Page 61 of Tiger Queen

“The band saw broke around eight. So the video was recorded any time between then and nine-thirty,” I announced.

“Then it could have been a visitor,” Anthony said. “The security cameras watch the outer perimeter of the zoo, and the enclosures, but nothing watches the areas marked employees-only.”

“Or,” Jake said ominously, “it was an employee.”

We looked around at each other.

“I didn’t… I didn’t do anything!” Mary Beth said in a shaky voice. “I was with Rachel most of the morning, helping feed the animals. I mean, not all morning. But most of it! Plus I wouldn’t do something like this!”

Brandon looked around with his mouth open but didn’t offer any verbal defense.

“What group was the video posted on?” Rachel asked.

I clicked out of the video and returned to the main page. “The AFF. Animal Freedom Foundation.”

“Never heard of them,” Rachel replied.

“Me neither. It looks like they’re a new group trying to make a name for themselves. And they’re doing a good job so far. The video has seven hundred comments on it already.”

“Eight-forty, now,” Anthony said with a wince. “Oh, man. They’re not being kind to us at all. Saying we’re just as bad as dad, if not worse.”

“They’re calling us the Crazy Carl Children,” I said, biting off every word. “The comment section is running wild with rumors and speculation. Don’t read it unless you want your blood to boil. This is going to make it harder for us to move animals into sanctuaries. It hurts our credibility. Organizations won’t trust what we tell them.”

“Have you made any progress with that?” Rachel asked.

“I’m working on it.”

“You need to find a way to get rid of them,” she insisted. “Once we dump more tigers, we won’t have groups like the AFF bothering us.”

“I said I’m working on it,” I said more heatedly than I intended. “I’m trying to find creative solutions, but it’s not easy.”

“We should issue a formal statement,” Anthony said. “I’ll look into what we should say.”

“You do that,” I said. “In the mean time, we still have work to do. Meeting over.”

We all returned to work cleaning up the zoo and doing the end-of-day work on the enclosures. Tidying things up so we wouldn’t need to do it in the morning. Then we walked back to the house, all of us silent and brooding. Anthony made beer sausage for dinner, with a side of pasta for everyone else.

“I looked into it,” he said while we ate. “I can issue a copyright takedown request on Facebook and get the video removed. That might buy us a day or two, but eventually it will get re-posted. It’s their video so they can do whatever they want.”

“That would probably just make everyone think we have something to hide,” Rachel added. “We should take a video of the food prep building now that it’s clean. Show everyone how it really looks.”

“Fuck that,” Jake muttered. “It’ll just look like we got caught and quickly fixed our mess.”

“Then we show them the food delivery recipes,” she insisted. “We received fifty pounds of chicken parts last week. That will prove that we’re not feeding the animals spoiled food.”

“Responding to only one accusation would mean admitting to the other,” Anthony replied. “If we release our food recipes, we need to bring up our cleanliness standards too.”

“We shouldn’t do shit,” Jake said angrily. “Dad never gave these people the time of day. Best thing is to ignore those fuckers and tighten our security.”

“We have to do something,” Rachel replied.

Jake tossed down his fork. “No. We don’t.”

I pulled out my phone and opened the zoo email account. The company that delivered our food sent us weekly invoices, but I wasn’t sure how granular they were. They might not even show a breakdown of food items.

But before I could look up an old invoice, I noticed there was a new email from the delivery company. I scanned the words quickly, then read them a second time.

“Son of a bitch,” I cursed.

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