The Curator

(Content Warning: This story depicts physical violence, abduction, animal abuse, and arrest)

The Constable slides the unopened orange drink across the metal table. The scraping of the aluminum can as it travels across the stainless-steel table hurts my teeth. My blood sugar is low enough that I am inclined to ask for help. I manage to point to the ring on top of the table that I am handcuffed to and fight the urge to say “Well, it’s not going to open itself.” The man in a cheap suit wearing an unusually thick amount of drugstore cologne pushes away from the opposite side of the table with an audible sigh and leaves the room. He comes back with a straw in a paper wrapper. “Oh look, you’re still here.” He says with a smirk. He opens the drink and pops the newly unwrapped straw in it, placing it in front of me on the metal table.

“Okay,” the Constable says with a tinge of irritation in his voice, “here is the way this is going to go…” He wads up the straw wrapper and flicks it toward the corner of the table. “You’re going to talk, I’m going to listen. We both know why you are here. Tell me how you got to this point in your life. You know, where you are shackled to a stationary table in a police station at 2 o’clock in the morning when we should both be home, sleeping soundly in our respective beds.” He is irritated. I am amused.

The urge to request a phone call wells up in the back of my throat. For the moment, I’m on my own. There is no number to call. This was stressed early on when I became curator. In the event that things have gone so far south that I end up in custody, I know I only need to sit tight. The calvary is on the way. I know too much. Why would they risk having me out in the world in a position to feel vulnerable enough to spill my guts? I decide to stall. Having had wonky blood sugar in the past helps. My act is award worthy. It’s only a matter of seconds and the Constable is frantically calling for help. I use the time while playing out my new role as a diabetic in distress to consider what I might say if I trusted the man in the cheap suit, which I do not.

There are two kinds of people in this world. The ones who protect animals and the ones who hurt them. There is no grey area when it comes to companion animals. They either hurt them by not caring when other people harm them… or worse, they do the harming. I am one of the people who happen to love animals. I am not a fan of people who aren't like me when it comes to furbearers. Now, don't get me wrong. I eat meat. I eat meat often. That doesn't mean I am the type to kick a cow. When I started on this journey, I simply answered a random questionnaire on social media.

That may be how they found me. I'm not special. I'm just an average American who has a family, a spouse, a kid, and even a few grandchildren. Who would have ever pegged me to be perfect for this position? I've been a writer since I could write my name. Before that, I was telling stories since I could talk. Maybe that's a bit of an overreach, but you get it. I digress. I think the criteria for this job boils down to caring so much for the animals that cannot care for themselves and having so little compassion for those who aren't humane enough to slow down for a goose trying to cross the street with her young family, those who show a pet less than love, those who hurt… or worse, kill animals because the animal can't (or won’t) fight back.

Would I sit and watch a 480-pound silverback gorilla tear a man limb from limb… again? That's part of my job. Did I enjoy it? Not really. It was messy. I did wish the human in question had been more human and not beaten a dog to death because she pissed on his carpet. But that's another story for another time.

It started out simple enough. If I go back to where I think it all began, it would be either the questionnaire on social media or the crowdfunding campaign that I set up to raise money for a project to help captive animals. Between the two events, regardless of which one may have put me on their radar, my life took a very strange turn.

If you told me that I would become the curator of a human zoo, a veritable vigilante for the invertebrate and vertebrate alike, I would have laughed in your face a few years ago. If I knew then what I know now, I would not have even blinked.

Everything that a person ever puts on the Internet is out there, somewhere. Nothing goes away; nothing is erased, buried, or deleted. Not really. People think you can take things back, bury one diabolical thing said or done with two thousand good deeds, but that just isn’t how it works. You cannot “unring” a bell. To quote the Goblin King from the movie Labyrinth™… “What’s said is said.” At some point, I said or did something that made the owners of the Garden take notice. I must have put myself on their radar. While it is also possible that they built my personality and proclivities from the ground up. There is no way to tell, and no one who has been willing to tell me, up to now.

