River looped the mask over his ears and pulled it up over his nose before he exited the car. He walked with Newt to the entrance—I’m not limping at all! —and Newt showed his phone at the desk.
They were a little early, so were told to wait in the gift shop.
“Want to guess again?” Newt asked.
River looked around at all the cuddly toys on sale. Lions, cheetahs, gorillas, snakes—please not them—meerkats…tigers. Those two songs…My God. Really?
“Ti…ger?”
Newt nodded and River’s heart thumped hard.
“You have laryngitis, so don’t speak,” Newt whispered. “Well, you can squeak with fear. But try not to sound like something a tiger would eat.”
A tiger?River didn’t think there was much that could surprise him anymore but this did.
When the uniformed employee came to them, Newt stepped forward with his hand out. “Hi. I’m Newt. This is Sol.”
Sol was the name of the character River had played in the time jumper movie.
“Sol’s lost his voice. It’s not contagious. Too much karaoke.”
The keeper laughed. “I’m Jacob.”
River shook his hand.
“We thought a face mask was a good idea, just in case, or will it frighten the tiger?”
“I think Luca will be fine with a face mask. There’s not much that scares a tiger apart from fire, loud and unfamiliar noises or big powerful animals like elephants, rhinos, and grizzly bears. And humans with guns.”
“Wow, I have something in common with a tiger,” Newt said.
As they walked through the wildlife sanctuary, Jacob talked to them about the tigers they had and how they’d come to be there. All rescued from other zoos where they’d not been treated as they should have been.
“I read that their pee smells like buttered popcorn. Is that true?” Newt asked.
“Yes. So does that of the binturong. They’re bear cats from south-east Asia. There’s a chemical compound in their urine that’s the same as in freshly popped popcorn.”
“I know that an impala’s pee smells like cheese,” Newt said. “And a maned wolf’s smells like weed and a male Western Grey kangaroo smells like curry.”
Jacob chuckled. “Been googling?”
“I couldn’t stop once I’d started. Google is just… My final contribution is that a millipede’s pee smells like cherry cola or almonds.”
“Hints of cyanide,” Jacob said. “And here we are.” He led them through astaff onlydoorway. “This is Alice. She’s backup in case I get eaten.”
Alice rolled her eyes as she shook their hands.
“We’re going to be feeding Luca,” Alice said. “He’s a male white Siberian tiger. Eight years old. The meat will be on a stick. If you hold it high against the caging, he’ll come up on his back legs to get it.”
“Do you ever go in the enclosure with him?” Newt asked.
“Not unless he’s tranquilised. One blow from a paw could kill. If he sat on you, you’d die of suffocation.”
“That might be better than being eaten alive,” Newt said.
“True.” Alice nodded. “Tigers are naturally solitary animals unless they’re mating, or mothers who have cubs. All our wild cats have large enclosures with water to swim in. Luca knows when he’ll be fed by hand so he’ll come close. We hide most of their food, make it a challenge to find. The cats here are as wild as we can make them. Luca is friendly, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t eat us if he got the chance.”
They washed their hands, were given gloves to wear, then led into an area where there was tall metal caging between them and what looked like an empty grassy enclosure.
