The Zoo

Part 2

“I tell ya,” Frank said, pacing back and forth in the enclosure, “the world is going all to hell.” His long arms were clasped behind his back, an air of deep contemplation upon his simian brow.

“I don’t know,” George said from his swing, a banana in his hand. “Things will muddle along. There’ve always been problems.”

“This time it’s different,” Frank said. He ambled across to one side of the enclosure and pointed at a calendar he had pinned up by the food chute. “Do you know, we haven’t had a visitor in nearly a year?” Excited, he began jumping up and down. “I’m a trained professional performer! I haven’t been able to ply my craft!”

“This is an opportunity for continuing education,” George said. “When your audience returns, you’ll have a new set of skills with which to impress them.”

George was right about that. For the past year, Frank had put himself on a strict regimin. At sunrise, it was swinging practice- a half hour with his feet, a half hour with his hands. Then a break for bananas, no whipped cream, which Frank had struck from his diet. At noon, he practiced his facial expressions by imitating the keepers who were eating lunch in the office. Then in the afternoon Frank would embark on his great intellectual pursuits.

In the back of the enclosure, behind the trees, he had installed his laboratory. In the jungle, both Frank and George were familiar with the use of sticks, a common domestic appliance, to obtain food, from anthills for instance, and also the rock, which, though primarily a kitchen appliance, had also been extensively studied in the field for its self-defence applications.

But though he had spent many hours sitting upon the rock in his lab, chin on hand, hypothesizing, he had yet failed to discover any novel applications.

“Sleep on it,” George would say. And Frank had tried that, but found himself dreaming only of whipped cream. And flying airplanes. And sometimes eating whipped cream while flying an airplane. He smiled at the thought, but then, aware that he was bearing his fangs, self-consciously corrected himself and assumed the closed-lipped smile with the arched eyebrows that he had observed the keepers sometimes assume, and which he had sketched hastily in the dirt for reference. To make sure he was doing it right, he checked his reflection in the enclosure glass.

Perfect, he thought. You look just like one of them. He paused.

Momentarily enraptured, he felt himself pulled towards his own smiling reflection. He imagined himself greeting news photographers, that same gallant smile upon his face, chin upturned, nose in the air, calm and confident, goggles still strapped across the top of his flight helmet, scarf billowing behind him in the wind. He could see the headlines now:

“First Ape To Complete Trans-Atlantic Flight Lands Safely in Paris!”

“World Stunned By Remarkable Chimpanzee!”

“Have Human Beings Been Exceeded By Frank?- Humbled Scientists Ask.”

“Why are you moving your hands like that for, Frank?” It was George.

Frank opened his eyes. His hands were indeed clasped above his head, vigorously shaking. Slowly, he lowered them. He looked at his reflection in the glass again. This time, he saw dejection. “I think,” he said to George, “I think I’m going a little stir-crazy.”

“Aren’t we all?” George said, swinging, unconcerned.

“No, this is different!” Frank said dramatically. He threw back his head and draped his arm across his forehead, covering his eyes.

“You’re thinking about flying again,” George observed.

“No!” Frank said defensively. Then, quietly, he began to hunch over, and he let his knuckles come to rest in the dirt. “I must come to terms with what I am, George. I am a monkey. Monkeys don’t fly airplanes.”

Behind him, Frank suddenly heard the squeaky sound of George’s swing stop. He turned. George, mid-banana, was looking at him, dumbfounded.

“What?” Frank said. “What’s that look for?”

“Why, Frank, don’t you know?” George said. “Don’t you know!?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Why, Frank, haven’t you heard of Ham?” George asked.

“I’m on a diet. No whipped cream, no ham, no...”

“No!” George waved his banana in the air to correct Frank’s misunderstanding. “Ham the chimpanzee: the first chimp in space! Haven’t you heard of the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission? Why, Frank, if chimps can pilot spacecraft, of course they can fly airplanes!”

“There’ve been chimps...in space?”

“Sure there have!”

Rapidly, Frank un-hunched, placed his chin in his hand and began to ponder. Chimps in space! Think of that! And George was right: if chimps were entrusted with the piloting of spacecraft, then they obviously could fly aircraft; obtaining cruising altitude, after all, was a much simpler affair than reaching orbit.

He had not been misguided, and his dreams were not so fantastical! In fact, his aspirations were modest, really. Readily achievable.

Lawgiver be praised, Frank thought. There was justice in the world after all.

That night, after George had gone to sleep in his swing and was gently snoring, Frank lay in his own swing, hands behind his head, looking up at the stars. He felt himself already lifted up towards them, into the bracing night air. H was at the controls of a Santos-Dumont Demoiselle, flying by dead-reckoning only, arcing high across the sky, and then, in a gentle curve, slow at first but then with increasing speed, diving down and swooping low over the treetops and farms, so low he could almost touch them.