The Tiger Whisperer

Chapter 5

The next evening, Jared and Peter sat down to review their to-do lists for the next day. Sunset gleamed peach light into Jared’s office window.

“And the FEAPA inspection is tomorrow; he won’t give me a time of day,” Peter said. “We’re ready for him. The lion cages are reinforced and we stabilized their water troughs. Shouldn’t be a problem this time.”

“There better not be any problem,” Jared said. “What a clusterfuck operation they are. All that money they spend could help a lot of cats. FEAPA drives me nuts.”

The Florida Exotic Animal Protection Agency was developed after a half dozen highly publicized incidents with big cats where humans were injured or killed. The agency was created by a governor with close ties to the White House, big oil money, and an abysmal record when it came to actually protecting wildlife and the environment. Jared thought FEAPA was the worst example of political cronyism, favoritism, and general uselessness of any government agency in the state. Two years ago, it had hired three dozen inspectors, supervisors, and management types, all of whom, naturally, needed brand-new equipment, vehicles and cell phone service provided by taxpayer dollars. They were sent out in the field with the authority to shut down exhibits, zoos, and refuges even if they met USDA wildlife regulations.

Peter pulled off his John Lennon-style glasses and rubbed his nose. He wore a scruffy beard and looked nearly the same as he did when they’d met at the refuge twelve years before: longish hair a la graduate assistant, a pudgy belly that belied his strength when it came to hauling around animals that weighed hundreds of pounds, and an elfin look that fit his cheery personality. Jared had never heard him utter any invective stronger than “Oh, shoot.” “Puppy piss” was another one. For Peter, swearing meant that emotion had over-ruled intellect, a bad strategy.

Peter thumbed his clipboard, clicking the metal paper holder. “We’ll handle the inspector. You’ve got a Kiwanis presentation on Thursday. We still need to prep the slides. And Katherine needs a check for Sam’s to get this quarter’s dinner, Saturday night.”

Jared reached for his checkbook. “We got any licenses to hand out this time?”

“No, but Dean has hit his 1,000 hours so he can apply.”

“You got a certificate for that?”

“Yes, it’s on my drive, no problem.”

“I wish we could still use a caterer,” Jared said. “It’s a lot of work for you guys.”

Peter waved one hand. “It’s fine, boss. We have to stock up at Sam’s anyway, so it’s not an extra trip. Plus, I think Little Steve has delusions of becoming a chef. Did you see that new grill of his? It looks like the Starship Enterprise, all those dials and burners. He loves it.”

“Yeah, you’d think it was a grandchild,” Jared said with a grin. He thumbed open the scruffy refuge checkbook. “How much for food?”

“Two hundred,” Peter replied, glancing down at his papers. “Also, the football coach with the cougar down in Avon Park called again; he’s sounding a little desperate.”

Jared looked up from writing the check. “Another i***t. Gets a cute little cub as a school mascot, then decides he wants to dump it when it’s an adult. My patience with people who get Class 1 carnivores as pets gets shorter every month.”

“I’d noticed.”

They got calls like this frequently. People who’d assumed that any zoo would be grateful to have their cougar or lion found out differently. Zoos didn’t accept animals from civilians; they had their own population of big cats to care for and bred their own to exhibit. Desperate owners sometimes let the animals loose in the woods where they usually died within weeks. The cold-hearted shot them. The merciful had a veterinarian euthanize them. The most unfortunate cats ended up at the animal auctions and eventually at game farms that offered canned hunts for trophy animals.

“Mr. Cougar isn’t cute and cuddly anymore and that bozo doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing with a big cat.” Jared’s voice was tight with irritation.

Peter partly hid his smile behind his clipboard.

“What’s so funny?” Jared asked.

“You. Mr. Tough Talk. You hiss and moan like this every time, and show your teeth, and every time, you say ‘yes.’ Because you’re a big ol’ soft-hearted mushybutt pile of cat-loving goo.”

Jared put one finger over his lips and smiled. “Shhh, we all have our secrets.” A moment’s silence and just their brotherly connection.

Peter frowned and sat up. “That cougar is more than he can handle.”

“Where can we put him?”

“We can annex more of Sultan’s cage.”

“I don’t like doing that. Sultan needs his space.” Jared grimaced. The tiger’s habitat had shrunk from fifteen acres to less than ten over the past year as Jared had built cages for new animals. For an animal with a range of hundreds of miles in the wild, ten acres felt criminal, but Jared was doing his best.

“We’ve been talking about clearing some more acreage at the back. Maybe we should get started on that.”

“I guess it’s time. I’ll get a team together with Steve and we’ll get going,” Jared said. The Cliftons had initially cleared twenty-five acres when they began keeping big cats in the sixties. Jared had cleared another fifteen when he took over; there were nearly forty more left but some of that was pure swamp muck and cypress trees.

