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a true story
By: soren poulson

The party was at Woodland Park. There were two kegs for about forty-five people, and more and more kept coming like zombies wandering out of the woods, lured by the aroma of alcohol, smoke, and vomit. When all three of these smells are mixed together, they form one very sweet and nauseous fragrance. If this smell came in a cologne bottle, I would buy a lifetime supply, I was addicted to it.

The clock struck two, in the morning of course. There were about 15 people still there lingering in their drunken zombie like state. All of the girls were with their boyfriends, so this kind of killed my hopes of hooking up with someone. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t stop me, but I knew all the guys, and they were my friends, I wouldn’t steal any of their chicks tonight. The point is; I was bored. Someone once said, “Idle hands are the devils work” or something along those lines, I didn’t remember, but that statement holds lots of truth, especially in my case.

I was trying to think of something cool to do, so was my friend Gordie. Gordie and I are like gasoline and fire. Usually we make sure that if one of us is drinking, the other isn’t, because a drunken Gordie and a drunken Soren, equal several arrests, a couple broken bones, and the destruction of property. Tonight though, was different. Both of us drank at least 10 cups of the shitty beer that the person who threw the keg bought, trying to save money I suppose. Then, out of nowhere, it hit me.

Lower Woodland Park was situated below the Woodland Park Zoo. I started thinking to myself, I haven’t been to the zoo since I was in fourth grade, and that was one of the best days of my life. I decided to go to the zoo. The zoo was not open with it being two thirty in the morning and all. But I’ll be damned if that would prevent me from making this night interesting. The plan was, we would sneak into the zoo, and check out the new albino alligator that I had seen advertised on the side of an old city bus earlier that day. I ran this past Gordie, who was more than willing, and we started through the park towards the zoo.

When we got to the boundaries of the zoo, we quickly realized that the only thing that stood between us and the coolest fucking alligator in the world was a couple layers of barbed wire that sat on the top of a fence. I knew that barbed wire could easily be scaled. Barbed wire was only to scare people from attempting to break in, razor wire was the real deal; you didn’t fuck around with razor wire.

We climbed the fence with surprising coordination. I was well adapted to using my eye hand skills while under the influence. We were both very athletic, both of us were captains of the football team, and had plans on playing at our respective colleges. We easily pulled ourselves up to the barbed wire, and then made sure to put our hands and feel in between the barbs. We dropped down into the zoo; victory was ours.

Now the only problem was we needed to find the god damned alligator. I had forgotten how big and complicated the zoo was with all its paths and short cuts. We started off down the road. The alligator really should have been the easiest animal to find. It was white as snow, in the pitch black of the night. I wished it were that simple. We walked past the hippopotamus’, the giraffes, and the huge grass field where about 70 flamingo stood around stupidly. We stopped for a bit to look at some tigers. I guess they were asleep because they didn’t move at all, you would have thought that they would have been surprised to see some humans at this hour, but they weren’t.

Finally after about and hour and a half of staggering around the deserted zoo, we came upon our prize. We walked up to the rail and strained our eyes to catch a glimpse of this mystical creature.
“Do you see it dude?”
“No… wait, I think…. No it’s just a rock, damn it” I thought, great, we put our asses on the line and this thing is probably being kept in a cage behind the exhibit. Before I could dismount my train of thought, I saw two white circles slowly emerge from the murky man made pond. The body followed.
“Oh shit dude, check it out check it out”
“man that thing is one bad ass creature”
“nah, a grizzly bear would kick that things ass”
“no way dude, an albino alligator is a mystical creature, mystical creatures don’t lose”
“are you kidding me?!?!? A grizzly is the most mystical of any creature in the world”
“mystical versus mystical, that would be cool to watch”
“Fuckin’ albino alligators…” I muttered under my breath. Suddenly I hated the alligator. How dare a worthless reptile challenge the almighty grizzly?

A blinding light pointed directly into my eyes interrupted my anger. It was security. Damn it, I hadn’t taking into this into consideration. No matter, I’ve ran from the cops before, this was no different, except I was surrounded by the most dangerous creatures known to mankind. We ran down the road, thinking about how we could get out of this place without being caught. Luckily, the guard must have weighed 320 pounds, so out running him was no issue. Unluckily, he had a cell phone on him and called the cops.

Gordie and I split up, every man for himself. As I was running down one of the roads, sever policeman on bikes started coming towards me. They didn’t have flashlights so I had time to hide. What I did next was very, very stupid. I climbed the rail next to me and dropped about ten feet into one of the exhibits. I had no idea what was in the exhibit when I jumped in. on my way down, this hit me. I thought to myself, I could be going into a lion’s den, a panther, some wolves, or maybe even a gigantic anaconda. I hit the ground and rolled. I lay there motionless until the cops rode past me. My lungs were pounding against my chest. My heart was beating like an Indian war drum. I sat up slowly. There was dry grass stuck to my sweatshirt. This immediately gave me the inclination that I was in the presence of an animal from Africa. Lions leapt back into my head. My eyes slowly travelled up. Suddenly I was sitting face to face with one of the biggest orang-utans I had ever seen.

I sat there being completely still for about the next 30 minutes. I have read about chimpanzees brutally killing travellers before, but these weren’t chimpanzees. God only knows what these things could do to me. I kept looking this beast in the eye, trying to show him or her, it, that I wasn’t going out like a punk. As I maintained eye contact with the orang-utan, something weird happened. I was instantly overcome with a profound emotion, so deep and meaningful it brought me to tears. I cried for the first time in about seven years. This orang-utan must have been to oldest one in the zoo. I estimated that he was about 25 years old. His wise face had wrinkles on it. It was like I was staring at Yoda. Instantaneously, I felt all the pain that this thing had gone through. His journey to Seattle. How he was shot with tranquillisers in his neck and dragged out of his home. Plucked from his territory, his life stolen from him. Never being able to see his kids, or the other orang-utans in his pack or whatever it’s called again. How he spent a month in a cage not big enough for him to move in, in the hull of a hot, disgusting boat full of mean sailors who would be too drunk to remember to feed him or give him water. All of this flashed before my eyes in less than a second.

The orang-utan understood me just like I understood him. I'm not a real spiritual guy, but I could sense this. The trust we shared, both of us trapped in a cage, would never be shared between me and another human being for the rest of my life. For one night, I was just like him. We were on a level playing field, trapped.

I gathered some grass and made a bed next to some rocks. I spent the night in a zoo exhibit with about 12 orang-utans. It sounds ridiculous, but it was one of the most important, influential, and strangest nights of my life. I couldn’t believe the shit that I had gotten myself into this time. Of all the outlandish things I’ve done in my life, this by far, was the most bizarre thing of all.

I woke up the next morning to a scream. The woman who worked at the zoo found me. I'm sure that it must have taken her aback to find a hung over 18-year-old kid asleep in a zoo, surrounded by orang-utans. I spent the next couple hours being questioned by the police. They tried to intimidate me, but I could tell that every time they left the room they would burst out laughing and tell all there other cop buddies the story of the kid who spent the night with a bunch of orang-utans. Apparently this story was so ridiculous that they decided that I wasn’t in any trouble. They let me go without even telling my parents. The next day I found out that Gordie got away alright. I told my parents I had stayed at his house. No one believes me when I tell them this story, and honestly, I don’t blame them. I don’t even tell it anymore. Fuckin albino alligators….

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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