My best friend: The Panda

         Through the grainy glass wall, I watched an immense animal preside over his surroundings. He sat like a king on his throne. I walked around the corner. A fake Chinese landscape complete with gilded temples was at my back, and bits of gray stone beneath my shoes. I held a bundle of bamboo outstretched instigating the panda to his feet. The panda with his black tree trunk legs, and black and white face, stood up in response. He started off lazily at first like I’d woken him from an all-important nap. His front paws landed on the fake rock-like ground. The ground, engineered as the perfect habitat for one of the last representations of a nearly extinct species, was the work of architects from around the world. He stopped, just past the “tree”, and decided it was time to go. A familiar spraying sound started as the panda let loose of his excessive waste byproducts. Inside, Paul stepped from a door covered in a fake rocks, grabbed a broom, and pushed the liquids to the drain, and the solids to the weighing bin. Our dedicated staff measured all panda functions, both in and out. Our job description was “to ensure that the panda was safe and happy”. This could be difficult in zoo. Here, it was different. We only fed him bamboo to understand how they choose what to eat. In the outside world, pandas are omnivores. They have a diet filled mainly with the fibrous strands of the bamboo stalk, yes, but also with the rare meat treat from-to-time. They’d never hunt down their meat, but with the right opportunity, they’ll go ahead and take a bite.
         He came up to the wall that separated us, and placed a paw on it. His solemn eyes found the greatest thing in life, which I held, and he cupped his hands.
         “Wait,” I said with my index finger raised.
         I walked over to the food weighing station. It looked like a telephone booth with no doors or walls. Now the poles which at one point held an actual roof hold up a blue trap that we rigged one day. Sometimes it protects us from the rain, and sometimes it pools the rain together for one big wet surprise. The pandas may be kept consistently dry and at 76 degrees Fahrenheit, but their keepers have earned their positions by gutting out all manner of weather. I recorded the weight, and placed the paper back in its plastic sleeve. To my surprise, the panda had stuck his hand in the slot and his paw awaited my food deposit. The panda took his meal over to the middle of his enclosure, and started to fan it in front of his nose like a child who picked up a Chinese fan and pretended to be in the movies. I envied that panda bear. A perfect temperature all the time, dry, and unlimited food. Someone was always around to grant the panda’s request. No one ensured that I should even be dry here at work. I started to pace.
         Not that I mind. Before, I was a park ranger. I helped people with their troubles, and once I stopped a forest fire, that I may have almost started. My problem was that I’m a dreamer, and dreamers don’t make attentive employees. Here, at least, there are checklists and computer system that show whether I do my job or not.
         I walked back and forth along his cage, and he followed me the entire time. Whenever I stopped, his paws stretched up the glass, digging, and he’d hop down as I turned back around to begin my path anew. Between the third or fourth time, Shaggy came up and tapped me on the shoulder. His real name was Hobart, but he looked too much like the Scooby-Doo character to be called anything else. The panda responded with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. When we switched off, Shaggy raised his hand for a high five, like he tagged me into a wrestling match. The panda followed suit, and slapped the glass. He did it once, then again, and again again again again striking the wall with both paws. His head turned slightly to the right and his large brown eyes stared. I came over to see him once more, and placed my hand on his outstretched paw.
         Lunch time was always interesting because of the people around. Families with multicolored shirts that matched their homeland’s flag, or jerseys from their favorite sports teams, tended to illuminate my otherwise bland day. People often think that working with pandas would be the dream job, not really working at all. But, they were what made this job my passion. A breakup of the monotonous and infinite record keeping. The look on a child’s face when the panda stood up like a monster from a horror movie, the out-of-country traveler whom couldn’t speak English and was more apt to ask for the bathroom instead of panda history, or less commonly, the visitors whom asks an exorbitant amount of questions. They are my favorite.
         “Why do they sit around all the time?” they’d ask.
         “Not much else I to do in there I’m afraid,” I’d say. “But seriously, they only go in search of food, a luxury that we provide for them,” I’d say with a little smile and then toss some extra (weighed) bamboo in and the panda would response with a slow walk over.
