was the small but vicious Indo-Chinese fishing cat - a nasty little item, hackles up and back arched high. They hardly moved. It didn't appear that either one would attack, but each time the aardvark would slightly lose and then catch his balance on the root of his tail, the fishing cat would snarl and hiss and lower its chin to the sawdust floor. And the aardvark - old sluggish earth pig - would snort a low sort of snort. I was trying to weigh all the odds in my mind when I heard O. Schrutt.

He sounded like he was just outside the Monkey Complex, but his bullying voice was coming my way. 'There's nothing here, you fake of a baboon! You try me once more, and I'll have you go a round with my little jaguarundi! I'll give you something to scream about, I will!'

While beside me the fishing cat yowled, faked a spring; and the aardvark grunted, stiffened up on his hind legs and the thick root of his tail. They stood off each other - my God, for how long?

O. Schrutt! He makes his own theater! He creates a late show all for himself!

O. Schrutt came roaring into the Small Mammal House. I heard him taunt someone; and then I heard the combat boots walking round a corner closer to me, one aisle to my left and one up; I traced an aisle to my right, padding coolly barefoot on the cement. I waited for O. Schrutt's next move.

Only twice did I actually see O. Schrutt in the maze.

Once, when I was crouched flush to a cage wall, but below a cage window - out of the infrared reflected through the glass, I think, and a whole aisle-length away - I saw old O. approach one of his productions. He slid back the glass to the cage! That's the glass that slides, the whole damn window face slides back. O. Schrutt's got a little key that lets him unlock the sliding glass - it makes sense; if someone heavy died, or someone vicious was sick and wouldn't come out, you wouldn't want to fool around with that little back door o

ff the chute - but O. Schrutt opens the glass to urge his gladiators on! If he thinks a stand-off is much too calm, he slips his cattle prod inside and touches off one of his contestants. And, of course, they can't see him, standing in the void - inserting his electric arm; it comes groping at them out of the dark, and jolts them neatly, once or twice.

I saw him conduct the vocal levels up, then slide the glass back - cutting off the complaints. Then he watched, with interest, the Tasmanian devil skittering side to side and yelling as if it were running over hot coals - kept at bay by the surly ratel. O. Schrutt watched quite calmly, I thought - his raving mind at ease, or drugged.

And once more I saw O. Schrutt. This time, I was perfectly safe in observing him. He'd gone in one of the chutes, so I just watched a whole glassy row of animals, looking for which cage would suddenly exhibit old O. at the back door - from where, I knew, he had the animals' perspective, and couldn't see a thing beyond the front glass.

I watched him break up a stand-off that looked like it had been running over-long. Two tired giant anteaters looked as if they had taken all they could stand from a wildly pacing, panting jaguarundi - long, low, lean, little tropical cat. O. Schrutt is sly! He doesn't want any blood. O. Schrutt's overseers would be suspicious of mangled small mammals. O. Schrutt is a careful director; he keeps the matches at an exhausting standstill; he's there with his cattle prod to break up anything that gets out of hand.

I saw enough, I'll tell you. O. Schrutt operates on all scales.

The slow loris exchanges terrified glances with a lemur. The Malayan tree shrew is aghast at the startled leaps of the kangaroo rat. I was so ashamed to see: even the dying bandicoot is forced to endure the antics of the flying phalanger. And the expectant mother ocelot lies haggard in her cage corner, listening to the grunts and scuffles in the chute behind her back door.

O. Schrutt knows no bounds.

I waited until he was off in one end of the maze, and then I fled his house of organized horror.

I lay back in my hedgerow, thinking: Whatever gave him the idea? Where did O. Schrutt first develop his perverse habit of playing small mammals off against each other?

It's getting lighter all around me now, and I'm still without an overall scheme. But I can tell you, I have plans for old O. Schrutt.

(CONTINUING:)

THE HIGHLY SELECTIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIEGFRIED JAVOTNIK: PRE-HISTORY II

On the fourteenth of October, 1944, the Red Army entered Belgrade, with ex-quisling Marko Mesich leading the Yugoslav contingent. Well, times change; it was a hard war to go through if you stayed on the same side you began with.

On the twenty-fourth of October, 1944, a Russian partisan group were surprised to find Chetniks engaging a force of twenty thousand Germans at Chachak. While the Russians and Chetniks were making a pincer attack on the Germans, a Russian officer observed that the partisans were attacking the Chetniks from behind. After the battle, the Chetniks turned over forty-five hundred German prisoners to the Russians; the following day, the Russians and partisans disarmed the Chetniks and arrested them. Chetnik Captain Rakovich escaped, and the partisans made a most sincere hunt for him throughout the Chachak area.