I Heard Animals' Voices novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Swan Files a Complaint

The inspector's letter came on Friday morning, in a plain envelope.

The director read it aloud in the cat house with his glasses crooked.

"The complaint against Dr. Derrick Hargrove is closed with no finding."

"His record shows no incidents, forty-one successful treatments, and one commendation from a python."

The reptile keeper clapped, once, and then looked embarrassed.

"There's a postscript," said the director. "It says, 'Please fix the roof.'"

Duke, behind the glass, had woken from his faint two days ago and had been insufferable ever since.

"I'm going to be a father," he told everyone who walked by. "Ask me how."

"Nobody is going to ask you how," said Poppy.

"Ask me."

At ten past nine, the front gate had a problem.

I heard it from across the zoo, a hiss that went through the morning.

I ran, and Derrick ran beside me, and we found the ticket booth with a crowd around it.

In front of the booth, on the pavement, stood a swan.

He was very white and very large, with an orange beak.

He had walked here from Central City Park, which was one mile and a bridge.

The woman in the booth was holding a ticket scanner in front of her.

"He doesn't have a ticket," she said, in a thin voice. "He won't leave. Is there a discount for swans?"

"I have been walking for two hours," said the swan, loudly, to me.

"I have crossed a highway. I want to speak to someone who listens."

"I'm listening," I said.

"Then tell them," said the swan, and swelled up.

"The man in the yellow hat threw bread at me with his whole arm, like I was a ball."

"He says," I told the crowd, "that the man in the yellow hat threw bread at him like he was a ball."

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