Tag Archives: Phoebe T

That summer the air was raucous with bird screams. Linda stood by the enclosure in a lion costume, sweating through its foam innards. Totally happy. 

The zoo was full of children: children with mouths stained ice lolly blue; neat children with bows in their hair; children who had taken off their shoes, small toes on hot tarmac. Children visited day after sweltering day.

We brought in extra vegetation, to shade the animals. We tried to keep their air from drying out. Even the lions needed extra pools of water, for the cubs. 

Linda was offered a little hand-held fan to help her cope on the hottest days, but she wouldn’t accept. ‘The real lions don’t have fans,’ she said, ‘why should I?’ 

Linda loved the lions. ‘My babies,’ she called out to them at dusk, when the zoo was closed and her sweat was cooling. I liked the lions, too, but more unevenly. Anya was my favourite. Whilst the other lions were tending to their cubs, or lying still and sleek in the sun, Anya pounced at the glass wall to scare visiting children. She liked dragging the beef away from the others at feeding time. She liked me, too, I could match her recklessness. More than that, I could give her extra beef. 

We were quite surprised Anya wasn’t pregnant, too. She’d been brought here as part of the healthy breeding rotation, like the others. They’d tested her fertility, we had records of her blood tests and print outs of swirling grey ultrasounds. They were pinned up on the Anya board in the office. Every time I looked, they made me think of my own ultrasounds, at the hospital. I’d lain so still and so open on the paper sheet whilst the doctor checked me. I’d watched her as she watched the screen: her face inscrutable, my eggs like blurred grey bubbles. Maybe that was why Anya was my favourite. The fact she wasn’t getting pregnant, either.

We’d been surprised that Anya wasn’t pregnant, like her companions, but then we were even more surprised when we realised that she actually was pregnant, in September. She hadn’t snuck off, or changed her eating habits. But she looked about three months gone, nearly ready to pop. 

She didn’t pop, though. Not yet. 

We monitored her diet and behaviour. Took her body temperature. Marcel, my manager, talked to her former zoo, and the mammal partnership. 

And Anya kept on being pregnant. Ultrasounds and adapted diets, and growing. And watching. And waiting. I was there for all of her procedures. Everything. I’d touch her head, not too much, just to reassure her. 

‘Mum and baby doing well,’ said the vet each time he rummaged around Anya’s body. There was only one cub, he said, ‘A very special little guy.’ He rubbed the ultrasound machine over her stomach, and showed me its blurred grey movements. Anya winced, or I did, and I gave her some extra beef. 

Anya was still pregnant, still leaping at the glass, in November. Marcel and Linda and I stayed late at the zoo on Guy Fawkes night, trying to calm the animals. We were with the lions. In the dark, the sky screamed and sparkled with fireworks. Monkeys shrieked and the big cats scattered and roared. Linda shuddered, scared for the lions. But they were ok. Anya was ok. And still pregnant.

She was pregnant through the heavy gloom of London winter. 

I went to my parents’ for a few days at Christmas. They asked me about how I was, and I tried to explain about Anya. Her long pregnancy. ‘Oh love,’ my dad said, when I told him. My mum looked at me sadly. ‘Has the hospital said anything more?’ I explained that the zoo used in-house vets, that no hospital was involved. ‘Come here my darling,’ she said, and reached up to embrace me.

Anya was still pregnant at New Years’. We were worried that there was something wrong, tried to feel for movement. The vet came and did blood tests, ultrasounds, checked for a heartbeat. ‘It’s unusual, yes,’ he said, ‘very unusual.’ He mopped at his forehead with pale blue paper towels. ‘I’ll run more tests.’

Marcel asked the vet whether Anya should have a caesarean section. ‘At this point,’ the vet said quietly, not meeting Marcel’s eyes, ‘that isn’t what I’d recommend for Anya.’ Anya squinted her eyes, docile but critical, and I gave her a little meat. 

She was still pregnant in February, and I called my mum. ‘I can’t come back for my birthday,’ I said. ‘Anya needs me.’ She was quiet, and I heard her fumbling, whispering something. Then it was my dad’s voice on the phone. ‘Hello love,’ he said. He faltered. ‘Your mum and I are here if you – if you want us.’ There was more fumbling, and I heard my mum saying ‘I don’t know, darling.’ More fumbling, and then silence. They’d hung up. 

And then, just after Valentine’s day, when I was drinking tea with Linda in the breakroom, it happened. Linda leapt up, gleaming with excitement. I stood up more slowly, resolutely. Anya needed me. 

It was me at her head, the vet at the other end. And Anya at the centre of it all. 

We were in a pen, separate from the other lions, with a roof and three walls, and straw beneath our feet. The same place we’d done her last two ultrasounds. We’d planned it all to avoid fear, avoid shock, for Anya.

Still, she was frightened. I could tell. Her angry gold eyes stared at me. Pain flickered across her. She shouted out hot, animal breath. 