“We can build a new cage to move Tasha. She can go farther back; she really shouldn’t be in the main part of the refuge anyway,” Peter said.

“Yeah, I’d like to get her more isolated. I thought she’d adapt but she’s not happy being on display. Not that any of them are.” Tasha had gotten more hostile over the last year and Jared knew it was from the stress of having strange people in her environment. It had taken them years of working with her to even be able to enter her cage; he didn’t want her stressed again.

“Little Steve and I will get on it this weekend. We can be ready for the cougar in…what?…A week?” Peter asked.

“Yeah, tell him that. Speaking of Sultan, walk tomorrow?” Jared asked.

They walked both Sultan and Eloise on a weekly basis. It kept the tigers acclimated to being handled and controlled, it gave the cats some enrichment to walk the compound by being out of their cages, and it kept them used to a leash. The old-fashioned, clumsy metal chains had given way to high-density plastic that was both lightweight and quiet; no metallic rumbles to accidentally startle such a large carnivore.

Only Jared walked Sultan. After the Siberian tiger had challenged Peter the year before, they agreed that Peter shouldn’t take the chance. He still walked Eloise, the smaller female Bengal, and she seemed to have bonded to Peter, took his direction happily. She trotted next to him, tail up and whinging against his beard, a comical sight. She’d knocked his glasses off once and Peter had to stop and yell for Jared to come and get them.

Every handler knew the rule: Never bend down to the ground with a tiger nearby.

Peter nodded. “Let’s do that first thing.”

“What else? Any more tours scheduled?”

“Not ’til Friday, the high school biology class, at a fifty percent discount. And then the seniors’ group this weekend.”

“I want double coverage on that seniors’ group; the cats might get antsy with them doddering around.” Jared tugged off his baseball cap and palmed his scalp. “Geez, it’s tempting to restrict senior citizens’ access but they’re such a good demographic. I don’t want to piss them off.”

“And more disposable income for donations,” Peter said.

“I wish Juliana were here; she’d know how to handle it.” A few heartbeats of uncomfortable silence. Jared looked out the window. “Any donations by mail today?”

A head shake from Peter.

“Damn!” Jared felt tired all of a sudden. The constant task of keeping the cash flowing gnawed at him. The eighty-thousand dollar cushion that Hazel Clifton had left in her estate for the refuge had been steadily eaten away over the years. Jared could never relax anymore; he’d started having dreams about collecting roadkill to feed the cats.

“Everybody’s donations are down since the recession. Birmingham, Ocala, Miami, all the refuges, all the animal charities. The economy makes it tough.” Peter chewed on his pen for a moment. “By the way, Valerie’s last day is tomorrow. She brought in the U-Haul today.”

Jared grimaced and tugged his cap down lower. Silence.

“You should say something to—”

“Stick to the cats’ love life and not mine, okay?” Jared’s words came out harder than he expected; Peter’s cheery demeanor momentarily faded. “Anything else?”

The front door slammed open and familiar footsteps banged through the trailer. The walls vibrated. The men smiled at each other.

Molly, five years old, had her father’s red hair, and her own angelic blue eyes. She zipped into the room, ignoring Peter and went straight to Jared.

“Uncle Jared! Uncle Jared! I made this for you.” Molly proudly waved a crayoned drawing as she clambered into Jared’s lap. Her grimy fingers pointed. “See, this is the haunted house and this is the ghost and this is the witch.…”

Jared caught a whiff of her fruity shampoo, the distinctive odor of not-quite-clean kid, and he planted a kiss on her temple. For a second, his heart panged in his chest. If he and Juliana…

“Princess, thank you for the drawing. How about saying hello to your father?”

“Hi, Daddy!” Her reply was perfunctory; she was far more interested in her drawing for Jared.

Katherine Rodriguez-Alston stepped into the room and Peter rose to greet her with a hug and a kiss. Her glossy black hair was tugged back into a tidy ponytail. She looked tired, her face a little worn and creased, despite the weight she had put on the last few months. She worked as a counselor at a junior high school, a tough job.

She’s working too hard, taking on too much. If I could pay Peter more money, she could take a rest.

Ever since Juliana had left, Peter had taken on more and more responsibility at the refuge, work that kept him from leaving at a decent hour, work that had him back in the mornings by seven. Their budget didn’t allow for much of a raise; Jared had scraped up a hundred dollars a week, but it was a pittance compared to the burden Peter carried for him. Jared didn’t really mind living in a trailer on site but he suspected Katherine was tired of a two-bedroom apartment, not being able to save enough money for a house, and driving a balky minivan with nearly two hundred thousand miles on it.

