Field Trip
"Today, right?"
"Yeah."
I nodded at Noona's question, working a brush through the animals' coats as I answered.
The keepers already groomed them on a regular schedule, so they were tidy enough as a rule. Today, though, they needed to look a little sharper than usual. So-eun's kindergarten was coming to our zoo under the banner of a field trip. It probably wouldn't come to anything, but I couldn't have her friends see the animals looking scruffy.
"All right, next!"
"Take good care of me, I say!"
By the time I had brushed them one by one, I was standing in a drift of fur. White, black, yellow—dazzling, almost. Gather it all up and I could probably have stuffed a fair-sized large dog.
Once I had the clumps tidied away, Noona came over, dressed neat and proper.
"So-eun's almost here."
She had checked on the phone and the GPS bracelet we had given So-eun, and as she spoke she picked the loose hairs off my clothes. Cleaned up at last, I headed for the zoo's main gate with her.
People kept stopping us along the way, calling themselves fans and wanting photos and autographs, so it took a little time. Thankfully, we still weren't late.
Past the ticket booth at the gate and out beyond it, a tram was drawing near from a short distance off. We had brought it in to ferry tourists, and a closer look showed it packed full of kindergarteners.
At last the tram stopped in front of me, and I found a familiar face among them.
"Daddy! Mommy!"
So-eun hopped down from the tram and waved both hands at us in a wild blur. Spotting us because of that, the kindergarten teacher came over.
"Hello. You're So-eun's mother and father, I take it?"
"Yes, hello. It's been a while."
This was the teacher who looked after So-eun, and Noona seemed to be minding her manners more than usual. Not in any material sense, of course.
"The trip must have been tiring. Children that age—bringing them all this way can't have been easy..."
"It's all right. It's my job."
The teacher smiled gently, waved the concern off, and had the children get down from the tram. There were plenty of assistant teachers and chaperones besides, so the kids climbed off under their guidance.
Naturally, the moment So-eun realized Noona and I were there, she broke straight through that escort.
"Hehe, Daddy!"
She ran into my arms with a soft thump and beamed up at me, bright as anything. I stroked her hair and sent her back to her friends. This might have been home, but right now it was a kind of class.
The So-eun I had just sent back broke through the escort all over again. This time she brought a friend.
"Daddy! My friend! Jiyeon!"
"Hello. I'm So-eun's friend, Yang Jiyeon."
The girl So-eun called her friend was remarkably well-mannered—the exact opposite of So-eun, who had more than a little wild, scatterbrained streak in her.
"Hi there. I'm So-eun's dad. Be good friends with her, all right?"
"Yes!"
Jiyeon answered me with real spirit, then bowed neatly at the waist and led So-eun back into the crowd of children.
"She's a good kid. You think so too?"
"Yeah. I saw her the last time I went to pick So-eun up. Really sweet. Though... I feel a little bad saying it, but she does have a bit of an old soul in her."
"Then they suit each other. They fill in what the other lacks. Mix So-eun, who's too much of a live wire, with calm Jiyeon, and it ought to come out just about right, don't you think?"
Watching So-eun play with her friends left us with a strange, unfamiliar feeling. We saw her romping with the animals all the time. We almost never got to see her with other children.
While we were still taking that in, the teachers from So-eun's kindergarten began leading the children into the zoo. A procession of little ones trailed after the teacher in a bobbing line.
The moment every last child had crossed inside, their cheers went up. A great waaah, a chorus of shrieks—the noise pulled every eye in the place.
The animals had spotted So-eun and come swarming toward the children. With so many of them closing in, some of the kids were frightened and some were simply amazed.
"It's okay! They don't bite!"
Right in front of the scared ones, So-eun reached out and touched the animals herself. Far from nipping or hurting anyone, they shoved their heads forward as if begging to be petted, and she made sure the others saw it. Thanks to that, the children found their courage one by one and crept closer.
"Kyahahaha! That tickles!"
One child dissolved into helpless laughter while a camel tickled the nape of their neck. Another was grinning, delighted to have a raccoon climbing all over them, even as the snack bag on their body was being thoroughly shaken out.
Wait. That guy?
Fortunately, So-eun snatched the raccoon up by the scruff of the neck, and the heist ended as a near miss.
"Everyone, follow your teachers!"
After a little while hemmed in by animals, the children started their tour of the zoo under the teachers' lead.