It was not as quick as the other lions’ births had been. For a long time I sat, tense, watching her roaring face, and the vet’s. And then it was happening. I was watching Anya, who was watching the vet, who was watching the cub coming out. And when it did, Anya strained and then relaxed. The vet’s face fell. 

The vet turned away, with the cub in his arms. Anya lay there exhausted. I touched her head very gently, to reassure her. She felt pulsating-hot, fur damp. 

The vet was making garbled sounds, and he turned back to face us. In his hands, covered with dirt and blood, was a cub. Was a shock. Was a human baby. 

The vet looked at me, and I looked at him. I patted Anya’s head, again. To reassure myself this time. 

Anya was looking around, looking for her child. And, maybe because there was no other suggestion, no protocol, the vet laid the delicate baby down beside her mother. The baby lay, tiny, breathing, against its mother’s stomach. And Anya made a big, sweet, growling sound, and scooped her baby closer with her paw. 

The vet and I watched the strong, soft lion and her baby. Anya licked her child, her cub. It seemed sacred, almost, that moment.

And then Marcel dashed in, and the moment cracked in half. 

He’d been watching the birthcam, he was frantic, he was way too loud. And he came right up and cut the umbilical cord between them. Cut. And that shocked Anya, and she bared her teeth. Her huge pink mouth, her zigzag jagged jaws. And the baby started to cry. Human-sounding wails. Like babies do.

Marcel shouted, snatched the baby, shoved me and the vet upwards, out of the pen. I felt dizzy as I stood up, my vision swirled. Then Anya screamed. And we, Marcel, and the cub, and the vet, and me, we were leaving the pen. 

And there we were, outside and looking in. Marcel was radioing someone, and he handed Anya’s baby to me. I held her close, supporting her neck, trying to keep her warm. She was so small, so new. And we were striding to the break room and the office. And the baby girl was roaring in my arms. 

We got her into the breakroom and I wrapped her up in a fresh green fleece. And Marcel was calling a high alert, and an ambulance, and people were rushing in. And I was holding Anya’s baby. Trying to comfort her. Trying to give her softness. Like the soft, the mothering, she’d just been snatched from. 

‘The cub is hers, she’s Anya’s,’ I said as they walked me to the ambulance. I’ve stuck to that truth. I’ve tried to, anyway. 

Inside the ambulance, they checked things on the baby. And I was trying to explain it all. A paramedic made me sip some water. ‘Signs of disturbance,’ he was saying to his colleague. I sat still as they took my blood pressure, as they shut the doors, as we started moving. 

I clung to the baby throughout it. The cub. Kept her close. 

At the hospital, they wanted to open me, check me, repair me, but I wouldn’t let them. ‘Delivered at the zoo,’ they wrote, ‘Mother refusing medical exam’. I let them check the baby, I knew they needed to. But I wouldn’t let them take her from me. I needed to see her as they put a knitted hat on her, as they clipped a plastic bracelet around her wrist. I watched them as they checked her, as they wrote things down. And then they handed her back to me, so delicate, this baby daughter. And I lay in the postnatal ward, with the baby. And she was wriggly and warm. And I rocked her in my arms. 

And, since I was there, and since there wasn’t really any protocol, and since they kept on asking, I agreed that the cub was mine. Agreed to register her. Named her Elsa, which is the name I’d planned for my own baby, if she was ever born. I registered her, there and then. I didn’t really see another choice. 

Then I was alone with the baby. Quiet. I thought of calling my parents. But I couldn’t explain it to them, not yet. I thought of Linda. Linda sweating through her lion costume, refusing a fan, for the lions. She was the only person I could think of, really. For this. 

So I called Linda, who came as soon as she could. She’d left the zoo in mayhem, she said. She’d bought nappies, and a car seat, and formula, and a yellow onesie. And we dressed our baby. And then we were out. In the cold February carpark, in Linda’s car, with our lion baby sleeping in her seat. 

So many parents say they have that moment in the carpark. Of fear and care. Amazement. Amazed we were allowed to take her home. 

She’s stood by my side, you know. Linda. Together we’ve been parents, carers, keepers. Through the newborn weeks of sliced-up sleep. Through the nappies, the milk, the mess, the milk, the exhaustion. 

The story was in the Evening Standard. But they got so much wrong. And most people didn’t believe it, anyway. There was a podcast about us, and a long thread about it on Twitter. But people don’t believe, don’t know. None of them saw Anya with her baby, laying down so soft, with her cub so close. 

She’s our girl, our baby, now. Anya’s and Linda’s and mine, and her own.  We care, we keep. We feed her, we hold her, we warm her, we tell her stories. We take Elsa to see Anya, of course. Her lion mum. We always will.

There is a rhythm to the visits. Elsa presses her little hands against the viewing window, calls out for her lion mum. Anya leaps at the glass and then crumples. There’s a fear in her voice as she falls back into herself. 

And then Elsa, in her kittenish way, pounces back. Jumps up at her mother. And Anya pounces again, playful. Watching her cub, her baby, through the glass. 

photo by Andrew Liu (via unsplash)