Zoo Story (22 page)

As a security guard ushered visitors away, Dr. Murphy arrived and went around to the high wall of mesh that covered the back of the exhibit. The vet could see that Bamboo was not just upset, but confused and frightened. He kept running up to Murphy and repeatedly making the fear grin, then returning to Herman’s fallen body to beat him again. Murphy tried to dart Bamboo, but couldn’t get a clear shot. He and one of the primate keepers waited until the chimp moved away, then hurried into the exhibit and dragged Herman into the night house to examine him.

At the clinic, Murphy checked Herman for shock, got an IV running, cleaned him up. The chimp’s external injuries—a few puncture wounds on his lip, a torn-up finger and toe—did not appear catastrophic. His pupils and his breathing pattern made Murphy wonder if he had suffered neurological trauma. Maybe during the attack he had fallen. Maybe Bamboo had hit him hard enough to knock him out.

As Murphy continued his examination, Lee Ann and Angela Belcher, the assistant curator in charge of primates, stood nearby and talked to Herman. But he would not wake up. He had slipped into a coma.

Leaving the others to watch over the chimp, Murphy went to the zoo’s manatee hospital, where the keepers had brought a sedated Rukiya for a few stitches on her nose. The vet was still working on her when a call came from the clinic not long before seven p.m. Herman had stopped breathing. Rushing back, Murphy found people taking turns performing CPR on Herman’s ninety-pound body. Murphy tried for a while, then Lee Ann took over. They kept at it for ten, fifteen minutes.

Lee Ann didn’t want them to stop. She didn’t understand why this had happened. She couldn’t imagine the zoo or her life without Herman. Finally, though, she and the others had no choice but to step back.

The king was dead.

The next day,
they allowed Ed Schultz to say good-bye. Lee Ann and Angela escorted him to the clinic and into a corner where Herman’s body was waiting. He had been turned onto his side, with one arm stretched across his chest. He had a sheet across the lower half of his body. He looked at peace.

Already Ed felt lost. Tears in his eyes, he took the chimp’s hand and felt the leathery palm against his skin. He kissed his forehead, cold now, and spoke softly and called him son. He told him he missed him but that the two of them would soon be reunited on the other side. Again and again, he repeated the name he had given his friend the first day they met, all those lifetimes ago.

Word of Herman’s violent overthrow quickly spread throughout the zoo and beyond the front gates. Normally, the death of a chimpanzee would not have merited the slightest notice in the outside world. But Herman was one of the most famous animals in Tampa Bay history, adored by generations of local residents who had grown up marveling at his displays, and his loss was all the more newsworthy because it had exploded out of nowhere.

The evening of the attack, an anonymous caller tipped off the
St. Petersburg Times
even before the zoo had a chance to publicly announce that Herman was gone. For the next two days, the coup was splashed across the front page. Noting Herman’s prominence as “a beloved fixture” at the zoo, the newspaper pieced together an early account of the assault that was largely accurate, except for one significant detail: The newspaper reported that Rukiya had been injured after she “intervened” in the battle. The assumption tucked inside that verb—that Rukiya had tried to break up the fight—was easy enough to understand, given that primate males are often viewed as inherently violent and females as implicitly more gentle. In this case, however, the assumption was wrong. Lee Ann and the other keepers who witnessed the fight saw Rukiya not trying to stop the violence, but teaming up with Bamboo against Herman.

The necropsy report was released several weeks later. Dr. Murphy found that Herman had died from acute head trauma and had also suffered from heart disease. The vet’s examination of Herman’s injuries also revealed a clue as to the extent of Rukiya’s involvement in the attack. Although Bamboo had beaten the alpha severely, it would have been difficult for him to have inflicted the bite on Herman’s lip. Bamboo, old and relatively feeble, had virtually no teeth left. It was one of the reasons he had trouble defending himself when the females bullied him.

The most disturbing question about the attack—the mystery that confounded almost everyone—was why Bamboo had gone after Herman with such blind fury. In the years since Bamboo had arrived at Lowry Park, Herman had been his closest ally and defender. By all appearances, the two of them had developed a bond as close to friendship as chimps could get. In news interviews afterward, Dr. Murphy talked about how he had often seen the two males romping together in the dirt.

“Everybody considered them buddies,” said the vet. “They were like two old gentlemen, rolling around on the ground, laughing and tickling each other.”

For many, Herman’s passing seemed almost impossible to accept. Herman had been the embodiment of Lowry Park’s history, good and bad. He was the zoo’s witness, its elder ambassador. Even Lex was a newcomer compared to him. In the mid-1980s, when Lex had arrived, Herman was already fifteen years into his reign. How could he be gone?

