Chapter One

Dear Diary;

Couldn’t log on here for the longest time.. don’t know what that was about, but weren’t they going to put up a message when the site was down so people would know what was going on? What happened to that..? hmm.. Whatev.

I wrote a frist chapter to my short story. It’s not as long as I’d like, but I haven’t really been in the zone- so to speak. Maybe one of these days I’ll have more motivation to write. I don’t have a name for the book yet either.

Every time I re-read it, I think it’s stupid. Bah. I’ll work on it.
 

Chapter One
 
There’s a kangaroo with a flatulence problem, a snake who ties himself in knots, and an elephant who has just been accused of murder. My name is Katie Quinn and I’m an animal keeper at the strangest zoo in the world. How I got here is simple: a friend, an opening and a need for cold, hard cash. It also meant having to re-locate to a whole new city, which was icing on the cake for me. Getting away from my family was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my entire life. Not that they’re bad people or anything, but there’s only so much you can take of your parents begging you to find a man and settle down. I’m an only child and my parents are hard working, typical Canadian parents. My dad keeps the same routine; work hard, come home, sit in front of the television and then go to bed. On weekends, he loads up his truck and disappears to a lake somewhere to fish. My mom works as a nurse, and then spends her nights and weekends cleaning the house and pampering her dog- a poodle named Scruffy.
 
 I didn’t expect to spend the past 5 years of my life working at the Inner City Zoo, but it’s become more like a lifestyle and less like work. My job is to feed the animals, and keep their respective areas relatively clean. Occasionally, I’ll spray them down with a hose and call it a bath- but only when my boss, Jerry, happens to be hovering around me. The zoo is always quiet when I get there at 7am. This morning was different. I walked into the office and stopped to glance around at the scene. Three police officers were questioning some of my co-workers and there was no sign of my boss.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Jerry was killed last night. Looks like he got a little close to Ellie and something set her off.” Sam replied from the corner of the room. She was paying more attention to the television then to what was going on around her.
Samantha Blair is my best friend. She’s 5 feet tall with coffee coloured curls that are always shoved under a hat and she has a face like an angel, which is fitting since her father is a devoted Christian minister for a church in her hometown. Sam was raised to attend church every Sunday and live her life according to the bible, but her current motto is “what dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him”. Today she was sitting in the staff lounge watching wrestling and cheering on a huge, sweaty man named Sludge.
“I don’t know what he was he doing in there anyway…” She mumbled to herself.
Ellie is our biggest elephant on site. She has a little problem with the hiccups.
“Jeez, I saw him last night before I left”. I was suddenly surrounded by cops.
“Excuse me, did you say you were with the deceased last night? Was he near the elephants?”
“Asshole,” Squawked Harold.
A bright green parrot was perched on the ceiling fan looking down at us. Harold, our un-official zoo mascot, lives in the gift shop but flies around the zoo during the day. His feathers are scarce in a few places due to a few close calls with a lion. He can usually be found during the day tossing out a few choice curse words to unsuspecting visitors from the tree tops. His swearing problem had become a bad habit and was enough to get the officers to take a step back long enough for me to slip out the door. I closed the door behind me as quietly as I could and when I turned around I was face to face with a short, pale faced boy who, despite appearing clean, actually smelled rather ripe.
“Damn it, Brent! You almost gave me a heart attack!”
He blinked a few times, turned a bright shade of red and took off running toward the monkey cages. Brent spent more time talking to the monkeys then anyone else at the zoo. In fact, I don’t think he’d ever said one word to me. Today was no different.
 
I thought about Jerry on the way to the giraffes, where I would spend the better part of my day trying to spray the dirt off their heads. Had he really been killed by an Ellie? I found it hard to believe. Ellie was a gentle giant; the kind of elephant we brought out for the visitors to touch and ride on. I’d seen her have a hiccupping fit once, but aside from her massive trunk flailing in the air, she didn’t look to be a threat to anyone’s life. Especially someone who knew how to handle elephants and knew what the dangers were. It just didn’t make any sense to me.
 
The sound of someone calling my name and footsteps trailing behind me broke through my thoughts.
“Katie… hey, wait for me!”
I turned to see Sam shuffling up behind me. Her shoes were a size too big, as was her uniform. She was such a small girl that she always appeared to be swimming in whatever she wore.
“Hey Sam. Did you get questioned by the cops too?”
“Yeah, they’re asking everyone if they saw Jerry go into the elephant pen last night. I told them it didn’t make any sense for him to go in there, but even if he did, he knows how to handle Ellie.”
“And they left you alone after that?” I asked.
“Yep. It looks like a pretty simple case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Does any of this even seem possible to you?”
Sam looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Don’t get any ideas Katie. You’ve been reading too many mysteries lately.”
 
It was true. I had just finished reading about Agnes Murphy, a detective who solved the case of a New York City judge who had been murdered by a lawyer and I was itching for a mystery of my own to solve. Agnes was one of my favourite fictional characters. She always got herself into dangerous situations with handsome men and then found the smallest clues in the strangest places that would lead her to solve the case. I wished my life could be as exciting as hers.
 
“Relax Sam, only in my dreams could something that interesting happen around here. We specialize in strange animals, not high profile murder cases.” I sighed.
“Good. I’ll meet you for lunch at noon.” Sam yelled as she veered onto a different path that lead to the reptile house.
Sam started working at the zoo just so she could get close to the reptiles. Geckos, snakes, frogs- they’re all right up Sam’s alley for some reason. If she had to choose between a fluffy, cuddly white rabbit or a scaly, sometimes slimy, little reptile she wouldn’t have to think about it- definitely the reptile. She doesn’t even mind feeding them live worms and crickets. I imagine she was off to help Benny the boa constrictor get himself untied. Every day for the past 5 years Benny has managed to tie himself in a knot while Sam is gone for the night. If you haven’t already noticed, this zoo isn’t your normal kind. Our animals all have some kind of strange, special quality and they’ve all been shipped here from other zoos that don’t want them. We’ve become known as the zoo with all the strange animals.

Ignore any spelling or grammar errors. I haven’t really been focusing on that.