At the Zoo with a Lama

 

Honolulu

     When my daughter was eight or so years old, we bunked for two weeks on an upper floor of a concrete apartment building not far off the Waikiki strip while her mother investigated a rumor that a tiny bird was gagging into extinction on fumes generated by the exoplanet observatories on the Big Island. 
    On the second Sunday morning of our stay, Delta suggested that she and I and her pal Max go to the Honolulu zoo. When she phoned to invite Max, his father wished to speak with me. He explained that he had offered his home as a halfway house for Tibetans and asked if a newly arrived monk could accompany us to the zoo. You bet. 
    We herded a rental car through a catacomb of streets with only vowels in their names until we stumbled across Max's house. Waiting on the steps were bright-eyed Max and a featherweight guy wrapped in golden robes, sporting black high-top Keds and a chrome Timex. On the way to the zoo Max explained that he didn’t know the monk's name, that the monk didn't speak English, that he slept sitting up and smoked too many cigarettes.
     Max was a local and knew the zoo, so the kids ditched us at the entrance. The monk and I made quite the pair, the have-a-nice-day-face wrapped in curtains and an over-heated hick in lace-up logger boots. We had a lot to talk about and couldn't, but we had nicotine monkeys on our backs, so we wandered down the zoo paths smoking Camel stubbies and pointing at animals, giggling at each other's name for various critters. The Tibetan word for giraffe sounded like "chewing gum." 
     As we shuffled past the cat cages, the monk was looking back over his shoulder at a yawning lion. When he turned round, he came face-to-face with a drippy-eyed Bengal tiger and the little dude came as close to freaking as a Buddhist ever would. He immediately went into a crouched self-defense posture and from down in that pile of saffron came a throbbing yowl that would curdle yak milk. This fellow grew up where tigers run free range and that he didn't much care for them. I stepped in front of the cage and broke the spell. He looked at me, looked at the tiger, nodded his head, then fired up the smile again. 
    On the monkey islands a middle-aged chimpanzee played games with the humans, throwing a knotted burlap sack over the moat to the crowd.  When it was tossed back to him/her, the chimp tucked it behind a chunk of driftwood, performed a somersault routine, then reached behind the log, and threw the cloth ball back into the audience. 
      During the third repetition of this performance, when a herd of tourists were packed around the ditch popping flashbulbs, the monk grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up on a knoll away from the show. He looked me in the eyes and said something that sounded like “Watch for poop.”  Sure enough, the chimp finished the cheerleader segment of the act then reached behind the driftwood like going for the gunny sack, filled his/her right hand, and sprayed ten thousand dollars’ worth of camera equipment with chimpanzee crap. 
     An hour later, the kids were hungry. We bought shave ice, popcorn and Pepsi, and sat on a warm concrete bench in the shade, munching and slurping, while the gulls of paradise swarmed around us. I fed them in the manner of an American, broadcasting popcorn by the handful then watching the scramble. The monk carefully chose one kernel, held it between thumb and forefinger, zeroed in on one bird, fed that individual one piece of popcorn, then switched birds. 
    Delta and Max ran off to see the seals. The monk, using universal sign language, made it clear that he had to use the restroom. I pointed to the appropriate door then stretched out on the bench and fell asleep. Tropical torpor. 
    The kids woke me an hour later, wondering where the monk was. I checked the men's room and the tiger cages, no monk, then began asking zoo visitors if they had seen a bald fellow in gold anywhere. A young couple from South Dakota said they had seen something like that down by the phone booths. 
     We found him sitting cross-legged on the grass, focused on a pay phone booth shaped like a clamshell. Max claimed he was asleep. I knelt beside him and gently tapped the face of his Timex. He snapped from his state of consciousness into ours, smiled, and followed us to the parking lot. On the way back to Max's, over the noise of the kids discussing whether an elephant could beat up a killer whale, I am sure I heard the monk humming a few bars of  "Love Me Tender.”