Chapter Text
Lexie rubs her eyes tiredly as she waits for the kettle to finish boiling for her morning cuppa. She doesn't mind the early shift at work, it's so nice to get there and start her day without the crowds already having descended, but she is decidedly not a morning person.
Once the kettle is boiled and her cuppa is made, Lexie heads back upstairs to find her work uniform and feed her various animals while it cools to a suitable drinking temperature.
She much prefers her summer uniform to her winter one: the shorts and polo shirt are significantly comfier and she pulls them on happily, tucking the polo shirt in and making sure her name badge is affixed in the right spot. She then pulls her hair back into a messy half-ponytail to keep it out of her face and sticks her balled-up socks into her pocket to put on when she puts her boots on.
Her spare room is more like an animal room at this point, and she double checks her chart on the wall to see who is getting what this morning. Her snake, Susie, doesn’t need to be fed today but the ferrets, Noodle and Spaghetti, do, as well as Henry her rescue hedgehog and Iris the chinchilla. Once she’s got everyone fed though, she has to dash, and she feels bad that she won’t get any time to hang out with them this morning. But then again, she’ll have all evening as she’s done by three o’clock.
A glance at her watch prompts her to curse herself under her breath and end up tipping her tea into a thermos as she glances around for her boots. Which of course, are beside the back door rather than the front and therefore makes her even later.
Finally she’s ready and she dashes out the front door, fumbling around for her car keys to unlock her little light blue car. Just as she’s reversing out of the drive, she notices the absence of a “for sale” sign on the grass in front of the house next to hers.
Looks like she’ll finally be getting a new neighbour then.
“Good morning old girl, how are you doing today?” Lexie asks as their oldest elephant in the herd, Adira, comes lumbering over to the bars separating her from Lexie as soon as she appears.
“Are you here for me, or just for this banana?” Lexie asks, laughing as she produces it from the bucket in her hand and holds it up for her to see. Adira gives a small trumpet of excitement, which echoes around the barn and she sticks her trunk through the posts to grab it from Lexie’s hand.
“It’s definitely the banana.”
Lexie turns around and rolls her eyes at her colleague, Dylan, who is holding a shovel in one hand.
“I like to think she enjoys my company too,” Lexie pouts, holding up a banana leaf from her bucket which is soon taken too. She has to take a step back as a curious trunk knocks against the edge of her bucket.
“Oi, not all for you ma’am! Need to save some for the rest of the family too,” Lexie scolds lightly, rubbing her trunk affectionately instead.
“Go on, Dylan will open the doors for you, it’s a gorgeous day. I’ll come out and hose you down in a bit.”
“Oh will they now?” Dylan quips, but they’re already heading to the lever that will open the barn doors and let their herd out into their yard and the paddock.
Once Lexie has given a piece of fruit to each elephant on their way past, laughing as little baby Azalea, only a few months old, struggles to grab it with her trunk and ends up smacking herself in the face with it with a squeaky little trumpet.
After they’ve closed the doors again, Lexie grabs a wheelbarrow and a shovel and heads into the barn properly to start shovelling up the piles of elephant poo that have accumulated overnight. Despite the fact that they’re the biggest land animals on Earth, and Lexie has been working with this particular herd for four years, she’s still blown away by the amount of it they can produce in just a few short hours.
At least it doesn’t smell as bad as some of the other animals in the zoo.
Between the two of them, it takes about 20 minutes to clear the barn, and they head outside to fill the feeders in the paddocks, and then hose down some of the elephants that want to play before the zoo gates open and they start letting guests in for the day.
Lexie, at just over 6ft tall, is the only one tall enough to reach the high feeders in the paddocks so that’s always her job in the mornings while Dylan fills up the barrels with hay and a few treats that they’ll be able to retrieve over the course of the day. After that, Lexie heads back over to the barn so she can hook up the hoses and offer them up to any elephant in the yard who wants a shower this morning. She opens the gates to the paddock first (making sure that Dylan is out of the way) although several elephants hang back as she turns on the taps to the hoses.