I travel for work. I find ideal and deserving specimens for the owner’s collection and ultimately their dispatch. They trust me to only provide the cream of the crop, and I deliver. That’s my job. What I deliver doesn’t rise to the top, though. I deliver what sinks to the bottom. I deliver the scum of the earth. I sit as prosecutor, jury, and even the judge on every case. Sometimes, I am also the executioner. Sometimes, things are handled in the field and never make it back to the compound. Sometimes, things can’t wait. Sometimes, I can’t wait.

I climb into the driver’s seat of the large black SUV and head east. Before the weekend is over, I will have heard the first-hand story of two dogs being shoved into a hot car. They will have fought until one was dead, and then the other not released until it passed out from the heat because the drunken idiot at the bar thought it was a cool story to tell. He made it a point to say that they didn’t use the trunk so they could watch, this time. This time?

Before the weekend is over, I will have gained the trust of that man, possibly two times my size. I will have convinced him to show me, in his drunken stupor, how the dogs were tricked to jump into the car. He will have willingly hopped in the back of my SUV, pretending to pant like a dog excited to go for a trip. “Good boy!” I said as I slammed the custom hatch closed, and it automatically locked.

Before the weekend is over, I will have driven him through three states, adding several more felony charges to an incredibly long list, considering I have only been the curator for less than five years. Oddly enough, the people who would be addressing felony convictions like mine are now controlled by the people I work for. A “Get out of jail free” card™ is only as effective as the people who enforce it, and power shifts happen. This is a reality that I accept.

While the engine warms, my thoughts turn to humans in general. It’s common for me, in current times, to wonder what is happening to people. Where is their ability to empathize or even sympathize? The increasingly violent acts against nature are far from natural. It’s been a question in my head for years.

During what could be considered one of the oddest job orientation phases in the history of the world, it was explained to me like this-

Humans stopped being selective when it came to breeding. No longer were mating decisions made based on the ability to provide for a family, spawn stronger children, or raise beings who could contribute to the ongoing evolution of humanity. The criteria became less about the “big picture” and more about the moment. It became about what felt good at that very second and to hell with the rest. To hell with humans as a species. That’s what happened. Children were bred unintentionally more often than not, with no other purpose than to consume. Guided, distracted, desensitized, and sexualized earlier and earlier by the media with no moral compass. Generations without a defined course or reward at the finish line reproduce at alarming rates with less and less ability to take care of themselves much less raise productive humans.

Unfortunately, animals still breed selectively and fall victim to those who are detached, bored, or not brave enough to take on something with a voice or the ability to fight back.

After a few months and seeing it for myself once, twice, and then hundreds of times, everything explained to me makes perfect sense. My job makes perfect sense. I sympathize with each human subject as I don’t feel they are entirely to blame. If they are meeting me, it’s too late. At some point, I redirect my most basic nature to forgive… to the files on my laptop. Paragraphs of details. Pictures. Ten-second clip of a puppy screaming in pain, an older cat taking her last labored breath after being used as a feline piñata, the dogs fighting in that hot car…each file reminds me that even though the subjects aren’t entirely to blame, they are to be held accountable.

Their presence in the Garden serves a much higher purpose than they could or would have ever served on their own. They don’t and won’t ever know that, though.

Every time I head back to the Garden, I go to the playlist I have fine-tuned over the years. The guitar at the beginning of the first song on the playlist never fails to put a smile on my face. An oldie, but certainly an appropriate goodie. Every note is more than music to my ears. It’s the same song they will hear once or twice through the reinforced partition that sections off the second row of seats from the tailgate. We removed the 3rd row when that crazy bitch slipped her cuffs outside of Vegas. It took an hour to chase her down. But that’s another story. Good thing I keep a diary. The best part of my job is knowing that if you're hearing my playlist, one way or another, I did getcha, getcha, getcha. Home sweet home, here I come.

I am so deep into my inner monologue that I don’t even notice the entrance of the EMT. It isn’t until she pricks my finger to test my blood that I notice her presence. She intentionally turns her wrist upward as the meter strip gathers up a bit of my blood, and I notice the tattoo. The calvary has arrived.