Frogmouth Read Online Free PDF Page A

question. He did not understand anything. His two keepers were his two teenage sons, neither of them very good at school and, like the other children who came to the park, merely happy to be with animals. The animals in Pets' Corner were dogs and a Manx cat, flightless rhea chicks, doves, lambs, a donkey and two tiny Shetland ponies. They wandered free. In the cages around the ark and the kiosk were barn owls and a pelican, peacocks and more doves and pigeons. They were all dead. They were fur and feathers in mounds on the ground. Yat, still shaking his head to the question, said, "No." At the dead donkey the white-coated government vet, like the policeman, a tall, fair-haired European, was bending down doing something with what looked like a pair of forceps. The donkey was dead: it felt no pain from the glittering instrument. Yat said, "Everything's dead."
    The cages where the birds had been, like the others in the main body of the park, had been broken into. The locks on the wired gates or grilles were tiny, cheap Japanese padlocks that had been yanked off with the knife that had gutted the donkey. The barn owl had been in a cage by the refreshments kiosk. The lock there must have been a little stronger or the wooden door frame newer: there were score marks where the knife had been slipped in and wrenched back and forth until it gave.
    At the donkey, the vet, standing up, said something in English to one of the uniformed cops, and the cop, looking down with a strange expression on his face, nodded and then looked away.
    The cop, walking across, said in a whisper, "He says it's one person." He looked at Yat. On his khaki shirt the cop had the name Lee on a plate in English and Chinese characters. He had a little colored flash on his shoulder showing he spoke English. Yat also spoke English. He could not remember the words. The cop said in Chinese to the man asking him all the questions, "He says it was all done by one person." The uniformed cop had children: you could tell by his face. The cop, jerking his head back toward the main park, said in Cantonese, "He says one person would have been able to drag the crocodile over the fence." He looked down at his hands, but not at Yat. He had been here with his children, Yat could tell. The cop said, "The government vet says, so far, there's no evidence of sexual assault." He looked away.
    "Do you have any enemies who might do this?"
    Yat said, "What?" Everything was dead, everything. Yat said in Cantonese, "I'm sorry, but I don't—" Yat said helpfully, "Maybe the kiosk was—"
    "No. It wasn't touched."
    "I keep money in there—"
    "It's intact." Feiffer, reaching out, putting his hand on the man's shoulder to get his attention, said, "The kiosk hasn't been touched."
    They didn't move. They lay there torn to pieces; they were all just feathers and gray fur and they did not move—they were piles of useless feathers and fur—and they . . . and they were all dead ! Yat said, "They're all dead! All of them! They're all dead!" He looked and he saw his two sons in their keepers' uniforms and they were not real keepers at all but only his two boys who liked animals and they looked dressed up and they were weeping by the dead donkey looking down at what the vet was doing and he— Yat said, "People come here to be happy! They come here— it's for children! Children—" Yat said, "Was it a person?"
    "Yes. It was someone acting alone."
    "They're tame! All the animals are tame!" He knew all their names. They all had names. Yat, starting to turn to see all the dead things on the ground, chopping at the air with his hand to find words, said, starting to shake, 'They're all tame. They all come up to children and they're all tame . . . They—" He asked suddenly, "Who did this? Have you found him? Ask him why he did this!" He was turning, looking. He looked down at the ground. "Look for footprints, for—for—"
    "The rain washed everything away that might have been here."
    "Then look