it.”
“I was taught to never show fear, never run. On that stage, I had an important job, especially with Aquila, who was my charge. I had to make sure he didn’t get frightened or feel like he was being backed into a corner. I made sure all my movements were calm and I was as still as possible.”
“I only saw a few clips with Aquila. He never left the cage.”
“That always pissed my dad off. Tyre wasn’t responding to Dad’s training. And though Aquila and I were doing great, because of my age and some laws, I couldn’t handle him during a live show.”
“That explains why I saw Aquila attempting to dance to ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ in a cage where he didn’t have enough room to turn.”
Katie laughed, letting down her guard for a moment. “I remember that show. Aquila didn’t really get to dance. It was more like he backed up, raised his shoulders, backed up some more and then playfully leaped forward.”
“He stole the show with his haughty ‘I don’t have to act cute, I am cute’ attitude.”
“That he did,” Katie agreed.
Luke had watched the clips, trying to understand the man and his techniques. It only took a few clips for Luke to realize how distant Bob was. He used a clicker to give commands to the animals. He touched them, but not much. And, unlike the animal lovers Luke knew, Bob was more aware of where the cameras were than what the animals were doing.
Katie, meanwhile, had interacted with the animals. She’d smiled while accepting pretend tea from Ollie. She’d gently put a napkin on George’s lap and held his hand while she did it. She’d helped Candy, their spider monkey, clean up the cups.
But anyone watching could see that her smile grew wider and her face truly lit up when she was with Aquila. She’d quietly danced right along with the cat, up close to the cage, comfortable in a way her father wasn’t.
Aquila was her love.
But she’d clearly not been posing for the audience like her father. She didn’t even look at the cameras. She’d not been selling the animals and their tricks to the public.
“You didn’t care for it much, did you?” Luke asked when the family changed their position, vying for a better viewing spot.
“What?”
“Being on television with the animals.”
She gave a half grimace. “Why do you say that?”
“In the clips I watched, you were always quiet, elegant and willing to do whatever the animals needed, but you never seemed comfortable.”
“No, the lights were always hot, and the animals, except for Candy, were always disgruntled and off their routine. I was always afraid something would go wrong because the people around us weren’t animal people. Once, a secretary moved to pet Aquila’s mom. She’d have lost a finger if my father hadn’t stopped her. We had signs warning people not to approach the animals without talking to my father first, but it’s as if people thought the signs didn’t apply to them.”
The family with the stroller finished taking pictures and moved on. Katie, back to being tense, still watched Aquila. After a moment, she said, “I don’t think panthers were meant to be performers. My father should have figured that out with his mother. She was beautiful, which is why he kept her, but she wouldn’t be trained. The only thing she did to earn money was let people look at her and give birth to two cubs that made it out of infancy. That’s when my father finally made some money on her. He sold the photographs to every magazine and news show that promised a check.”
“I’ve never seen them, but I hear you were in quite a few of those photographs,” Luke said.
“Like anything in my father’s menagerie, I didn’t get a choice. He said ‘Smile’ and I smiled.”
“We don’t focus on tricks here,” Luke said. “We focus instead on natural behaviors. If an animal wouldn’t have the behavior in the wild, we don’t develop the behavior here. The only exceptions are the animals, like yours, that come to us with learned behaviors. And as long as it doesn’t endanger the animal or people, we appreciate their skill. If a bear juggling lunch boxes will increase revenue so we can have enough food, medical care and personnel, we encourage them to perform.”
She nodded but didn’t comment.
“By the way, when you let your guard down in those films, like when you were dancing with Aquila, you had the audience eating out of your hands. You were quite good in front of the cameras, and some of those long-ago smiles actually seemed real. I think you protest too much. Maybe working with animals and showcasing what they can do is in your blood. If not, you could have fooled me.”
She pushed away from the wall, arms tight to her sides. Looking him right in the eye, she said, “Maybe you’re easy to fool.”
She stood, muttering something about exploitation and fools.
He formulated a comeback, only by the time he said the words aloud, she was too far away to hear them: “I may be a fool, but unlike in those clips, you haven’t smiled once since I’ve met you.”
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