         I realized that I had been starting at a couple with a newborn baby. The awkward expression they gave consisted of both my creepy stare, and the reflection of a, honey quick eat and let’s get away for this guy plan. With my stomach growing, and the beeper on my watch ringing, it was time to down a quick burger, and run back to the panda.
         With only a few bites remaining, I noticed the smell of smoke over my potent onions. I was confused at first, but the smoke coming from my work station cleared up any thoughts that I was just imaging things. I threw down my burger, and jumped up so fast that I nearly split my knee in two on the bottom of the metallic picnic table. A warm sensation of blood forming a future bruise rushed to the damage site. It took a few practice steps, but I was able use my leg again and to run over to the cage. The smoke came over the terracotta roof in rushing pillows. In the archway, Shaggy ran out and around the circumference of the Zen garden.
         “Tell them I quit man,” he said. That was the last time I saw Shags until his face was on the news the following day.
         I came back behind the archway to see the garden aflame. “The panda!” someone from the outside crowd screamed. Turning to the glass enclosure, I witnessed him cowering in a crevice on the complete opposite side, as far away from the heat as possible. I had to open his cage.
         Inside the laboratory was the door release button. I looked for the button with only the emergency lights to guide my way. When I pressed it, nothing happened. I checked the wires that came from the back of the control box, but I was no electrician so I kicked it hoping it would work. My heart began to beat faster and faster, as I stood there, unable to react, I thought I smelled the stink of burning hair. I felt warmth on my right leg, that my brain took its time in processing and witnessed small embers engulf my right pant leg. Nearby was some distilled water in a bucket. As my leg broke the water’s surface an alarm rang out. “Salinity out of normal range, salinity out of normal range!” I punched that monitor. Behind that punch was the pain on my leg, and the frustration of a place outfitted to measure the salt content of water, but not the ability to easily rescue a rare animal.
         I got back out to the cage and found the manual release. The heat on my back was not nearly as intense as the heat coming from the metal locking mechanism. A quick discharge of its energy would easily burn me, but I had to try. I ripped off a portion of my jeans, and wrapped it around my hands. Whenever the still wet jeans met steel, the water instantly evaporated, and now my barely covered hands were burned through.
         I came to the outside of the panda’s hiding spot. Unable to do anything, I dropped down to the ground, my back sliding against the cage. If there was any vegetation in his sanctum it would have caught fire by now. The panda choked, one that I had never heard before. I looked into his eyes, and felt a twinge of pain in my back. A number of onlookers seemed to be chucking rocks at me, like I was the worst show of the night. The twick twick twick of rock against tempered glass awaken me, and I stood up. “Throw more, keep going,” I screamed. The cage was full of smoke now, and the panda’s shape was only a silhouette. I began pound on the cage with the heel of my shoe like Bruce Lee.
         What sounded like a skull crushing crack, that grew louder and louder as it moved outward of its epicenter was actually a crack in the glass. It stretched out in tendrils going going going, and then stopped. I yelled for them to keep hitting the spot, but the smoke was too thick, and the crackling roar of the fire drowned out my voice. I pressed my forehead to the glass looking at the ground. Long black toenails appeared, and I looked up slowly fearing that this bear might be dying in front of me. He was calm and placed his paw in front of my face. I stood back and surveyed his beauty, and returned his gesture in kind. The cracking noise happened again, as a lucky rock had found its target. I stretched my hand on the crack, his hand following mine. The pain shot straight up my arm, and sent an instant transmission and I reeled back. He reeled back. I slapped the spot hard. More pain. Then, even harder, and he slapped harder. As I slapped harder the pain grew until my brain would not allow another. I started to hit the glass with my forehead, and his paw came up to my eye level again. He started to back away because of the increasing heat, and I started hitting the cage with both hands. I pointed to the crack and reeled my arms back as far as I could go and slapped the surface one more time. The panda looked like a toddler trying to correctly throw a soccer ball. His two paws came crashing through the shatter-less glass dust which was as numerous as the sands of a beach. He landed on me, and I think that he gave me hug. I hugged him back. He stood back up in his kingly way, and inhaled deeply.
         The paramedics and doctors had finally arrived, and they tried to remove my new best friend. He wouldn’t go without me, and certainly not in another cage. We left together with the fire trucks spraying water on the flames, and my new friend waited for me to get bandaged up in the ambulance.

WC: 1926