The Gift of the Magpie Read online

  “We’re not that far from the zoo, are we?” she asked. “Why don’t we drop by and see your grandfather?”

  I made a quick mental calculation. Yes, we could squeeze in a visit. As a matter of fact, since presumably he wouldn’t expect me to build a ramp for the buffalo, declutter the primate habitat, or haul around the manure his many herd animals produced, visiting Grandfather might actually be almost restful.

  Although I did find myself wondering if Mrs. Diamandis would be impressed by an exotic manure like the ones Caroline had suggested bringing from her sanctuary. And Grandfather’s zoo would be an even more convenient source. Giraffe manure. Zebra manure. Gazelle manure. That had a certain ring to it. I should scribble a reminder in my notebook when I had the chance.

  “Sure, we can drop in on him for a little while if you like,” I said aloud.

  “Lovely.” She settled back contentedly in her seat. “I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s up to.”

  “Up to?” The phrase triggered my instinct for danger—or at least extreme annoyance. “Why—is he up to something? Scratch that—he’s always up to something. Just what is he up to now?”

  “I’m looking forward to finding out myself.”

  She looked so innocent that I knew she was stonewalling me.

  Ah, well. Probably a good idea to find out what Grandfather was up to before he added any more complications to my already crazy holiday schedule.

  The zoo’s parking lot was nearly full, and if I’d been a tourist, my loathing for crowds would have sent me scurrying for some less popular destination. But thanks to the fact that I often served as Grandfather’s chauffeur and general dogsbody, I now possessed a card key that gave me entry to both the staff door and the staff parking lot. Although it was still slow going, making my way through the overflowing lot.

  “He’s only advertising the Animals of the Bible exhibit,” Caroline said. “That’s disappointing.”

  “Disappointing? Why?” Had Caroline suddenly taken against the zoo’s popular holiday feature? I’d rather enjoyed doing it with the boys when they were young enough to appreciate it. In addition to informative signs at each animal’s habitat, he’d created a zoo-wide scavenger hunt. When you came in, you could pick up a checklist, and if you succeeded in collecting the stickers to show that you’d found all fifty animals on the list, you could turn it in at the gift shop for a small prize. “The Animals of the Bible is wildly popular,” I added aloud.

  “Oh, I know,” Caroline said. “But I was looking forward to the primate nativity.”

  “Primate nativity?” Maybe I’d heard wrong. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, he’s been working on it for some weeks now. At first it seemed to be going quite well, but then one of the wise men decided that posing on a painted wooden camel was a lot less interesting than flinging poo at the onlookers. And there’s a reason for the phrase ‘monkey see, monkey do.’ I suppose he’s given up the idea of having it ready for this year’s holiday season.”

  “Let’s hope he’s given up the idea altogether,” I said. “Training human children to perform a nativity scene is hard enough—I should know; I’ve been doing it for the past several years now.”

  “Don’t bring it up if he doesn’t,” Caroline said. “You know how it distresses him when his little projects don’t go as planned. In fact, let’s try to avoid mentioning monkeys at all, if he doesn’t.”

  “Fine by me.” Maybe if we didn’t bring it up, he’d forget about it by next Christmas. Or pretend he had, which would achieve the same good results.

  I snagged a parking spot as close as possible to the staff door and led the way inside.

  We found ourselves in a small enclosed courtyard that lay between the Education/Administration Building—or Ed/Ad Building, as the staff called it—and the equipment warehouse. At the far side of the courtyard a gate led out to the public part of the zoo, where we could hear the shrieks and giggles of a lot of children enjoying themselves, plus the strains of “Good King Wenceslas” being played by the half-dozen musicians Grandfather had hired for the holiday season as a more civilized alternative to blasting carols over the zoo’s loudspeaker system.

  “If people want to hear carols, then fine,” he’d said. “They can follow the musicians around the grounds if they like. And those of us who don’t want to hear carols every single second of the blasted day can give them a wide berth.”

