Project Orpheus: A Tale of Blood and Feathers

Chapter 7: The Warden

There were two animals Orenda refused to work with. Fish and hippos. Most every other animal had difficulties, but Orenda could handle them. Crocs were predictable and actually easily restrained if you knew what you were doing. Lions and tigers are actually really lazy if they're well taken care of. Spiders and snakes were usually not too eager to use their venom on anything when it could be avoided. Even gazelles, with their propensity for speed and shyness, could be acclimated to a human presence and learn to see it as not a threat.

But fish...she couldn't stand them. It made sense if you knew her well. Orenda loved everything in creation, from the smallest feeble mite to the most majestic elephant. But fish were slimy, stinky and best admired from behind a curtain of glass where they couldn't get their awful anywhere near her. She gave them their space and let other people handle them.

The hippos were the real surprise to some people. Most people thought of hippos as lazy vegetarians, which they were, but they were also extremely protective of the things they cared about. What most people didn't know about prey animals was that nature had spent millions of years molding them into angry, violent things. For a predator, strategy is survival. A predator could choose to engage meaning it can also choose not to. Those who took time to evaluate risks, process potential outcomes and make informed decisions about its next action did better than those who didn't. Herbivores, when faced with a threat, had only two options - run for its life or fight as psychoticly as possible. Outrunning it's attacker was not exactly an option for something as big and slow as a hippo, so they put their evolutionary eggs into the "maul first, ask questions later" basket. Then they figured out how to sprint at 40 kilometers an hour anyway.

Thankfully, in this reserve, there were all sorts of dangerous animals, but no hippos, and no fish besides the ones that swam through the river. Even with lions, tigers, snakes and scorpions, she still found the elephants and chimps the hardest to work with. Both were still dangerous, elephants having the same skittishness as hippos, and chimps being intelligent enough to be unpredictable, but they were both in their own way manageable. Elephants, if properly fed, entertained and socialized, didn't really care much where they were. Chimps were much the same, though they also enjoyed having a goal to work towards.

Currently, she was in the chimp enclosure, currently performing something of an experiment with one of their brighter youngsters, Jestae, who was quickly picking up on complicated ideas, such as the idea of object relationships.

She had taught Jastae a sign for 'Bring me', and had taught her a few signs for some of her toys. She then took a picture of those toys, and printed them out onto single sheets of white background paper. She would then ask for her to 'bring me' and point to the object on the paper. It took her a few tries to get it, but she had actually figured it out rather quickly and now was performing the concept with items that she hadn't been trained with.

She held up a card with a tree branch on it, and signed.

Jastae looked at it for a minute, her head cocked with a curious look, before she hooted and bounced off to the nearest branch, returning it.

"Good girl, Jastae. Good girl." She gave her a little pat on the head, and Jastae delightfuly responded with a chortle.

She heard a rustle in the bushes, and the both of them turned to see Phoebe coming.

Phoebe was Jastae's mother. Jastae was only 3 years old, but it was a point in their life that chimpanzees would start trying to integrate more into social life outside of their mother and siblings. Mothers, meanwhile, were very happy to have a trusted person to foist their young ones off onto for a brief respite, and Phoebe was not only a participant in that long and historic tradition, but one who put it to use often. That's what had first cued Orenda to Jastae's development.