The Game’s Afoot

The Game’s Afoot

Being a security guard at the San Diego Zoo has its perks, especially when you’re on the night shift. Basically, your job is to sit in a room watching a series of monitors and make sure nothing unusual goes on. Every once in a while you get some exercise by walking the grounds to do a visual inspection of the zoo. All this you log into your secure iPad. In addition to all the cameras throughout the zoo, there are hidden silent alarms that go off if anyone does manage to evade the cameras.  

My job was to watch the Africa Rocks, Outback, and Urban Jungle sections. Most of the time I just sit, read magazines, play solitaire, or binge-watch shows on my own iPad (which the execs at the zoo can’t monitor). 

Things became a little different about a month ago. It was a Friday night. The zoo closed at 9:00 p.m. as usual. After the visitors and staff had gone, I did my usual routine. I made sure all was locked up. I did a walkthrough of the grounds, which took a while, checked all of the exhibits in my section, and said good night to the baboons. They’re always the most fun animals to interact with. You know, reaching through the bars, trying to mess with your hat and clothes, checking you over for an occasional banana I happen to have stashed in a pocket, and putting on quite a show. It’s a fun way to end the circuit. I go back to my surveillance room, grab a Coke, and sit back to enjoy a quiet evening. 

This is how I started off that Friday night. It was about 11:00 when I closed my eyes for just a moment. All of a sudden one of the alarms went off. Intruder alert! I checked the monitors only to find that they all looked fine. If I had looked more closely I would have realized that all the monitor pictures were still framed. Normally there would be some movement in at least one of them. I decided to do a walkabout. 

The first thing you’re supposed to do is check the gates, which I did. All of them were locked and gated tightly. Next thing is to check the animals’ habitats. The first place I went to was the Urban Jungle. When I came to the Rhinoceros’s habitat I did a quick headcount and to my surprise one was missing. I looked all over the area and he was nowhere to be seen. The giraffes, the koalas, the kangaroos were all present and accounted for, but not the Rhino. I notified the other security guards at the other sections to be on the lookout for a Rhino. I was expecting a response of “THE What? and was sure they were going to laugh at me when instead, they responded that I should be looking for a panda, a gorilla, an orangutan, a tapir, a polar fox, and a number of missing birds.

This was no coincidence! Considering that all the gates had been locked, that meant that the release and theft of the animals either happened before the zoo closed or they were all somewhere within the confines of the zoo. So it was back to the Safari Park to look for clues. 

Checking the ground inside and outside the environment with my flashlight I specifically looked for footprints. There were none other than Rhino ones inside the environment, and most of the ones outside the environment were just random kids’ footprints from the visitors that day.  I was about to look elsewhere when I happened to find not only a rhino’s footprint outside the area but a set of footprints that shouldn’t have been there at all. They looked more like fat handprints than footprints and there were sets of four of them instead of two. I recognized the shapes. I radioed the other guards and told them to look along the outsides of their habitats for similar prints. If my suspicions were correct, I knew the whereabouts of the thief. I headed for the baboons. 

Though it was relatively quiet, I did notice that at the entrance to the exhibit there were a number of animal footprints that were definitely not baboons nor people. As I went to unlock the security entrance access, I also discovered two other important clues. One, the access door was unlocked, and two, I was missing the two particular keys from my keyring that would have unlocked that door and the Rhino’s access door. 

I stealthily made my way past the climbing area and rocks, past the water trough, and into the baboon house. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. I was afraid that there might be some carnage with animals attacking other animals. Again, had I thought about it, which I didn’t, most of the missing animals were herbivores, not meat-eaters. 

What I found was a circle of animals each intently looking at what appeared to be playing cards and playing what appeared to be poker.  Don’t ask me how they were doing it, but I just stood there for a while and watched as one animal after another, would stomp on the ground, somewhere between one and five times, and an orangutan would come by and take that many cards away from that animal and replace them with an equal amount of cards. I saw the arctic fox at one point use his nose just to flip all his cards over in disgust. I saw an oxpecker bird, one that is noted for being in a symbiotic relationship with the Rhino appear to peck in the Rhino’s ear just before the Rhino put his foot on his cards and patted them nicely. At this point, all the animals left in the game showed all their cards. Based on what I saw, the Rhino’s full house beat all the other players. A baboon then proceeded to give the Rhino and the oxpecker a treat before a gorilla went around to collect all the cards, mixed them up between his hands and feet, and was about to deal out a new set of 5 cards to everyone. 

It was at this point that the flamingo spotted me. All the animals turned in my direction. I was convinced that I would be killed in a stampede as the animals rushed to escape. Instead the baboon, clearly the organizer, came over to me and took me by the hand. In his other hand, he held the keys to all the missing animals’ enclosures. Clearly, I was not the only security guard to get frisked by the baboons. He led me over to an open spot in the conclave of animals and the gorilla proceeded to deal out the cards, including me in the game. 

The zoo management has yet to find out about these Friday night poker games. The baboon no longer needs to steal the keys, as all the guards are now involved in the games on a rotating basis. I mean somebody has to mind the store while the game’s afoot. To me it makes the Friday night shift a little more fun. Us guards also add special treats to the pot. We thought of inviting the sloth but decided the games would take too long with them included. As for the Rhino, I’ve noticed he wins a lot more hands than any of the rest of us. I’m pretty sure the oxpecker is cheating on his behalf, but I haven’t been able to catch him at it yet. I have won a few hands myself. All I can say is that the baboon gives a really relaxing shoulder rub, whenever I win. We make sure everyone is back in their own environments come Saturday morning. 

As I said, there are some perks to this job, especially on Friday nights.