My Remarkable Giraffe

My name is Hal Dresdinaught Bandliton and just the other day I came into the possession of a giraffe. It being that I am the sole owner of a giraffe, my life is now remarkable. It is a life to be remarked upon! And so I am remarking upon it. 

It all began with a raffle and an uninvited coffee guest.

I wasn’t looking to be remarkable. I was just reading National Geographic. I entered the contest for the giraffe simply because I like filling out the little forms on their postcard paper when I have a particularly inky tipped pen. I love the look of my name in the wet, black print and the idea of sending my little name, “Hal Bandliton,” off on little adventures of its own. 

When I entered the raffle I thought it was for a stuffed animal toy giraffe. I was quite surprised when, two weeks after I entered the raffle, Miss Eliza Pomwaddle arrived at my flat with her clipboard, leopard print glasses, camera and seashell necklace. 

It was a quarter to nine when Miss Pomwaddle rang the bell of flat no. 3 on the Saturday in February upon which I became remarkable. I was having a coffee in my pajamas on the window seat and sketching pictures of airplanes on the back of my latest book store receipt. I heard the bell, buzzed the woman in, and took full advantage of the 4 minutes it took her to climb the stairs and rap upon my door to recall that I had entered a raffle through National Geographic and that must be why she was calling, though it seemed a bit out of the ordinary to me. Little did I know how extraordinary this unexpected visit would prove to be.

Before this unexpected visit I was not remarkable. Some people are remarkable because they bake delightful chocolate chip cookies and always have a full cookie jar. I, on the other hand, make cookies that are rather dry and have large divots of chopped milk chocolate. I like them quite a bit, but most guests nibble and set them back down if I serve them at tea. Some people are remarkable for their occupation, but I’m an accountant. Some for their failures or their publications or who their parents were or the color of their hair or how many languages they can speak… I, on the other hand, can’t even come up with an interesting fact at a party that might make a person stop to have a conversation lasting longer than three minutes. At most large gatherings I introduce myself to everyone there, because no one takes interest in prolonged conversation with me after they learn that I am a bland person of habitual nature and an accountant. It is quite alright with me. I enjoy learning names and faces and I have a few remarkable friends who I enjoy discussing literature and going to the zoo with. 

Anyways. It took the acquisition of a giraffe for me to become remarkable.

I had met Miss Pomwaddle before at a book club. It was the annual Slidigid book club. My old college friend, Joel Slidigid, invited twenty three friends to his house on Mark St. for an extravagant evening of hard liquor, classic literature and debate every January 14th. Miss Pomwaddle had been in attendance this past year. I got to know her enough in the course of the night to never expect her to call upon me or take note of me, a very inadequate excuse for a noteworthy character, and to respect her as a highly intimidating specimen of the learned sect of society.

“No matter!” I thought to myself. “This unexpected visitor might be quite a jolly time. I can easily brew some more coffee… Oh dear… Well, I have nothing better to do.”

Rap. Rap. Rap.

I got up and opened the door and let the queen of the remarkables into my gold and grey papered living room.

“Hal Bandlington” she announced, pursing her lips a little as she spoke and sniffing the air for toxins or something.

I waited a moment for her to continue. She didn’t. 

“Yes, that’s me.” I prompted, shaking her hand inside its embroidered, plum colored glove. “Miss Pomwaddle, is it not? We met at Joel’s book club in January.”

“Yes, Eliza Pomwaddle of National Geographic. I am the main correspondent at the London Zoo.”

“A pleasure, as always.” I bubbled and stepped aside to let her into my flat. “It was such a pleasure to make your acquaintance the other day as well.”

“Indeed” she answered curtly. She sat down in the armchair, and placed her camera and clipboard on the side table in a neat stack. She removed her wide brimmed, lacey hat, folded her hands, resting them on her ankle length shirt dress and tipped up her pointed chin. I scrambled back to the window seat and tried unsuccessfully to straighten the floppy collar of my pajama shirt. It flopped up and down until I gave up. Miss Pomwaddle pursed her pale pink lips and nodded. “Mr. Bandliton. Did you submit a card in the latest National Geographic raffle?”

I said yes, yes I did, and took the opportunity to get up and take another pastel red tea cup from the shelf and pour the coffees. 

"Well, I have some news to share with you. Doubtless this will come as unexpected news to you, and I will be quite understanding if you show the usual weaknesses seen in humans in their initial reactions to a shock. I will also tell you that there are several options, so don't please act as if the world has ended when I share this information with you."

