The City Jungle
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Chapter One
Tikki Arrives
ON THIS PARTICULAR MORNING, in the sleeping-quarters of the orangutans’ cage, Tikki was born.
It was early summer, and as the sun’s first rays touched a sky aglow with pale pinks, yellows and greens, changing to a clear blue, the blackbird on the topmost branch of the tree burst into a song of joy.
All kinds of things happened in the course of that morning.
There was a domestic scene in the cage of Hella, the lioness.
Mino, the fox, had one of his attacks of insanity.
The big elephant, Pardinos, killed a boy. Nobody knew who he was or how he had managed to get into the cage.
Later, Brosso, the lion, after twelve years of service with the circus, was turned over to the zoo.
And strange and unexpected things also happened to the young wolf called Hallo.
The zoo was still: there were no human beings about. The keepers had not yet put in their appearance, and most of the animals were asleep, for, as usual, they had not slept during the night.
The trees were glorious, bathed in the sun’s first rays. Their leaves were like a green and living gold. In their branches finches trilled, doves cooed, jays screeched. The oriole sped through the air, a golden flash, constantly uttering its melodious and exultant cry of love. Woodpeckers hammered, and the squirrels at their merry antics over and around the boughs, twitched their bushy red tails. There was an odor of leaves, of damp wood, of turf and of flowers blooming in their beds that were like a gay carpet. It smelled, too, of dew, of iron wet with dew, and of trim tidiness.
All the free creatures about the zoo were happy.
On the orangutans’ house was an elegant weather-vane. On its very tip sat a young blackbird, singing her morning song. She had all kinds of tuneful inspirations, and grew quite drunk with her music, sitting up there as if she were alone in the world.
She knew nothing of the mother orangutan, or of little Tikki, who had just glimpsed the light of day. Indeed, she would not have understood; she would hardly have been interested. Free creatures are divided from captives by a gulf as wide as that which divides rich and poor.
Within, in the sleeping-quarters, sat Yppa, the mother orangutan, holding little Tikki in her silken black fingers.
In the two years that she had been imprisoned here with her companion she had never for a moment forgotten her freedom.
Her home had been in the virgin jungles of Borneo. There she had grown up in the brilliant green forests, with their multitude of shapes and powerful odors. She had become daring and strong, and whether with her companions or alone, had been blissfully happy and utterly content.
Once she had gone for a stroll across a small clearing, and in the short-cropped grass discovered a quantity of bananas strewn about. Yppa squatted down and one by one industriously devoured the bananas. Heaven knows, one, or at most two, would have sufficed her. She did not suspect that human beings had strewn the bananas there, or that they contained a narcotic. She knew just one thing—she had been free and was now a captive: there had been a time when she was happy, now there was simply misery without end.
She had been overpowered by a deadening sleep. Waking, she found herself in a narrow cage surrounded by cackling, laughing humans. Her skull ached, her limbs felt numb. Terror at her plight and the loathing and the horror caused by the sight of human beings further numbed her. Her loathing increased; her horror became a kind of paralysis until both were consumed in a boundless rage.
Furiously she shook the close-set bars of her cage. She bit into the iron, butting it with her shoulder, her head.
In vain.
Exhausted, she sank down, but began all over again the next day with the same result. The days, the hours passed interminably.
By degrees Yppa’s broken spirit began dimly to comprehend that the most furious rage was of no avail. She cowered in her corner, sulking. She shuddered with loathing of human beings. An uncompromising hatred of all their brood kindled in her heart. She had never done them any harm, never.
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