The Right Thing To Do
“We have to put him down, we have no choice!” This is what Erik, Magnus and Lucy heard the man say to the woman. They were on a school trip to Adelaide Zoo and had left their group to go to the restrooms. Normally 11 and 12 year olds at a zoo would need an adult to go with them, but Erik and Magnus were exceptionally responsible twin brothers, so their teacher let them go on their own. Their classmate Lucy had asked to go at the same time though, so the boys took responsibility for her.
As they left the restrooms, they all stopped as they heard two adults arguing behind the lady’s restroom. “We can’t put him down, that’s totally unfair! He didn’t bite me on purpose, he was just trying to grab a fish out of my hand and missed, that’s all!”
“And you nearly lost your arm!” the man exclaimed.
“Pff, hardly. Look, I’m not saying the bite didn’t hurt, but it’s just a couple of cuts, he didn’t break anything. If I wear a long sleeve shirt for a few weeks no-one will even know!”
“Oh, you want to keep this quiet? He attacked you! Next time it could be one of our customers. No, we have to follow protocol on this. And protocol says that if any animal attacks any human, it must be destroyed. I don’t make the rules, but as a manager it is my job to enforce them.”
“But… but… he’s just a little sea lion. I’ve been treating him for nearly 10 years and we’ve always gotten on great. Tasko has never tried to harm me before, not once!”
“Yeah, well, today was a bad day for him them. You say it was an accident, but when he bit your arm he didn’t let go straight away. He held on. He chewed on it. And having done it once, he could do it again. No, he has to be put down. He is your responsibility, I’ll give you until the end of the day to take care of it.”
“Me? I couldn’t! I can’t!”
“Yes you can. Every zoo vet knows that one day it might come to this. If you don’t like it, you can find another job. But if you want to keep this one, you’ll get this done. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to figure out how best to break this news to the public.”
With that, the man strode away. The woman stayed though. It sounded to the children like she was crying.
“Did you hear that?” Lucy asked the twins. “They’re gonna kill Tasko! We can’t let them do this!”
“We? What can we do about it?” Erik asked her.
“Yeah, exactly. What could we do? Break him out? Release him into the wild? That’s impossible!” Magnus chimed in.
“Why? Why is that impossible?” Lucy shot back at him defiantly.
“Erm, because we’re kids? We’re in the middle of a school trip. Someone will notice if we suddenly disappear to go break out a sea lion. Can you even imagine how much trouble we’d be in?” Magnus reasoned.
“And anyway, we know nothing about this place. We don’t know where the sea lions are kept, we don’t know how to access that area even if we did, and we have zero idea of how we could get a sea lion out of the zoo unseen.” Erik further posited.
“I do.” They all heard a voice say. They turned around to see a woman approaching them from behind the restroom. “I know how I could get him out. Until I heard you talking I never would have thought of doing something like this, but… it is the right thing to do, isn’t it? Even if it’s a really bad thing to do. But… I can’t do this alone.”
What is the vet’s plan for freeing Tasko?
What part will the three children play in her plan?
Even if they all get Tasko out of the zoo, what will they do with him?