I furrowed my brow, picked up the coffees and walked back to the window seat. "Carry on, Miss Pomwaddle!" I encouraged bravely. "But wait just a moment until I have safely deposited these hot drinks on the table. I don’t think either of us would like it if I spilled hot coffee everywhere in my shock!”

She humphed. I giggled nervously. We both held our breaths until the cups were safely stowed. Then the strange play continued. 

"Mr. Bandliton -" she began. 

"Hal," I interrupted quickly, tucking my legs up under me to sit cross legged. "Just call me Hal."

She gulped as if this were, indeed, a bridge too far, but complied without argument. "Hal," she stammered, "the giraffe you won is real."

I cocked my head to one side and sniffed. "Uh What do you mean?"

“I mean that it isn't a stuffed giraffe or even a mini robot giraffe or a made of Legos or something idiotic like that. This giraffe is a little, adorable, wobbly, baby giraffe. Right now, she lives at the London Zoo.”

I bit my tongue. I took a sip of my coffee. I clenched and unclench my hands, after I put the coffee down of course, and I curled my toes. 

“Are you really telling me,” I quavered in disbelief. “That I own an actual giraffe?! Like a - like a giraffe that's a - a  mammal and very tall and eats leaves and has a - a well, has a really long tongue and is, you know, wobbly?”

To this day, I am not sure  if I was horrified or glad when she simply responded, “Yes, and tapped her fingers against her clipboard.

I got up off the window seat and began to walk back and forth as was my wont to do when I was nervous. I snapped my knuckles. Then, quite suddenly, I went over to the kitchen. I opened the third cabinet on the left, removed the false back, took the key from around my neck, unlocked the safe the false front had revealed, and removed my special emergency store of raspberry mint chocolates that I had bought a very long time before in a very far away place that I've now forgotten and had saved their for a time when I didn't have anything to say and didn't know what to do.

I now began to eat them rather quickly. I chewed with my mouth open and raspberry and chocolate came running out the sides of my mouth and down over my face. Miss Pomwaddle didn't turn around. She simply began to tell me about the remarkable giraffe that was going to change my life.

‘She's an adorable giraffe. Trust me I've seen many giraffes and never before have I really seen one so expressive. Her eyes are really large so she's cute. She doesn't have a name yet. We wanted whoever won the raffle to name her. So, you have won. What would you like to do with her? We just call her “Sweetie” since she doesn’t have a real name yet. I have a picture here if you would like to see it... As I said before, you have a few options. You could of course refuse the prize. Or you could take Sweetie to be your pet, though  you'll have to have a lot of schooling and certification before you can do so. Or you could pay to have Sweetie kept at the London Zoo, sort of sponsor her... What do you think?”

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “You can’t take care of Sweetie on your own?”

Miss Pomwaddle took her seashell necklace and her hands and crunched it back and forth anxiously. “I am afraid the Zoo isn’t doing very well of late. They cannot afford to care for another giraffe without help.” 

“Let me see the picture.”

I marched back to the window seat, chocolates in hand, and resumed my seat. She picked up her clipboard and handed it to me. There was a picture of a sweet, wobbly baby giraffe struggling to stand up! I reached out, picked up my coffee, and finished it in one go. Then I drank Miss Pomwaddle’s coffee. Then I finished the chocolates.

-----

That remarkable thing led to another, as such things always do, and soon my back garden was a forest of acacia and wild apricot trees. Liliana, my giraffe, took up residence there on her third birthday. I will not lead you to believe, however, that the early days of our friendship were not marked by some hurdles to be leaped. The first night, I made her a bed of hay and plugged in the fountain I had purchased to keep her water fresh and flowing. She didn’t sleep. She didn’t drink either. I sat on my window seat and watched through puffy, sleep drenched eyes as she nibbled and wandered all night. In the morning, I called Miss Pomwaddle in a panic. I must have done something wrong! Why didn’t Liliana sleep? Did she not feel at home in my back garden? Would she be sick if she didn’t drink?

Miss Pomwaddle laughed at me. “My dear Hal, did you not pay attention to your lessons? Giraffes hardly ever sleep. They take about fifteen 2 minute naps each day, oftentimes while standing up. They don’t need more than a half an hour of sleep.”

“And what about the water? Is she dehydrated?”

