(Please read the Part-1 Denver Fever if you haven’t already)
We went to the Denver Zoo some where in the afternoon. A Polar bear cub stole my heart there: it would pick up its toy – a huge plastic can – and throw it in the pond. And would dive after it, wiggling its enormous posterior (I am trying to be politically correct, else, I would have written ‘huge butt’. Whatever.) And spraying a zillion drops of water into the air. It’d catch the plastic can, bring it back to the shore and repeat the whole thing all over again.
It was sad too in a way; I mean the bear cub belonged to the icy wilderness of the North Pole. The next most stunning animal -at east to me – was the Siberian Tiger. Though smaller than the Royal Bengal Tiger from India, it looked ‘royal’ enough to me.
We drifted along and suddenly we -Linnea, Mary, Abhijeet, and I- found ourselves in a deserted part of the zoo. Darkness was fast eating up the Sun, and we were staring at the magnificent Bald Eagle. And a woman appears seemingly out of no where. She had with her a boy who looked tired and yet at the peak of his mischief. She looked exhausted. Her eyes had an eerie shine; like that of a Bald Eagle that just found a sleeping Rabbit. The son was probably around five and reminded me of Dennis the menace.
‘I lost one of my batteries in the Camera, could you please take a picture of us?’ she said. God knows how one can lose only a single battery-cell. Linnea took the picture and even offered to mail a copy of the picture to her and was all set to note down the woman’s address, when the woman started giving her life story. Divorced. Single mom. All right. And she said, ‘I never realized I was pregnant until my seventh month.’ and laughed. And the kid started babbling something, for a moment I thought I was hearing things, but the second time I was sure: the kid was going F***, F***, F*** and S***, S***, S***, S***.
That was an overdose of craziness even by my standards. I mean hey what kind of a woman would never realize that she was pregnant until the seventh freaking month! Probably an Alien mom. And it was obvious where the kid was doing his PhD in profanity. He made me feel like a three year old. Man, that kid has got some vocabulary.
The psycho mom said, “I run a Manicure center you all can drop in and I will give you a discount’ or something like that and started off on how ethical she was and how she never would cheat her clients. Her son shifted gears and moved into cruise mode; he started calling me names. The psycho mom feigns exasperation and warns the kid. “I don’t know where he learnt all that…but I love him.” She said and the kid looked at me and said something that I can’t print here.
By that time the Red bulb started flashing in my head. Weird thoughts started floating in my head; her laugh started sounding scarier. It had that high-octave edge to it. Or maybe I was imagining things. But we knew we had to get out. To be contd… Also read my earlier post Denver Fever
Write to me: suman ‘at’ sumankumar ‘dot’ com
