Welded Wire Mesh

Welded wire mesh reflected in her eyes. Golden green eyes held captive - her mind behind, caged. A sigh escaped her wrinkled lips, brushing over my face as the only aspect of her that would ever again be free.

In the Orangutan building of the Kansas City Zoo, I heard the footsteps of my coworkers continue onward down the hallway, fading to silence aside from the low HVAC hum heard throughout the floor. I was rooted in place, standing two feet away from her shaggy body that was sat squarely in a pile of straw hay. The concrete around us seeped cold into the air.

Oma was the newbie. All I knew was that she had been brought in by the curator when the recent habitat expansion had been completed. I glanced around the holding stall, imagining linework and callouts where mesh connected to timber and metal studs. I caught sight of the shift doors along the back wall. Did she know how to use them already? Or had she needed to be taught, coaxed through with delicate pieces of fruit?

Where did you come from? I watched her eyes, thinking. She blinked slowly, impassive and unknowing. Had she been at another zoo? Had she been wild? Surely they didn't capture wild orangutans anymore...

A metallic creak echoed from somewhere down the hallway. Perhaps the arm of a pneumatic cage door clicking into place. A slight rustling drew me back to the animal. She had reached up and grasped the cage - her wrinkled grey fingers tangled through the crosshatch of wire strands. The digits tightened and relaxed, tightened and relaxed, tightened and relaxed.

A gasp nearly burst from my lungs when I met her gaze. Oma's eyes burned with an intensity that sparked my nerves. There was a forest fire in her irises. Holding my attention, she swung up her other hand, great arm of muscle rippling through the air, and slammed a fist against the barrier. I felt the reverberation through my shoes.

OUT! She seemed to scream, silence forced upon her lips sewn by eras of evolution. Did she remember where she was from?

I'm sorry, I wanted to whisper, but the words clumped on my tongue. Was here not better than where she was before? I didn't know. I didn't know they'd bring you here.

I didn't know that it would feel this way... to confront the end result, the product, of the last three years of my work, my life. The holding stall had seemed larger on paper. Three hundred square feet couldn't contain a soul.

I didn't know, I pleaded again with her. She crashed her fist to the mesh once more, and a sob broke past my lips. I had done everything I could to make them happy, to keep their minds occupied - the riverbank, the giant climbing structures, the shady spot by the viewing window. A few thousand square feet of lush habitat to roam. It all paled in comparison to the place she remembered. Had she been wild?

I stared into the enraged eyes, feeling her gaze sweep through me like a sandstorm. The moment of connection we were sharing, it was heartbreaking. But in the back corners of my mind, I could sense a twisted inkling of joy, of exploitation, of exhilaration at being so close. I could reach out and touch her shaggy red hair.

I stared into her eyes and felt as though she could understand me. I thought my words deliberately in my head. Oma, I'm sorry. Her face was stone. I wish you could be free. I wish I could protect you. I wish I could fix everything for you. If the world weren't so set on tearing itself apart, maybe there would be enough wild rainforest left. Maybe you could go home and that forest fire would dissipate. But maybe you've never seen the real world, maybe you've always been caged. If that's the case, then I truly hope that you can't see the beauties of the last wilderness encased in my mind, I hope that I'm not taunting you. If you were born behind bars, you have to die behind them, too. You wouldn't know how to live freely.

There's an old adage in the zoo world about the different great apes: If you give a screwdriver to a chimpanzee, it will kill everything in its cage. If you give a screwdriver to a gorilla, it will cower and fear it. But if you give a screwdriver to an orangutan, it will do nothing.

That is, until you turn your back.

And then it will dismantle its entire holding building.

I wish I had a screwdriver for you, Oma.

Her hand slid down the mesh and rested in her lap. She sensed the resignation in my scent. I had nothing to offer her, no cure to the intangible longing in her chest. We were both broken, but on opposite sides of the bars. Did she realize that I had designed her cage?

I didn't want this! I snarled at her in my mind. Did she blame me, solely? If she were free, would she rip me to agonizing pieces?

If this was the power of being a creator, I didn't want to wield it any longer.

Souls should not be caged.

Footsteps faded back into existence. They had noticed my absence. I wonder if any of them also felt guilty, exploring the halls of the prison we had painstakingly perfected. I knew that Oma had zero chance of escape; I was the one that locked her in.

I looked up to see my boss hurry around the corner, a smiling 'there you are' poised on his lips. But something in my gaze must have shattered his faltering steps. I must be a more powerful creator than I imagined, for just like Oma, I have locked myself in - this dream career, those galivanting ideals of rescuing needy creatures, of preserving the natural world... it all fell away as I clung to the only shred of reality that remained cold and callous and constant:

My fingers curled around my own cage.