  I wished more retail establishments would adopt this point of view.

  We turned toward the Ed/Ad Building, which was a major part of what I thought of as the backstage area of the zoo—and sometimes infinitely more fascinating than parts that were open to the public. Of course, since this was Grandfather’s zoo, he cared a lot less about amusing the public than about educating them about animals and turning them into responsible citizens of the planet. I suspected that if the public ever got tired of the Caerphilly Zoo and stopped coming, Grandfather’s dismay would be considerably diminished by the realization that he no longer had to worry about providing food, beverages, and bathroom facilities to a lot of wayward Homo sapiens, not to mention keeping them from getting scratched, bitten, peed on, or eaten. The absence of human visitors might even leave him free to focus on what he considered the zoo’s real missions: Studying the animals. Breeding populations of endangered species that could be reintroduced to the wild to bring them back from extinction. And spending time with the creatures whose company he sometimes seemed to prefer to that of humans. With the possible exception of humans like Caroline, who shared his interest and expertise in zoology and was a longtime friend and collaborator.

  After all, they might try to bite, claw, or dismember him, but none of his charges ever contradicted him.

  In the reception area of the Ed/Ad Building we found a knot of people, some in khaki staff uniforms and some in white lab coats. They seemed agitated. Alarmed.

  “Poor Fred!” someone was saying.

  “I wouldn’t be Fred for a million dollars!” another exclaimed.

  Just then they noticed our arrival and grew quiet.

  “Hey, Meg,” a few of them called, or “Hi, Caroline.” But most just looked stricken. And maybe a little guilty?

  Apparently Caroline thought it better to ignore their agitation.

  “Is Dr. Blake in his office?” she asked.

  Some of the employees exchanged glances before one spoke up.

  “No, he’s in the aviary.”

  For some reason the word “aviary” seemed to cause several of them to flinch. Caroline simply thanked them and led the way back out into the courtyard before reacting.

  “What in the world is wrong now?” she muttered as we headed through the gate to the public area.

  “And who is this Fred they’re so worried about?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” She shrugged. “No doubt we’ll find out when we find your grandfather.”

  In spite of the serious cold—today was one of the sunny arctic days, with temperatures in the twenties—the zoo was crowded. The gift shop was overflowing with customers. All the food concessions had long lines—well, all except the ice-cream vendor, who really should have been given the day off.

  Good to see that the zoo was prospering. Not that Grandfather needed the revenue that much, but he tended to sulk when attendance was down, and utter dire threats about the fate of a civilization that had lost its interest in nature.

  He wasn’t in the public portion of the aviary. It was filled with people peering into the habitats, hoping to spot their occupants. Since Grandfather cared more about keeping the zoo’s occupants content than pleasing the tourists, he favored very large habitats that made observing some of the creatures a real challenge. Fortunately the Animals of the Bible scavenger hunt didn’t actually require you to lay eyes on an animal to collect its sticker. Children were happily running up and down and squealing with excitement when they spotted the little baskets of stickers for the buzzard, the turtledove, the ostrich, t
he great horned owl, the raven—

  “He must be behind the scenes,” Caroline said.

  I deployed my key card again and led the way through a STAFF ONLY door.

  We traveled down a long corridor whose walls were lined with doors leading into the habitats and great floor-to-ceiling windows that the keepers could use to see into the habitats when needed—although at the moment, at least along this corridor, all the windows were concealed by curtains, to preserve the birds’ peace of mind. Each door was surrounded by a variety of signs and bulletin boards giving instructions about the occupants’ care and feeding, bulletins about any medical conditions they were experiencing, and repeated warnings to make sure the doors were closed and locked when you left the habitat. Some of the warning signs looked relatively new—had the zoo recently experienced the ornithological equivalent of a jail break?