“Mind if I film you?” Dylan asks, coming up behind her and Lexie nods. The zoo's social media pages always do well with the elephants, and she knows Dylan will avoid getting her face in it, which she isn’t a fan of. But she loves this part of her job, and it’s something that the public don’t usually get to see.
Sure enough, the showers are a noisy and messy affair but Lexie has a big grin on her face as their little elephant family trumpets happily, catching the water and spraying it back up into the air, even little Azalea trying her best to get involved in the fun.
By the time she turns off the hose, she’s drenched from head to toe and Dylan is definitely laughing at her.
“And that is why I only do that when it’s this hot outside,” Lexie laughs, wiping her hair away from her forehead and pulling out the bobble to shake it out.
“And it’s why I stand and watch from afar.”
By late-morning the sun is blazing high in the sky and the zoo is packed to the brim with visitors. Lexie is taking a few minutes in the relatively cool space of the food storage room, her back to the open freezer.
“Do I really have to go out there?” Lexie whines, fidgeting with the headset microphone in her hands.
“Your day to do the keeper talk,” her coworker Phoebe shrugs, flopping down into the plastic chair in the corner. “Oh I regret that - I'm sticking to this now.”
Lexie snorts in laughter, stepping away from the freezer and shutting the door behind her.
“Go on, go be the nerd we all know you are. I'll have a cold drink ready for you when you get back.”
With a mock salute, Lexie heads out the door and into the oppressive heat of the summer air. Heatwaves never get easier, but at least the elephants are enjoying themselves.
As usual, the circular tiered seating around the area for the talk is packed to the brim, with people sitting on the steps and lining the path either side. Lexie takes a deep breath, unlocking the gate that blocks the steps up to the little platform that will allow her to stand high enough that everyone can see her, and the elephants will be able to reach the treats in her bucket. Although she has learned from experience to leave the bucket on the steps rather than the platform so they can't get into it until she's ready. She makes sure the microphone is connected properly before she taps it a couple of times to get the crowd’s attention.
“Good morning folks, it’s a lovely hot day and welcome to our elephant enclosure. My name is Lexie, I’m one of the keepers that looks after this gorgeous herd and I’m going to be leading your keeper talk today.”
She adjusts her baseball cap on her head and then turns to gesture to the herd behind her.
“So firstly I'd like to introduce you to our elephant herd here. We have eleven elephants, our oldest is Adira who is the matriarch of the group, which means she's the one in charge. And then our youngest is little Azalea, who is at the front here. She's only three months old so she's a really little baby!”
Lexie continues her talk, educating the crowd about her beloved elephant family and all the fun facts she's memorised over the years. She chucks the treats down to the little ones and feeds some by hand to the adult elephants. Then finally, she opens it up to questions from the audience.
A smile spreads across her face as multiple hands go up.
“Alrighty, lots of people to choose from … let's start with you ma'am, front row on the left with the pink glasses.”
Lexie nods as the woman gestures to herself, encouraging her to ask her question.
“Well it's kind of two questions in one but … why do they have such long trunks, and what's the heaviest thing they can lift with them?”
Lexie grins. “That is an excellent question. So the main reason that elephants have really long trunks is so that they can reach high up foliage and vegetation that only really them and giraffes can reach. Some other things they use it for are to smell things, drink without having to bend all the way down to the water and to trumpet with obviously! And the heaviest thing they can lift would probably be about two pandas, which are really heavy!”
Lexie takes questions for about ten more minutes before she wraps up the talk and heads back down to the ground from her little platform, desperate to go back inside and grab some shade and a cold drink. However she’s stopped by a woman and her daughter.
“Hi, how can I help?” she asks brightly. It’s quite common for people to ask her for directions or clarification on something after the end of a talk.
“Hi there, my daughter here really wanted to ask a question during your talk but she was a bit nervous about putting her hand up, would it be okay if she asked you now?”
Lexie’s face breaks out into a smile as she glances down at the little girl, perhaps three or four, and crouches down to her level.
“Of course you can, what was your question sweetheart?”
The girl looks up at her mum, who nods encouragingly.
“Can elephants jump?” she asks in a small voice.
