Temporary Closure (2)
"S-sorry! I didn't know you were in there!"
The moment Noona realized that what she'd shaken off wasn't snow but a bird, she startled hard, scooped up the fallen Whitey, and apologized. When I passed the apology along, he accepted it more readily than I'd expected — and it didn't seem to be on account of the finely crushed nuts she held out with her sorry.
"I'm used to ending up like this, so it's fine!"
"Used to it?"
"I was flying with my flock, and a big friend smacked into me and I fell!"
"Ah. I see……."
I watched with a pang as Whitey pecked away at the nuts in high spirits. Poor little guy. It wasn't just me and Noona who'd hit him — his own flockmates had, too. Feeling sorry for him despite myself, I offered a more generous helping and gave him a stroke.
"While we're at it, want to live at our place?"
"Yay!"
No chance of being eaten, and food besides — Whitey didn't hesitate for a second. I asked the staff to handle the paperwork for keeping a long-tailed tit, though of course I told them to see to it after they came in later. With his arrangements handed off, the family sat down to a cozy breakfast together.
"We've got a rare day off. Shall we take it easy?"
"Let's. Want to watch something on Webflix?"
Noona said she'd already found a movie worth seeing, and I nodded at once. Someone, however, was not on board with that plan.
"Nooo! We gotta play!"
"Ah… we can't?"
"Nuh-uh! It's snowing, so we have to play!"
"You heard her, Suhwan. You've got this! I'm starting with the laundry."
I stared blankly after Noona as she slipped away in a flash, then looked down at So-eun, who had hold of my hand and was shaking it. Come to think of it, she'd seen snow before, but she'd never really gotten to play in it. Even on trips to other places, she'd only touched the stuff — nothing you could actually call playing.
"What do you want to play, So-eun?"
"An igloo!"
"An igloo? And where did you see one of those……."
I was thrown by the idea of playing at building an igloo — where on earth had she even seen one? — but I nodded soon enough. Making things while you played was already well known to help a child grow. I pulled up MewTube at once and did a quick search on how to build one. Pack a plastic container full of snow, pour in a splash of water, press it down hard, and the snow would bind into an ice brick.
Hmm. We could definitely manage that.
With snow blanketing the entire zoo, a single igloo seemed more than doable. I went straight inside and brought out what we needed, mostly the big plastic tubs we used when making kimchi for the winter, then warmed them and stretched the upper rims so the bricks would set in a slight trapezoid. Once everything was ready, I headed for the open ground that was still clear — less an empty lot than a kind of plaza, and just the spot for an igloo.
"Igloooo!"
Watching So-eun toddle and bounce around beside me, I held out the little trowel I'd prepared.
"You scoop the snow and pack it in here. Think you can do that?"
"Yeah!"
Bright with the prospect of making an igloo, So-eun set to scooping snow into the plastic tub with all her might. It filled in no time. I poured in a little water and pressed down hard, and with a crunching squeak we soon had a solid ice brick.
The brick shattered almost at once.
"Pweee! Thought I was a goner!"
The culprit was none other than Whitey. Looking just like snow, he'd been swept up with it again and packed right into the brick. To keep him from becoming part of another one, I set him on So-eun's shoulder and made the brick over. This time it was an ice brick in the literal sense — no bird inside.
"Whoa!"
Amazed that a brick had appeared just like that, So-eun endured her freezing hands, carried it over, and set it down on the ground with a little tap. Then the two of us kept repeating the same motions, with help from the animals along the way. One grown man and one little girl were never going to raise an igloo on their own, so creatures deft with their hands, like Wonsungi and Kongkong-i, backed up our work-that-was-really-play, hauling in snow and packing it with water into several more tubs we'd made until they came out as bricks. So-eun and I stacked those bricks every which way, filling the gaps with snow and water, and worked hard at building the igloo.
There was just one problem. We'd made it a bit bigger than planned, and the snow around us was already gone — bare ground was showing through.
"Hmm……."
While I was wondering what to do, something occurred to me, and I headed for the storage shed. I'd prepared a bit of entertainment for the bears, the tigers, the elephants, and the like: a huge steel box, meant to be closed up with fruit inside so they could figure out how to get it out themselves. Built as solidly as it was, though, it was also a thing the animals had never managed to open. I grabbed that box and a tough rope, then went and fetched Bbwoobbwoo — the elephant wearing a shirt printed with the sort of elephant you see all over Thailand.