As with the deaths of so many legends, rumors circulated, both inside and outside the zoo. Some wondered if Bamboo had sensed that Herman’s powers were waning, that he was ailing or vulnerable in some way the staff had not yet detected. Other theories suggested that baby Sasha’s arrival had somehow altered the group’s power dynamics and spurred Bamboo to plot an assassination. Some implied that greed had led to Herman’s death. This line of argument was based on the well-documented fact that baby animals were good business for zoos and on the supposition that a hunger for more profits might have been the real motive for acquiring Sasha, thereby triggering the attack. Intriguing as it sounded, the theory seemed implausible to anyone who knew Lee Ann and how crazy she was about chimps. It was she, not the zoo’s front office, who had pushed for Sasha to be brought in. The infant chimp had needed a home and a mother, and Lee Ann thought Lowry Park could give her both. Her lifelong devotion to chimpanzees was well established. She was obsessed with protecting the species, especially the handful who lived at Lowry Park. The notion that she would have agreed to put Herman or the other chimps at risk, just to pull in a few more dollars, was ludicrous.

A few people whispered that the true cause of Herman’s death was Lex and his ceaseless ambitions. If the staff had not been decimated by so many resignations and firings, if they hadn’t all been so consumed with the new exhibits and the next expansion, then maybe there would have been more staffers in the primate section on the morning of the attack. Maybe a keeper would have seen what was happening more quickly and sounded the alarm, and then they could have separated Bamboo and Herman before things got so out of hand.

Lee Ann, still a true believer, did not give any credence to that particular theory. The curator certainly did not blame Lex for what had happened. The truth was, she did not know what to think about Herman’s death. She was so heartbroken that she could not summon enough calm to reflect on what had happened. For weeks, she had trouble mentioning the chimp’s name, even with friends.

Outside the zoo, some wondered out loud if Bamboo should be punished. Hadn’t he murdered Herman? Lee Ann heard these questions and shook her head. The law was another human construct. Among animals, there was no such thing as murder, or even right and wrong. Herman was gone. Bamboo and the others remained. That was all.

After Herman’s death, Ed Schultz didn’t go to the zoo much anymore. He couldn’t bring himself to look out into the chimp exhibit and not see his friend waiting for him.

“I just can’t put myself together on that,” he said.

Ed railed at the injustice of Herman’s overthrow. Even though he knew chimps should not be judged by human standards, Ed was appalled and believed that Bamboo had betrayed Herman. One day, Ed went into the zoo and made his displeasure known by standing in front of the chimp exhibit with his back turned toward Bamboo and the others. He refused to look at them.

At home, Ed gave himself over to grief.

“Half of my life with that little fella,” he said, fighting back another wave of tears. “Didn’t we ever love him.”

Bamboo was suffering as well. In the days after the attack, he was seen searching for Herman in the exhibit and the night house. When his companion did not reappear, Bamboo lost much of his appetite. He and the other chimps seemed unsure what to do next. They were quiet and appeared confused. They were all waiting for Herman’s return.

In the depths of that summer
, the distress inside the zoo grew palpable. With all the turnover, the remaining keepers were working extra hours and were busy training new hires. More animals seemed to arrive every day; new directives from management appeared on staff bulletin boards. Safari Africa was preparing to expand. The Asia section, home to Enshalla and Eric, closed to the public while construction crews moved in to renovate the exhibits.

The frustration that had been building quietly inside the staff bubbled over when Lowry Park’s supervisors embarked on a quest to identify the caller who had leaked the news of Herman’s death to the
St. Petersburg Times
. Several keepers, including Carie Peterson, were being summoned into offices for questioning. Word spread that Lex and his team had assembled a list of suspects, made up primarily of those who had dared to complain about their work conditions and the care of the animals. There were rumors the zoo was checking phone and e-mail logs and even considering the use of polygraphs.

For Carie, the leak investigation was the final indignity. She had no idea who’d tipped off the newspaper. But to her, the zoo’s hunt for the tipster smacked of an obsession with control. Had they expected to keep the death of their most beloved animal a secret?

In mid-July, Carie finally quit. She’d found another job working with animals—this time at the Humane Society of Tampa Bay—but even as she started the new position, she could not stop thinking about Enshalla. At night, she was haunted by guilty dreams that took her back to the zoo and into the tiger night house. She would see Enshalla’s face turned toward her, wondering where she had gone.

The departure of Carie,
yet another veteran, opened a huge hole in the staff. Another keeper in the Asia department, a veteran who had repeatedly suggested improvements in animal care, was fired only a few days after Carie left. Recognizing that the Asia staff required more help, the zoo hired a new keeper, a man who had just graduated from a zookeeper program in Gainesville. He was learning the protocols but had a long way to go.

The rest of that summer, Lowry Park tried to regain its footing. The staff needed to stabilize—and soon, because that September, the zoo would co-host the annual convention of the AZA. In just a few weeks, hundreds of zoo officials would descend on Tampa and tour Lowry Park, appraising every exhibit, mentally noting whether the zoo measured up. For Lex, it was another chance at the national spotlight. For the staff, it was just one more pressure. Already the keepers were scrambling to prepare for the distinguished guests.