They began at the aviary, where all sorts of birds lived. It was mostly where Yubu and his underlings held court, and quite a few animals made their home there. Most of the migratory birds you could see in Korea took up residence according to the season, and the parrots had their place as well.
"Everyone, there are parrots here. What kind of birds are parrots?"
"They copy what you say!"
"They're all colorful!"
The children answered the teacher with everything they had, hands shooting up, voices bright. People passing by smiled, fond, and went on their way.
"If you give them a snack, they sing a soooong!"
"Uh...?"
The teacher, who had been nodding along at the children, looked thoroughly thrown by So-eun's shout. So-eun seemed to decide the teacher didn't believe her. She walked straight up to a nearby parrot and fed it a treat. It was the biggest parrot in our zoo, and true to its size it had a well-developed voice box and was excellent at both talking and singing.
"Yodel-ay-hee-hoo!"
"Yo-de-lay-dee-oh-ho~"
"Yodel-ay-ee, yodel-ay-ee!"
Yodeling was its specialty. It ripped through the song at a speed most people would struggle even to imitate, then shook itself all over, thoroughly pleased with its own performance.
Naturally, the teacher who heard it went blank on the spot. She had probably been expecting something on the order of hello, nice to meet you. A parrot delivering a flawless yodel—not being shocked would have been the strange part.
Shocked or not, the children cheered and scattered toward the parrots all around them. They had already been given small handfuls of snacks they were allowed to feed the animals, and now they offered those to the birds. The parrots that received a treat began paying the children back with whatever songs they knew.
Children's songs, of course, and pop tunes anyone would recognize, rang out together. It sounded like dozens of people streaming music all at once.
"What kind of zoo is this even supposed to be..."
I caught the teacher's mutter, half a sigh. The animals' personalities were strong, true enough, but I had the distinct feeling my superpower accounted for a good seventy percent of it, and I couldn't say a word. Even so, she realized she had misspoken and gave me a small, apologetic bow.
"Everyone! If the parrots talk too much, they'll get tired, so please let them go now!"
Perhaps she felt she had to escape an aviary that full of parrots. She gathered the children at once and moved them on.
The trouble was where she went after fleeing the aviary: the grounds where the large animals gathered, elephants and giraffes among them. If anything, it was even less ordinary than the bird house...
"How does an elephant cry?"
"Bbwooo!"
"And how does a tiger cry?"
"Rawr!"
"Very good. Now, does anyone know how a giraffe cries?"
At that, the children's mouths snapped shut. Other animals' calls were easy to come by, so they answered without thinking. A giraffe was different.
All except one.
"Kuruuuung! Keoong!"
So-eun shot her hand straight up and shouted, imitating the sound.
"Wh-what was that?"
"A giraffe's cry!"
The teacher looked flustered, as if she had never expected So-eun to answer. So-eun, though, walked up to the giraffe enclosure as if she meant to prove it.
"Kuruuuung!"
"Kuruuuung! Keoong!"
So-eun called out loudly toward the giraffe, and the giraffe answered her. People who had never imagined she might actually be copying a real giraffe's call stared, startled. Giraffes rarely vocalize—even the keepers had hardly ever heard the sound—so the surprise was hardly strange. So-eun heard it all the time, of course.
But scaring the living daylights out of the teacher did not end there.
She led her friends straight into the elephant enclosure and had a grand playtime with Bbwoobbwoo. They slid down his thick, long trunk as if it were a slide, and took a turn around on the elephant's back.
So-eun's rampage did not stop there, either. She barged into enclosure after enclosure and had a wonderful time with her friends, and the teacher's face grew paler by the minute.
When she wedged herself into the tiger enclosure, the woman looked like a corpse.
I still couldn't shake the memory of the teacher's face when she saw So-eun astride Hodori's back, weaving through her friends. After that, all I could do was watch So-eun stuck tight at the teacher's side so she couldn't cause any more incidents.
"Everyone. At other zoos, you must not get this close to the animals. Do you understand? Here, because this is where So-eun's friends live, they didn't hurt you. Animals in other places might."
Worried the children might walk away with a badly warped idea of how animals worked, the teacher had to laboriously set their common sense straight again.
I looked at her, full of apology. I was starting to wonder whether I had been wrong to say they could come.
She led the other children back the way they had come—everyone except So-eun, whose home this was—and from behind, she looked worn straight through with exhaustion.