"Bbwoobbwoo, let's put those muscles to work."
"Put my strength to use? I'd love to!"
True to form as an attention hound who loved to show off, he nodded readily at the invitation. I wound the rope round and round his body and hitched it to the box, and a splendid snowplow — box edition — was complete.
"All right, let's go!"
"Let's go!"
"Let's gooo—!"
I shouted first, So-eun echoed me, and Bbwoobbwoo let out his distinctive elephant call and fell in behind. As I drove him all over the zoo, the box lashed to him scraped along the ground and filled itself with snow, and with a fresh supply in hand I went back to raising the igloo at speed. Whenever So-eun and I brought him in with a load, the other animals turned that snow into ice bricks: Kongkong-i filled the tubs, Wonsungi poured the water and packed it down, and a bear stacked the finished bricks. Thanks to their joint operation, the igloo went up fast. The trapezoidal bricks let it take on a nice rounded shape, and once we'd added a cave-like entrance, it was a proper igloo through and through.
"Want to set the last one, So-eun?"
"Yeah! I wanna do it!"
She hefted the ice brick I held out with all her strength. It was a pretty big one, but for So-eun, strongly influenced by my superpower, the weight wasn't much at all.
"Bbwoobbwoo! Lift me up!"
She gestured to him nearby, as if telling him to wrap her around the waist. This was hardly the first time he'd seen her do it, and whether that was why or not, he caught on at once and coiled his trunk around her middle.
"Up!"
Bbwoobbwoo lifted her just like that, raising her to the crown of the igloo, which stood a little taller than I did. She set the ice brick into the open gap left for the final piece. With a crunch it slid home and filled the last space in the ceiling. At the sight of the finished igloo, the two of us looked at each other.
"High five!"
"Hai-five!"
We slapped palms and laughed, then dashed home to show it off. The snow that had covered the ground there was already part of the igloo, so it wasn't slick underfoot.
"Noona!"
"Mom!"
We'd come to brag, and we hauled Noona — who'd been leisurely watching TV — out to the igloo.
"Wow, you made this well."
"We did it all by ourselves!"
So-eun even planted a hand smartly on her hip as she said it. Noona and I burst out laughing, then stepped straight inside. For something made of ice, the interior was remarkably cozy.
"Want me to bring the camping gear so we can have some tea?"
"Oh, I'd like that."
Maybe it was that coziness, but we set camping chairs and a table inside the igloo and enjoyed a little tea time. And it wasn't only us. I also handed out rewards generous enough to satisfy every animal who'd helped raise it.
"Suhwan. Shouldn't we clear the snow on the road coming up, too? If it melts, it'll freeze over later……. Then we won't be able to open again, will we?"
"That could happen."
I nodded, got to my feet, and looked outside.
"The snow seems to be letting up, so we ought to clear it."
The flakes that had been dumping out of the sky had thinned by now, and I stepped out of the igloo. Just as Noona said, if the fallen snow melted, it would only be a bigger headache later.
"Hmm……."
I looked at the hill path buried in snow, still marked with tiger tracks, and ran back to the shed. There were several more boxes like the one Bbwoobbwoo had dragged. I pulled out two of them and brought over a pair of rhinos who'd been resting at their leisure.
"Push these as you head down, just the way I show you. Think you can manage? They might be a little heavy."
"Leave it to us."
Following my instructions, the two rhinos began slowly pushing the boxes from behind. As they started down the steep, snow-buried hill, the snow was shoved aside to left and right and a road began to take shape, for all the world like bulldozers cutting a path by shoving everything out of the way. It was nothing more than two rhinos pushing two boxes, but that single pass laid bare a road a good ten feet wide. A casual trip down and back was all it took to leave the way up to the zoo perfectly clear.
"Thanks for the work. I always end up leaning on you two."
The rhinos insisted it was nothing, rubbing their broad snouts against my leg. I gave them a pat, returned to the igloo, and picked our pleasant tea time back up with the family. And thanks to the snow removal by the elephant and the rhinos, when the next day came we were able to open for business as usual — now with a brand-new sight in the plaza: an igloo.