Page 81 of Tiger Queen

“It doesn’t work that way,” I explained. “We can’t just shoot each animal with the same amount of sedative. The amount required to knock out a tiger would stop a chimp’s heart. We have to prepare a specific dosage for each animal and their weight. So when we come across an animal, I need to prepare the syringe on the spot depending on which it is.”

“Dad never did that,” Jake argued. “He had a big box of darts all with the same dosage.”

“What your dad probably did was prep a bunch of darts for the same small amount, then use multiple darts as needed. Three for the tigers, two for wolves, one or smaller animals.”

“Exactly. Let’s do that.”

I shook my head. “It’s a shitty, lazy way to do it. It’s dangerous for the animals if they don’t receive the proper dosage.” I showed him the box of darts. “Plus we only have twelve darts. We can’t afford to use three or four on one animal.”

“Shit.”

We flew down the road, the wind blowing my hair all around. It felt like a safari, and not in a way I enjoyed. I had left my hair ties back at the medical office, and my hair was still damp from the shower. Thank goodness there was no soap or shampoo in the office; the smell might have attracted the animals to us.

“These animals may exhibit more aggression now that they’re loose,” I warned Jake. “Don’t approach them. Stay back and use the jab sticks as protection if you need to.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious,” I insisted. “This isn’t the time for bullshit. I’m in charge, and you need to listen to what I tell you. So don’t do anything stupid. Got it?”

“I said okay,” he replied. “I trust you.”

I was surprised by how sincere he sounded. Like he was a completely different Jake Haines. Maybe having sex with him was all it took to get him to fall in line.

If I had known that, I would have done it on the first day, I thought with a smile.

We caught up to the chimpanzee first. There were two of them together now, Bonzo and Bubbles, pulling the lid off of a zoo trash can and reaching inside with their long arms. They glanced at us as we pulled to a stop thirty feet away, but then returned to their scavenging.

“Bubbles is eighty-two pounds,” I muttered while doing the mental math on how many cubic centimeters of Telazol to use. The darts were long, thin needles with pink feathering on the end. My hand trembled as I loaded it with the sedative. “Bonzo is one-fifteen…”

“Bubbles is looking this way,” Jake hissed.

“Almost done…”

I finished the second dart, then loaded it into the dart gun. Bonzo was the male, and therefore the most dangerous, so I wanted to take him down first. I rested the gun on the front of the Mule and took aim. Bonzo was sitting on the ground with his back to me, eating a leftover sandwich from the trash. It had been years since I fired one of these in my zoo residency, and if I missed…

I squeezed the trigger. There was a puff as the compressed gas fired the dart. A pink spot appeared in Bonzo’s shoulder blade. He screeched and began running off, but slowed down after twenty feet and drew sluggish. Bubbles, the female chimp, watched him run away and then picked up his half-eaten sandwich happily. The next dart caught her on the butt. She bounced away with the sandwich, slowing down and then swaying drunkenly like Bonzo had before finally laying down on the path.

“Nice shots.”

“Thanks,” I said.

We drove up to the chimps and I removed the darts and did a quick check to make sure everything seemed fine. Then I hopped back in the Mule and told Jake to move on.

“What if a tiger comes along and decides it wants a monkey meal?”

Ignoring that chimps weren’t monkeys, I said, “Nothing we can do about it now except hurry up and subdue the rest of the animals.”

“The enclosure with the two female Bengals is open,” David announced on the radio. “Shit. Same for the wolf pen.”

Jake and I looked at each other. “What else have you seen?” I asked.

“The chimpanzees are gone. And the entire bird aviary.”

“Already took care of the chimps. Looking for the rest now. Let us know what other open cages you find.”

The wolves scared me the most because I had no idea how they would react. They could be hunting us at that very moment from the surrounding trees, slipping through the shadows out of sight. Fortunately, we found them back toward the visitor’s center sniffing around inside Caesar’s enclosure. As soon as I saw that, I hopped out of the Mule and sprinted to the gate. I reached it just in time to slam it shut and engage the bolt, locking them inside.

“That’s an easy win,” Jake said.

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