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After years of working at the zoo he and his girlfriends managed, Sam was an expert in wrangling large animals. He had no fear of the lions or tigers or bears or any of the other animals in the zoo, under normal circumstances. Of course, there was no excuse not to be cautious, and he always took extra precautions when dealing with a sick or wounded animal or a mom with new babies. It was a good job, and everyone at the zoo loved him for his fearlessness.
Normally, Sam wasn’t afraid of the animals. Today, though, today was different. Sam knew what to do with a tiger who acted like a tiger and thought like a tiger. He did not know what to do with a tiger that was trying to eat leaves and hiding from the other tigers. Hiding wouldn't have been that unusual if the other tigers were trying to play with her and she didn't feel like it, but one was stretched out in a beam of sunshine and the other was investigating the box Sam had originally come to the tiger exhibit to deliver for them to play with.
Anna came running up to him as he stared at the tiger. “Sam, we’ve got a problem over in the giraffe pen. One of the giraffes has gone crazy and is trying to attack the others.”
“What?” Sam turned away from the tigers. The other tigers didn’t seem to care about attacking the one who was hiding. The giraffe was the far bigger problem. “What’s with the animals today?”
“I don’t know. Ruby had to cancel lunch with me because she had a penguin that jumped off the cliff and tried to flap its wings. The belly flop into the water hurt and she had to clean it up.”
Sam just shook his head and ran for the giraffes, Anna on his heels. He stopped to grab the tranquilizer gun – giraffes were rather large, and Sam was not going to be able to corral it on his own if it was upset. Once the giraffe was handled, there was a problem with the bears. Then the elephants. All day long, Sam was running back and forth dealing with various animals not acting like they should.
By the end of the day, he was exhausted, and he flopped on the ground in the office next to Anna and Ruby. “What the hell just happened today?”
“Body swap,” Ruby said. “Some jackass thought it would be funny to swap the animals into the wrong species’ bodies. So you have a tiger acting like a giraffe and a giraffe acting like a tiger. Penguin acting like an eagle, eagle acting like a penguin. Thank God we were able to get to the carnivores in the herbivore pens in time, because that could’ve been a mess.”
“Okay, but… how?” Sam asked. “That doesn’t happen outside of bad sci-fi movies.”
“And why? What on earth was someone trying to do?” Anna added. “Who would want to hurt us, and more importantly, why would someone want to hurt the animals?”
“PETA? Even by my standards, those guys are nuts,” Ruby said. “There are spells that would let someone do this. Probably a demon-bound witch, not a natural witch, natural witches wouldn’t mess with animals like this even if they were PETA twits.”
“So not looking forward to writing this one up, I gotta say,” Sam said. “What do you say we leave the paperwork for tomorrow and just go home?”
Anna groaned and sat up. “Tomorrow we won’t believe it happened and won’t be able to make ourselves write it up. We need to be good little drones and do it now while we can still believe it happened.”
“Somewhat believe, anyway,” Ruby said, but she forced herself to her feet. "I was there, I saw that hippo trying to climb a tree with my own eyes, and I'm still not sure I believe it."
“And stick to facts in the reports. Don’t use our body switching theory. I don’t want the zoo shut down because the keepers have all gone mad,” Anna added. “Then we go home, get drunk, sleep it off, and hope tomorrow is normal again.”