Page 31 of Big Island Horizons
And certainly not small talk for the zoo parking lot.
Five minutes before the gates opened, the whole Pualena Playschool crowd was clustered at the entrance, ready to go.
“I want to see the tigers!” Kiki shouted, jumping up and down.
“No, we have to go see the binturong,” Paige insisted. “She might still be awake now. If we go later she’ll be sleeping in her house.”
“The binturong is always sleeping in her house,” Luana complained.
“Only because you go too late!”
“I wish I was sleeping in my house,” Rory muttered.
“You’d rather be sleeping at your house than seeing tigers?” Kiki challenged.
Rory nodded, and her lower lip poked out. “I miss my mama.”
“Yeah… it’s not really fair that she gets to go to Uncle’s shave ice place all day and you don’t. Butyouget to see tigers! She doesn’t even get to see tigers.”
“I want to do both things together.” Rory’s lip started to tremble, and Olivia put a sympathetic arm around her shoulders.
“You’ll see her soon.”
“Not soon enough,” said Rory with high drama.
“Okay, let’s take a vote!” ‘Olena said brightly. “Everybody who wants to see the tigers first, raise your hand.”
About half of the hands shot up, mostly the younger crowd. After a moment’s hesitation, Rory raised her hand in a halfhearted way, level with her shoulder.
“Okay, and who wants to go see the binturong first?” She paused for a show of hands. “It’s an even split, so here’s what we’ll do. Binturongs, you’re with Kacie and her mom. Tigers, you’re with Kiki and me. We’ll meet up for lunch by the playground. Sound like a plan?”
“Yeah!” the kids shouted.
She grinned and waved to the auntie who was unlocking the front gate. “Let’s go!”
The kids ran through the entrance and up the path, taking the first corner so fast that they startled a peahen and her chicks. Rory laughed in delight, holding both hands over her mouth as she watched the big brown chicks scramble after their mother.
“Come on!” Up the path at the next bend, Kiki stomped her foot in frustration. “We have to go see the tigers before the sun comes out and makes them lazy!”
“Okay, okay!” Rory scrambled to catch up with her cousin.
They raced past the tropical plants and paid no heed to the squawking parrots in their too-small cages, charging straight uphill to the tiger exhibit. Kiki was the first one up the hill.
“Aw man,” she said as soon as she got there. She slumped against the railing, panting. “They’re already lazy.”
The kids crowded the railing and peered through the fence at the Big Island’s two resident Bengal tigers, one orange and one white. They were lounging on the grass.
“They’re pretty, though,” Olivia said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Kiki sighed.
Eventually the white tiger got up and walked over to the fence, just a few feet away from the kids. It paced the fenceline restlessly along a strip of mud it had churned up from beneath the grass.
The enclosure where the two tigers had lived for most of their lives was big and green, but it still made ‘Olena’s heart hurt to see them closed in behind a fence.
The other exhibits were even harder to witness, the caged monkeys and captive birds. The kids loved to see these beautiful animals up close, and she didn’t want to deny them that, but she had her limits. Despite the lack of an entrance fee, they only came to the zoo once or twice a year. That was all that she could stomach.
Still, she loved to see the awe on the kids’ faces and hear the delight in their voices.