  At the end of the long corridor was a big open work area. There we found Grandfather. He seemed to be alternating between staring through an uncurtained window into one of the habitats and glowering at a young man in a staff uniform who was standing nearby.

  The name tag pinned over the young man’s breast pocket said Frederick Entwhistle. Presumably he was the Fred who was in such hot water with Grandfather.

  I was pretty sure Grandfather heard us come in. We weren’t trying to be quiet, and as he was fond of boasting, he had the predator’s highly developed ability to sense relevant changes in his surroundings. But he just kept staring into the habitat.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He ignored me.

  I glanced over at the young staff member. Frederick Entwhistle didn’t say anything either, but he’d clearly noticed us. His face had taken on a slightly hopeful look, and he was glancing around, as if trying to figure out how to use our arrival to engineer his own escape.

  Caroline and I waited for a minute or so. Grandfather continued staring into the habitat. Frederick Entwhistle began shuffling almost imperceptibly away from him.

  “Knock it off, Monty,” Caroline said at last. “We get it. You’re doing your best to bear up under some unspeakable blow from fate. Stop posing and tell us what’s going on.”

  Caroline was one of the few people in the known universe who could get away with speaking that way to Dr. J. Montgomery Blake, world-famous naturalist and gadfly environmentalist. Or, for that matter, calling him Monty.

  Grandfather just growled. Which was better than having him erupt, but still not exactly enlightening.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  “About what?” Caroline asked.

  “Whatever’s bothering him.”

  “There’s nothing bothering me!” Grandfather snapped.

  “You see?” I said. “He’s fine. Just a little cranky. Let’s give him some peace and quiet.”

  We turned as if to go.

  “It’s my Corvidae,” Grandfather announced.

  “Corvidae?” I echoed—unfortunately, loudly enough for Grandfather to hear it.

  “The Corvidae,” he intoned, “are a worldwide family of oscine passerine birds.”

  “I know what they are,” I said. “I just don’t understand why you’re in such a temper about them.”

  “The most common members are crows and ravens,” he went on. “But of course there are also the rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, nutcrackers, treepies, and choughs.”

  “Treepies and choughs?” I muttered.

  “Asian species,” he said “You wouldn’t know them. Highly intelligent creatures, the Corvidae. We’ve only begun to learn just how intelligent. That’s the purpose of my latest series of experiments. I’ve been conducting a wide variety of tests to gauge the intelligence of the various species. And it was all going quite well until Fred here misplaced my magpies.” He turned to glare at Fred.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Fred protested. “I followed all the instructions. I’m sure I locked the door to the habitat every time I left it.”

  “Then why aren’t my magpies here?”

  “Someone else must have made a mistake,” he said. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Maybe they let themselves out,” I said. “Highly intelligent creatures, the Corvidae. You said so yourself. Didn’t I read something about crows picking locks? Or was it ravens?”

  “That was orangutans.” Grandfather’s tone was dismissive, but his scowl had been replaced by the slight puzzled frown that suggested he was seriously considering the notion. Had I accidentally said something both intelligent and apt?

  “And you know very well that there’s a great deal of debate going on about the relative intelligence of birds and apes,” Caroline said. “Don’t discount Meg’s theory just because it’s a lot more fun to yell at the staff.”

  Grandfather scowled briefly at her, and then returned to his pondering look.

  “Apes have opposable thumbs,” he said finally. “Some of them even have opposable big toes. No matter how clever the magpies are, I have a hard time imagining they can use their beaks and claws to open a door, much less pick a lock.”

  “Good,” I said. “That’s what they want you to think.”

  “Staff incompetence is a lot more likely.” Grandfather returned to glaring at Fred.

  “I’ll give you a scenario that doesn’t require opposable thumbs,” Caroline said. “They’ve found a foolproof hiding place somewhere in the habitat. One morning, when they know it’s almost time for someone to come in and feed them, they all hide there. Panic! Consternation! Whoever was supposed to feed them runs off to report the problem, leaving the door hanging wide open.”

