Read The Anteater of Death Online
Authors: Betty Webb
The Anteater of Death
The Anteater of Death
The Anteater of Death
A Gunn Zoo Mystery
Betty Webb
POISONED PEN PRESS
Copyright © 2008 by Betty Webb
First Edition 2008
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008925508
ISBN-10 Print: 1-59058-560-3
ISBN-13 Print: 978-1-59058-560-3
ISBN-13 eBook: 978-1-6159-52205
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Poisoned Pen Press
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Scottsdale, AZ 85251
To all my friends—both human and animal—at the Phoenix Zoo. But especially to a certain Giant Anteater who adores bananas. This one’s for you, Jezebel!
Thanks to all the helpful zookeepers and other animal experts at the wonderful Phoenix Zoo, who so generously shared their knowledge about wild animals and their habits. Believe me, any errors to be found in this book are strictly my own. Many of the animals mentioned in this book do live at the Phoenix Zoo, including sweet Lucy, whose real name is Jezebel. To learn more about Phoenix Zoo, click the link on my web site at
www.bettywebb-zoomystery.com
or
www.phoenixzoo.org
.
For readers who desire to visit Gunn Landing and Gunn Zoo, I’m sorry to tell you this, but both places are totally fictitious. The tiny fishing village of Moss Landing (population less than 1,000) on the Central California coast, did inspire some of the fictional town’s gentler aspects—and none of the negative ones! Thanks here go to Moss Landing’s extraordinarily helpful harbormaster, and to the terrific liveaboarders who graciously conducted me on tours around their floating homes. Thanks are also due to the innkeepers at Captain’s Inn, as well as to the area’s many harbor seals and otters; they all made my visit the Moss Landing an unparalleled delight. To learn more about Moss Landing, check the village web site at
www.mosslandingchamber.com
.
C
ONTENTS
Intrigued by the commotion underneath the banana palm, Lucy curled her four-inch claws under her leathery pads and moved forward on her knuckles to investigate. It wasn’t time for the human-thing with the soft voice to arrive with the morning meal, so what could the noise be?
Ah, there was the cause of the trouble. A strange human-thing had fallen into Lucy’s enclosure and now thrashed among the weeds as if it belonged. What nerve! All the ants and big juicy termites in this place were Lucy’s, and Lucy didn’t share. One swipe with her claws and the human-thing would limp off squealing.
She grunted a warning.
Get out. If you don’t get out, I’ll uncurl my claws and give you a rake down your belly. Out, out!
The human-thing ignored her, just kept flailing in the weeds.
Lucy extended her long nose and poked at it.
Better listen to me.
The human-thing made a rattling sound, slowed its thrashing to a twitch, then lay still. Did it think it could fool Lucy by pretending to be asleep? A sly move, but Lucy was slyer. She knew if she allowed the human-thing to stay it would gobble up all the lovely grubbies as soon as she went back to her nest and fell asleep. Furious now, she flicked out her tongue and slapped the human-thing in its open eye.
I said to get out, out, out. Now, now, now. If you don’t, I’ll show you what hurt feels like.
No reaction from the human-thing. Refusing to be taken for a fool, Lucy glared at it for a moment more, then slowly and with great show uncurled her dagger claws.
Here comes trouble.
When it remained motionless, she darted forward and gave it a swipe, little more than a scratch, really, but enough to let the stupid creature know she meant business.
It stayed where it was.
Her tongue flicked out again. Blue and almost two feet in length, it slapped the human-thing here, there, around its head, and in the folds of its dark clothing until it found a sticky spot, a different kind of wet.
The scent rising from the human-thing was different, too. Usually the creatures smelled like fruit, sometimes like flowers—especially the females. But this one reeked musky and sharp, almost like the metal around her enclosure.
And the sticky-wet on its front? Lucy vaguely remembered an encounter with a big spotted cat shortly before the human-things caught her and brought her to this place. The cat had flashed claws even sharper than Lucy’s, and when they raked along her shoulder, this kind of smell leaked out. When in self-defense Lucy opened the cat’s belly with her claws, curly dark ribbons tumbled onto the ground. After a while, the cat stopped twitching. Like this human-thing.
Oh, she understood now. That sharp scent was the smell of death.
Too bad, human-thing. I told you to leave and you didn’t.
Point made and the human-thing no longer a threat, Lucy started to walk away, but as she began to turn, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye.
Now what?
Yes, there was another intrusion into her enclosure, this time a happy one. Ants—juicy, sweet-flavored ants, were now crawling across the human-thing, splashing through its wetness.
Lucy wheeled around, flipped out her blue tongue again, and gave a lick.
Mmm, yummy.
Zoos are little pieces of Eden. In the morning, before the gates open and the crowds stream in, the groundskeepers trim and sweep so that the scent of greenery blends with the odor of fresh urine as the animals indulge in their first pee of the day. It’s the fifth day of Creation all over again, when only animals populated the Earth and God was pleased with his handiwork.
Of course, this was before the Sixth day, when God created Man and Man began tossing his Diet Coke cans around.
For the past year, I’ve been a zookeeper at the Gunn Zoo, a large private zoo five miles inland from Gunn Landing Harbor, a tiny village located halfway between Santa Cruz and Monterey. I arrive a half-hour before my shift begins, just to spend a few quiet moments meandering through the paths.
Mondays find me in California Habitat with condors and otters; Tuesdays, Tropics Trail with the giant anteater and the spectacled bears; Wednesdays, Africa Trail with rhinos and lions; Thursdays, Down Under with wallabies and emus; and Fridays, at Friendly Farm with llamas and chickens. Saturdays—yes, I work six days a week and would work seven if they let me—I visit the giraffes on Verdant Veldt.
Then I hike down to the commissary and shovel worms onto the food cart.
Today being Tuesday, I finished my early-morning stroll around Tropics Trail by looking over the moat for Lucy, our giant anteater from Belize. She was nowhere in sight. I figured she was sulking somewhere toward the back of the exhibit, maybe near her holding pen.
Lucy had good reason to be in a bad mood. Not only was she pregnant, with a tendency to suffer upset stomachs, but yesterday a visitor had ignored the DANGER: DO NOT FEED THE ANTEATER sign and threw a bag of popcorn over the moat. Before I could grab my safety board to enter the exhibit and retrieve the bag, Lucy snaked out her blue tongue and tried a kernel.
Have you ever heard an anteater gag?
Anteaters have no teeth, so Lucy spit out the hard-bodied kernel immediately, but there was nothing she could do to rid her mouth of salt. Enraged, she reared up on her hind legs, propped herself kangaroo-like on her thick tail, and slashed at the offender. Good thing for him he stood ten feet away behind the enclosure’s fence. With their extended noses and oversized tails, giant anteaters may appear cuddly-funny on the ground, but when they stand up they’re almost the size of bears. Five feet tall, weighing in at one hundred-and-fifty pounds, with massive shoulders and four-inch claws designed for tearing open logs, they can eviscerate a jaguar in one swipe. In fact, giant anteaters are so lethal zoos everywhere have designated them Code Red animals.
In zoo parlance, that means if one gets loose, run for your life.
The popcorn-thrower, a wobbly-bellied man of around fifty, had jumped back with a frightened squeak but by then the damage was done. In full-bore anteater rage, Lucy swatted the bag back and forth across her enclosure with her muscular forearms, scattering popcorn from one end to the other.