The Zoo

“Grumma said there used to be over ten billion people alive all at once.”

“Don’t be stupid, Willa. Where would that many people fit?” Willa’s classmate Zephyr said while the rest of the class boarded the train. Willa was about to snap back at Zephyr but was interrupted.

“Hiya Willa! Are you excited for our fieldtrip?” said Willa’s teacher.

“Are there going to be dinosaurs?” A boy with a dirty mouth shouted before Willa could respond.

“We’ve been over this Teven; dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years.”

“But Polly said there was gonna be honeybees there, and those are extinct!” The boy retorted. He was jumping up and down on his knees. The doors to the train closed and it immediately zoomed away, the brown landscape becoming a blur.

“Honeybees are extinct in the wild. They still live in a few zoos, like the one we are visiting today.”

“Whatever, I don’t like bees, anyway!” The boy said, as if something had offended him. Willa turned to him.

“Why don’t you like bees, Teven? Grumma said they used to be important. They pollinated flowers and food and…”

A girl in the seat behind Teven started laughing and the girl sitting next to her joined in quickly, though she looked unsure why.

“What?” Willa asked.

“You said that bees used to pollinate things!” The girl said, laughing.

“Yeah and…” Willa tried.

“But bees just stung and hurt people. That’s why we got rid of them all!” the Teven boy said, joining in on the fun.

“Well, they did sting people, but Grumma said they also pollinated flowers and made our food. And we didn’t get rid of them, they died because…”

“No! Scientists pollinate food. Everyone knows that. That’s why we have scientists!” The second girl said, finally catching on.

“But Grumma said that it used to be different. Scientists didn’t have to pollinate because bees did it!”

“Why would we let stinky bees touch our food? Bees used to live outside! Scientists grow our food inside where it is clean. Willa, your great grandma was crazy! Why did you listen to her?” the first little girl said.

Willa turned around and faced the front, her face burning. Her teacher gave a sad smile and said nothing. Willa, without realizing it, gently touched the heart-shaped locket dangling around her neck. A picture of Grumma rest inside it.

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“What is it?”

Willa stared through the glass, ignoring the conversation from her other three tour classmates.

“Does it…do anything?” A boy, Jade, asked while looking up to the chaperone, who immediately started flipping through his booklet.

“Hold on, um…are we in animals yet…or…no…we are still in plants…so this is…well um…AHA!”

Willa listened adamantly while the chaperone described the thing behind the glass, but she didn’t take her eyes off it for a second.

“This is a da…let me see here…daffodil. It is a type of flower.”

“Ohhhh,” the other three students said in unison. The chaperone continued.

“It once had a varied habitat, consisting of grasslands, woods…”

“But what does it do? What does it eat?” the other girl in the group asked.

“No, it is a plant. It doesn’t eat anything!” Willa said, frustrated.

“Oh. Well that’s boring.”

Willa looked quickly to the complaining girl. The girl wasn’t even looking at the flower! She wasn’t even giving it a chance.

“I like it,” the second boy, whose name was Liam, said. “It’s nice to look at.”

“Boring. What’s next?” the girl said, tugging on the shirt of the chaperone.

Willa reluctantly pulled herself away from the window and followed her group to a roped off area. A man informed them that the next exhibit was their most popular, and their group would have to wait a moment to go in, as it was full. Willa and her classmates buzzed eagerly, asking each other what was in the room.

Maybe it’s a raccoon. No, I bet it’s a snake. I’ve never seen a snake before. Ooooh what if it is a mushroom. My sister said there were mushrooms here!. My favorite plant is a manzanita bush, but I’ve never seen one in real life, you think it’s that?

“Children. What is behind this door is more exciting than anything you listed.”

Jade’s eyes widened. The girl who was bored with the flower exhibit was now tapping the ground in excitement. Even the chaperone was flipping through the book, trying to find what amazing exhibit could be next. Willa knew what she hoped was in the next room. There was one thing she had been waiting patiently to see.

“The room you are about to enter is the aquarium.”

Nobody said anything. Even Willa, who had studied and prepared for this day, was stumped at first. She had definitely heard the word aquarium before, but what did it mean? Had Grumma spoke of it? Of course. Grumma was the only person who would talk to Willa about animals and plants.

The man’s smile faded, realizing how anticlimactic the whole reveal had been.

“An aquarium is a place for…”

But Willa cut him off. “Fish! It is for fish and, and water animals and stuff! Right? Am I right?”

“Very good!” He cheered, while the flower-hating girl whispered know it all.

“What is a fish?” Jade asked.

“You idiot, you don’t know what a fish is?” the rude girl said.

“Hey kids, no name calling. A lot of people have never heard of fish,” the chaperone said.

“And even less have actually seen one in real life,” the man said.

“That’s ‘cause they aren’t real,” Liam said, sticking his chin high in the air.

The man frowned, but the boy continued to speak.