He remembered Juliana’s words, harsh and ugly on a cold Sunday morning two years before. “I’m tired of living like a grad student, Jared. I’m thirty-five, I want a real house!” Jared pushed the memory away and focused on Molly.

“Come on, Princess. Let’s get in the van.”

Outside, twilight bathed the refuge in violet. The cats were more active at night and some of them bellowed, greeting their morning. A lion roared, loud enough that Jared could feel it vibrate in his chest, and he smiled as Molly grabbed his hand in alarm. “He’s just saying hello. You know that, right?”

“Uh-huh.” Molly’s eyes skittered to the lockout gate where visitors and staff were allowed through to the habitats. “They just sound so scary. Mommy says I should never ever go back there.” The solemn pronouncement of rules from a five year-old.

“Mommy’s right. Come on, let’s get you settled in here.” Jared helped Molly into her car seat.

“I can do it myself,” she said proudly, her little fingers struggling with the tricky belt buckle. “Know what else? Mommy says you need a woman.”

Katherine’s face flushed deep red and she covered her mouth. “Oh, shoot.”

“Katy, I told you to watch what you say around her. Gosh darn it.” Peter glared at her over the van’s roof and pushed his glasses up.

“Jared, I’m sorry. Really.”

Jared bent into the van and focused on Molly’s seatbelt, his own face warm, glad of the baseball cap that shielded him. He secured the belt and gave Molly a kiss on the forehead.

Katherine gazed up at him, embarrassment pinkening her features. “Jared, please, I didn’t mean…”

“It’s okay, Katherine. Really. You’re probably right.” He managed a sheepish grin and raised the brim of his cap.

“Come out with us. We’re getting pizza,” Peter offered.

“Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” Molly’s shriek in his ear seemed as loud as a panther’s scream.

“Thanks, anyway. The Series is on tonight, gonna watch that. Roscoe’s coming over at seven.”

“Reliving your glory days, huh?” Peter smiled at him.

“Hey, I can still be captain of my team, right?”

The van’s horn tooted as Jared locked the gate behind them. He stood for a moment, watching them leave, feeling left out. And the thought that Peter and Katherine talked about him like that…

Around him, eyes winked in the dusk and the cats growled and chirped as he walked back to his office. A few volunteers stopped by to say good night and Brian, his senior volunteer coordinator, came in to sign off the clear sheet. It was a clipboard on Jared’s door, initialed each night by whichever staffer had walked the refuge, checked the eight foot-high perimeter fencing and verified that no one was lurking around.

“Want me to do final lockdown?” he asked. His freckled cheeks were flushed; the humidity had risen outside.

“No, thanks. I’ve got a guest later.”

“You going to the Sierra Club meeting tomorrow night? We’re still trying to shut down that new mall, keep ’em from nuking Cypress Creek.”

“No, can’t make it. But thanks.” Jared had been treasurer of the local Sierra Club, back in his college days. Once he’d settled down with Juliana, spending Sunday afternoons in bed were more enticing than attending club meetings. Last year he’d even let his associate membership lapse; the fifty bucks paid the water bill that month.

“I just saw a fox carrying a kit behind Sultan’s cage. She looked scared,” Brian said.

“Yeah, all these construction trucks have got a lot of wildlife on the move.”

“Didja see that oak around the bend? Man, someone nailed that old tree.”

“That’s depressing,” Jared said. “Some of those trees have been here for three hundred years, I bet.”

“Well, that’s progress for you. See you tomorrow then. Night.”

Jared heard the electric gate clank shut as Brian left. Jared went back to the bulky checkbook on his desk and the pile of bills that nagged at him. He raised his head occasionally at the roar of a cougar or the playful clang of a cat bouncing off the chain link fencing. It soothed him. He’d found solace on baseball fields, away from his parents’ grief, listening to the balls bang up against the fencing or pitching against a target and practicing in batting cages. Juliana had snipped at him one time. “You’re a little too happy in a cage, Jared.”

The sound of dump trucks out on Morris Bridge Road edged in, making him uneasy.

Morris Bridge Road snaked through two county parks east of Interstate 75, curving alongside the Hillsborough river. For years it had been an enclave of natural beauty; Spanish moss dripped off oak trees that were hundreds of years old; the copper-colored water of the river housed fish, alligators, otters and nesting sites for dozens of bird species.

The refuge was two miles east of the county parks on a straight section of the road, nestled between two cattle ranches. But the mutation into suburbia had begun. What used to be Jared’s isolated refuge in the boonies was being over-run by developers. The bulldozing of the Miller ranch, to the west of the refuge, began last month. The lush greenery giving way to concrete civilization made Jared sad. The Florida he loved was shifting beneath his feet; he watched the change with a sense of bitterness and futility.

At 6:30 he gave up, tired of juggling the growing expenses against the reduced income. His head hurt. He wanted dinner and some beer.