“That is a great question, but no they can’t. Their legs are only just strong enough to stop them from falling over so there’s not enough strength left to jump!”
The child giggles, and Lexie smiles at her.
“You has an elephant on your arm,” she adds, pointing at Lexie’s right arm.
“I do … I’ve got lots of animals!”
Lexie pulls up the sleeve of her shirt so that the little girl can see the full animal themed tattoo sleeve that goes all the way up to her shoulder.
“What’s your favourite animal?” She asks.
“Turtle,” the little girl replies.
Lexie grins again. “Oh that’s awesome! I’ve got one of those right here,” she explains, lifting her arm up so she can show her the sea turtle inked into the back of her forearm, just below her elbow.
“I like your turtle,” she says, reaching out to touch it with the tip of her finger.
Lexie chats to the girl and her mother for a couple more minutes before they head off to explore the rest of the zoo, and Lexie makes a beeline for the backstage area of the zoo and the cold drink and ice lolly she knows is waiting for her when she gets there.
It’s going to be one very long day.
When Lexie gets home just before 4pm she's completely exhausted and her work uniform is sticking to her uncomfortably.
Pulling into her drive, she notices that there's a small car next door, which takes her by surprise. She knows the house had been sold, but that had been a few weeks ago so to see activity, especially on the hottest day of the year so far, is surprising.
She's keen to go around and introduce herself, but she's sweaty and worn out and smells bad in more than one way, so a shower is most definitely in order.
The house is blissfully cool compared to the outside, and Lexie thanks herself from this morning for remembering to make sure the blinds and curtains were closed before she left for work.
After the world’s quickest cold shower, which she slightly regrets as it makes her muscles quite stiff and achy, she throws on a pair of jogging shorts and then a loose vest, jogging back downstairs and tucking her hair behind her ears. She slides her feet into a pair of sandals and then heads back out, crossing the front garden to next door. The windows are open and Lexie can hear music but she can’t see anyone after a quick glance through the front window. She knocks on the door, and then steps back down off the step so she’s more at a level height with whoever answers the door.
She hears the music stop and then the slight echoes of footsteps before the door opens to reveal a woman around her own age, early to mid 20s, also dressed similarly thanks to the hot weather.
“Umm, hi?”
Lexie blinks to try and clear her head. “Hey, I’m Lexie, I live next door. I just wanted to come over and introduce myself.”
“Oh hi! I’m Yaz, just moving in … obviously. She glances down at the floor briefly but then looks back up at Lexie, wringing her hands together.
“I’d offer to shake your hand but honestly they’re pretty sweaty and mucky.”
Lexie chuckles, nodding in understanding. “Nah, you’re fine. Is it just you moving in or…?”
Yaz hesitates momentarily. “No, there’s two of us. But it’s ended up being down to me to do the majority of the work. I’m dreading the painting tomorrow honestly.”
“I can help!” Lexie bursts out before she can really realise what she’s saying. “I mean … don’t feel obliged to say yes or anything but I don’t mind lending a hand if it makes things easier. Plus I’m good at reaching the high bits…” she trails off, stretching up with one arm as if Yaz needs some kind of demonstration of her height.
“You are quite tall,” Yaz says, a teasing smile on her face. “Honestly it would be a big help but please don’t feel like you have to help, I’ll manage on my own.”
“Nah, as I say, I come in quite useful and I’ve not got anything going on tomorrow, I’ve got the day off and my brother and my best friend are at work, as is my mum and dad so I’m a free woman … sorry I’ll stop talking now.”
Yaz laughs, leaning against the door frame and crossing her arms.
“Well if you’re sure. I’ll be getting started here really early so just pop over whenever you see the car in the driveway. And if you change your mind, no hard feelings either. It’s a really generous offer.”
Lexie lets out a deep breath she wasn’t aware she was holding. “I’ll see you tomorrow, bright an’ early. Well probably not that early, I’m decidedly not a morning person, but you know what I mean.”
Yaz laughs again, the edges of her eyes crinkling up. “See you tomorrow Lexie. It was lovely meeting you.”