“They are made up. They are fake slimy monsters that live in the ocean and swamps, and they just lurk down there and bite at people who swim too far out.”

“Hm, never heard of ‘em. My parents don’t really like telling me ghost stories,” Jade said, looking quite disappointed that they were about to see a fake creature.

Willa furrowed her brow and stomped. “It isn’t a ghost story! Fish are too real! And there used to be big ones, really big. There were whales and sharks and jellyfish and turtles and all sorts of animals in the ocean. But then we…”

“Alright, it’s your turn to go in!” The man said, gesturing to the door.

The aquarium was the single most amazing room any of them had ever been in, and that was a fact. Even the too-good-for-daffodils girl would admit it. The whole room was surrounded by glass, and behind it, water, green things emerging from the ground, and fish. Fish! Colorful, majestic, and yes, slimy. There were so many, some as big as a human arm. They swam right up to the glass so all the children could seem them.

Willa felt dizzy. It was like she was in a dream. She had heard of them, of course. Fish and other water creatures often made an appearance in one of Grumma’s stories. Long ago, when people had to find their own food, men and women would catch fish from all around the world, cook them and eat them.

Some even lived up by the surface, where they could swim in between one’s feet, and live in the coral or in the green slimy plants. Grumma said it was like a dance, watching the fish zoom through the green plants. And some fish lived deep down, miles down, in the waters. They had their own lives, completely separate from humans, and almost nothing the humans did could interfere with the fish. Or at least, that’s what everyone thought. And there were large ones, like whales and sharks, that were huge, bigger than a ship, Grumma would say! The sharks would fight to the death sometimes, and the whales would jump up from time to time to get some air, and of course to impress the humans, shooting water out their holes. And all the humans would look, and smile, and clap.

But now, none of that happened. Whales didn’t jump up anymore to impress anyone, because whales hadn’t existed for over a hundred years. Grumma’s stories were just what she had heard from family or read in books. And sharks. Sharks hadn’t existed since Willa’s mom was a baby. And small fish. Small fish still existed, but only deep down, down where nobody can find them, down where they can be safe, down where the light doesn’t reach. And there were no longer any coral or green slimy plants for the fish to dance with.

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Willa didn’t want to leave the aquarium, but the zoo was closing soon, and she still had one stop to make.

“I don’t care; let’s go back to the exhibit with those pink animals with the curly tails. I liked those silly things,” the pig-loving-but-flower-hating girl said.

“We only have time for one more exhibit and it should be one we haven’t visited yet,” the chaperone said, eyes glued to the pamphlet, flipping through.

“Or I guess we can just head back to the train early if you kids are all done.”

The three others grunted. Willa’s heart sped up for the hundredth time today.

“Wait!” She said. “There is one exhibit I’d like to see.”

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She felt numb, almost invincible looking at it. She thought the other kids would laugh at her for needing to see one so bad, but she was wrong. All four of the children and the chaperone stood in awe, their necks craned upward, trying to see the top. It was hard for Willa to breathe.

“Wow,” the rude girl said.

“It’s so big!” Jade said.

“Much taller than I ever imagined,” the chaperone said.

“You’ve never seen one either?” Liam asked the adult.

The chaperone just shook his head. “It is so…beautiful.”

“Majestic.”

“I know,” Willa finally said, struggling to speak. Her mouth was dry. “I have read all about them, and I knew this was one of the last two places you can see one.”

“Why?” the chaperone asked. Willa wasn’t sure what he meant, but she continued staring through the glass.

“Why is it your favorite? How did you know it would be so amazing? They’ve always sounded so boring to me.”

Willa cleared her throat.

“Well…I just knew it had to be. Something that was so important, you know, it had to be amazing to see in real life.”

“I had heard, but I just thought they were fake,” Liam said.

“I knew they were real,” Willa smiled. “Grumma told me.”

“What do you mean by important? What did your Grumma say?” the other girl asked. Willa could tell by her voice that she genuinely wanted to know. This wasn’t like the flower room. The girl actually liked this exhibit.

“Trees used to make oxygen for us. Before the scientists made it. Trees made air for us to breathe,” Willa explained.

“How much oxygen did they make?” Jade asked.

“All of it,” Willa said, not knowing how else to answer.

“But…why? What did we do for the trees in return?” the other girl asked.

Willa felt a tear coming. The zoo was closing soon and she would have to leave. She would get back on the train and go home. She would lay in bed and wish her Grumma was here to hear about her day. She would probably never see a pig, or a honeybee, or a daffodil, or a fish ever again. And she would definitely never see a tree again. She longed to go through the glass, to climb the brown trunk that shot up through the sky, to smell the odor of its leaves and feel their soft touch, to hear the branches swaying. But she never would; she could only watch for a few more moments from behind the glass.

“Nothing.” Willa said. “We did nothing for the trees in return.”