  “And the magpies fly out, wearing the magpie equivalent of a triumphant smirk on their smug little faces,” I said. “Sounds plausible to me.”

  “And to me.” Grandfather was glowering at Fred again. “But any staff member who runs off and leaves the door to a habitat open—even one that appears to be empty—”

  “You know,” Caroline said. “I may know where your magpies are.”

  Grandfather stopped glaring at Fred and turned to her.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because until I got here, I didn’t know you were missing any magpies.” Caroline didn’t actually say “so there,” but you could hear it. “Of course, when I saw them I did find it odd because I thought I remembered that the American magpie’s range was in the Pacific Northwest and parts of the upper Midwest. But then I thought I might be remembering it wrong, and besides, climate change is affecting the ranges of so many species. I was going to ask you if you’d heard of magpies in Virginia, and of course since I knew you had magpies here at the zoo, the thought did occur to me that perhaps you’d been a little careless with yours. I was going to give you a hard time about that. And—”

  “Blast it, woman, just tell me where you saw them!”

  Caroline drew herself up to her full height and for a moment I thought she was going to give him what for. But all she said was:

  “At Meg’s.”

  My turn to feel Grandfather’s wrath.

  “What are you doing with my magpies?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “If your magpies are at our house, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. I wouldn’t know a magpie from a mud lark.”

  “There’s no such bird as a mud lark,” he said.

  “From a meadowlark, then.” I turned to Caroline. “Are you sure you saw them at our house?” I felt a sudden flash of worry—what if the missing magpies turned out to be one of Rob’s crazy pranks?

  “Yes,” she said. “It was when I went out to see Rose Noire. She took me to see her herb-drying shed. She feeds the birds back there on a pretty ambitious scale. That’s where I spotted them.”

  “At a bird feeder?” Grandfather sounded skeptical. “They’d be a bit large for most bird feeders.”

  “A platform feeder,” Caroline said. “And that’s why I noticed them—they were chasing away the other birds and gobbling up all the birdseed.”
/>   “Birdseed? No!” From his tone you’d think Rose Noire was offering the birds arsenic or cyanide. “She shouldn’t be feeding them birdseed. They’re omnivores—birdseed should only be a small part of their diets. I’d recommend mealworms or—”

  “She didn’t set out to feed the magpies,” Caroline said. “She was aiming for songbirds.”

  Grandfather harrumphed.

  “You need to take me over there so I can check out these magpies.” And with that he strode off toward the nearest exit, leaving the hapless Fred to breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Sorry,” Caroline said to me. “But if you can drop me off at your house, I’ll ride herd on him and you can get back to your hoarder.”

  When we arrived at the house, Grandfather barely waited for me to stop the car before he was off, bounding along until he reached the middle of the backyard. There he stood with his hands on his hips, slowly turning in a circle and scowling at the magpie-free landscape around him.

  The llamas hurried over to the fence where they could watch him more easily. They were endlessly curious about human behavior, the odder the better, and had long ago learned that Grandfather was a lot more fun to watch than most of his species.

  “I suppose I should show him where I spotted the magpies,” Caroline said. “And unless you’re really desperate for people to deal with your hoarder guy, I should probably stay here and help him.”

  “Help him do what?” I hoped I didn’t sound as suspicious as I felt.

  “Heaven only knows,” she said. “Something magpie-related. When I said I was going to help him, I assumed you’d understand that what I really meant was something more like ‘keep him from doing anything destructive, or anything Meg would find more than usually annoying.’ Could just as easily mean thwarting him completely, if that seems the sensible thing to do.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I should have known. Carry on!”

  I’d intended to head back over to Mr. Dunlop’s as soon as I’d dropped them off. But I noticed that parked next to my car was the Twinmobile, as Michael and I called the minivan we’d bought for hauling around the boys and their friends. So I headed inside to see what he and the boys were up to.