Then, on Tuesday, August 22, as closing time drew near, the staff heard three words crackling on their walkie-talkies.

“Code One, tiger.”

Enshalla was out.

Late that afternoon,
the new keeper found himself alone with the tigers.

Chris Lennon, thirty-three, and only a month into his job, would normally have had another keeper watching over him. But Carie was gone, and the other experienced keeper had been fired. Pam Noel, the assistant curator who supervised the Asia department, had been on duty earlier that day, but she’d been called away when one of her children suffered an asthma attack at school. Chris was on his own with Eric and Enshalla.

By four thirty, he was ready to feed the tigers and shift them from the exhibit into the night house. He placed their dinner in separate dens, then pulled a lever that allowed Enshalla to enter the building. As always, a barrier of thick mesh stood between him and the tiger. And as was her habit, ever since she was young, she waited for him to walk past her den and then leaped toward him against that mesh.

Chris continued with his routine. He was standing in a little corridor, preparing to shift Eric from the exhibit into his den, when something made him turn around. A sound, maybe. First he saw a chunk of meat in the hall where it should not have been. Then he saw Enshalla. She had left her den and had passed through a door he had accidentally left unlatched. Now the tiger was loose, only a few feet away, and eyeing him.

If she wanted to attack, there was no place for Chris to go. The only exit was a door that led out into the exhibit, where Eric was still waiting to come inside.

For reasons that no one would later be able to explain, Enshalla did not pad toward him. For almost fifteen years, she had displayed unremitting hostility toward humans. But on this day, she ignored the new keeper and kept moving. Chris hurried to the end of the hall and threw shut the night house’s mesh door, so Enshalla could not reach him if she changed her mind. He got on his radio and declared the Code One.

Enshalla walked calmly out of the building and into the sunlight. For the first time in her life, she was free.

This was the moment
the staff had prayed would never come.

Once the warning sounded over the walkie-talkies, the zoo went into emergency lockdown. By now it was approaching five. The few visitors who remained on the grounds were hurried to safety behind closed doors. The front gates were blocked off. The weapons team grabbed rifles and shotguns.

From inside the night house, Chris told them Enshalla had gone into an area that until recently was the home of Naboo. The rhino had been moved because his exhibit was being remodeled. Even over the radio, the distress in Chris’s voice registered clearly. He sounded shaky, but was holding it together, reporting Enshalla’s movements. He watched the tiger as she lingered in Naboo’s former exhibit, now turned into a construction site.

Years ago, before Naboo had arrived, this had been the Asian elephant exhibit. The night house through which Enshalla walked had once been the barn where Tillie the elephant had killed Char-Lee Torre. The exhibit beyond, where Enshalla had wandered, was ringed by a muddy moat filled with elephant grass. The moat was deep but not wide. It was designed to keep in elephants and rhinos, not an animal that could leap.

Enshalla’s position put her a few strides from the front gates, near the manatee fountain so popular with small children on warm August days such as this one. If the tiger had escaped earlier, when the zoo was more crowded, she could have easily cleared the moat and gone hunting among toddlers.

Following the Code One protocol for tigers, the weapons team surrounded the area. An assistant curator climbed with his rifle to the top of the Komodo building. Someone else took position behind the tiger night house. The protocol suggested that the team first attempt to lure the tiger back into her den with food, but that was not likely to work this time. Enshalla didn’t appear hungry; in fact, she’d walked past her food as she’d slipped out. Even so, she remained dangerous and was likely to defend herself if cornered.

The weapons team waited for Dr. Murphy to arrive with his tranquilizer gun. Until then, they trained their weapons on Enshalla. Most of the team’s members had known the tiger for years. Several remembered her as a cub. Lex had known Enshalla since she was born at the zoo fifteen years before. Late that afternoon, when she escaped, the CEO was driving north on I-275 toward his Pasco County ranch when his cell phone rang.

“Come back right away. There’s a Code One tiger.”

Lex got off at the first exit and turned his truck around and sped back toward the zoo. By then Dr. Murphy was ready with his darts. The rest of the weapons team had Enshalla in its sights. Every time she moved, rifles followed. So far she had done nothing aggressive. She lay down for a few minutes, got back up, chewed grass, rested in the sun. She did not roar or growl. She was quiet.

When Lex returned to the zoo, he took cover in a car parked on the sidewalk between Enshalla and the fountain. Inside the car were Lee Ann and a primate keeper armed with a 12-gauge shotgun. The team was trying to decide on the best vantage point for Dr. Murphy to dart Enshalla. They considered putting the vet on the zoo’s skyride—a safe position, but too high and far away. They also considered having him climb to the top of the tiger night house, but they didn’t want Enshalla to see him and become agitated. Like so many of the animals, Enshalla did not like Murphy, because she associated him with the jab of a tranquilizer. Just recently, he had immobilized her to perform the tests to determine why she hadn’t become pregnant.