“She gets most of her water from the plants she eats, actually. Giraffes don’t drink more than once every few days.”

I nodded along, absolutely bewildered. I couldn’t help but feel like I was abandoning my friend every time I went to sleep. I could deal with the water matter well enough, but the no sleep? It felt quite cruel to leave her out there all alone. She didn’t seem to mind too terribly, but every morning I woke up to see her gentle face peering through my fourth floor window. A quizzical expression on her patterned face. 

Lilliana and I were good companions from the start. She is patient and I am incurably  inquisitive. My lovely giraffe has the biggest heart in the world, well to be literal, her heart is 50 times bigger than my own since it has to pump blood all the way up to her brain! I named her Liliana because she is innocent and lovely as a lily flower. I began to grow lilies near the window and she liked the smell. I also got in the habit of planting sweet, potent flowers in my window box and around the edges of my garden because, well, Liliana had a rather strong odor. Something common among giraffes, Miss Pomwaddle assured me. When we have company nowadays, I spray her with perfumes. Liliana finds it quite amusing and I swear she laughs whenever I spritz her with the fragrant liquid.

Every morning I was accustomed to take my tea on my window seat since I had a fantastic view of St. Paul’s cathedral spire. Once Liliana arrived, my view became obscured by her inquisitive face, bobbing in and out of the window. So I baked an extra biscuit and poured her a cup of tea. She refused the tea, but happily licked the bran biscuit right out of my hand! Her tongue was long as a snake and snatched it right off my palm and into her mouth. I leaped back in surprise, dropping my own biscuits and tea. Soon enough it became our routine to share tea together each morning. 

I put up an awning over my window so Liliana could have her tea with me without squinting in the direct sunlight. I put pillows along the windowsill so that she could rest her head there more comfortably, if she so fancied, when she took one of those “blink and you’ll miss it” two minute naps. Last of all, I called my friend Gerry over (I paid him for his trouble in chocolate wafer cookies and digestive biscuits) and we hung my hammock below my bedroom window so I could lay there in the sun and keep Liliana company. It also meant that I could carry on conversations with her without craning my neck or her doubling over.

On the subject of conversation I must now pause. Here was again a stumbling block and a rude awakening in my friendship with Liliana in those early days. 

She never spoke. She was absolutely silent. 

Miss Pomwaddle came over to visit Liliana one day and write up a little article for the magazine about Liliana's transition into her new habitat, my back garden. While we sat on my window seat, side by side and watched my giraffe munch her dry biscuits, I told Miss Pomwaddle of my most recent cause for worry.

“Eliza,” I began, for we were on first name terms at this point in our relationship, “Do giraffes usually - er - vocalize?” 

Miss Pomwaddle sipped her tea and straightened her rigid pink collar. “Did you learn about sound frequency waves as a child in primary school?”

I scratched my head, wrinkled my nose and bit my tongue. “I think so… I have vague recollections of a little chart and something about radio waves and microwaves.”

“Exactly. That’s just it. Giraffes do, as you so aptly put it, vocalize but on such a low frequency that our human ears cannot hear it.”

I almost cried. “You mean she is talking to me and I can’t hear it?! Why that’s just awful!”

She patted me absently on the shoulder - at least I think that’s what she meant to do. In reality she tapped the side of my neck and then my forehead because she was watching Liliana chew. (I will admit it was rather fascinating to watch my dear giraffe chew since her jaw rotated in all possible directions, not just up and down.) “It’ll be alright, Hal,” she consoled me. “There are more ways to communicate than just talk.”

I gulped the rest of my tea down and chewed gloomily on a dark chocolate covered biscuit. “She does like music,” I observed dully. 

Miss Pomwaddle swallowed vigorously and bounced in concurrence with my statement. 

“Perhaps I will play her some and that’s how I will talk to her.”

And that is just what I did! Not only did I take up the trumpet (and so call down the wrath of all my neighbors upon me, but that’s another story for a different day.) but I played her all sorts of music of all different genres during our tea time. Soon enough, she developed a distinct taste for Brahms as well as Alternative music. She would wiggle her ears to express her approval whenever their vibrating beats began. 

Well, that’s my remarkable story! Liliana is unequivocally remarkable and I am so only by association, which is just fine with me. Now I can attend parties and remain monosyllabic and dull, but I also have the option to drop that luxurious jewel of a statement: “I have a giraffe.”

And everything else falls away to naught.