#no kink in here nosiree

[minileena]

A little story about a zookeeper learning what empathy for nonhumans is - part 1

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“And this is the last stop on your route,” my trainer said as he took me into the final room in the ‘small creatures’ exhibit.

I did a quick scan of the room as I entered, noting the dark gray walls with glass tanks built into them. It was probably about twelve feet wide and thirty feet deep, and that was just the room that the guests could walk in—I counted seven exhibits total, and six were built deep into the walls, three on each side. There was one lone tank on an elevated table in the center of the room. I made mental notes of all of these little tidbits of information. It would all be important, seeing as I would be spending every day cycling through each room on my route now that I worked here.

Being a zookeeper was certainly a more interesting summer job than a cashier at McDonald’s, and I was actually pretty excited, so maybe my enthusiasm was just getting out of hand.

“This is small mammals, right?” I inquired as I inspected each tank.

“Yeah,” Jasper said, following along lazily as I took inventory. “Sorry you’re stuck with the little guys for your first assignment. They don’t let you work with any of the more interesting animals till you’ve been here a while.”

“I’m less disappointed than you think,” I hummed as I searched through the third tank for the sugar gliders. “I kinda like all these lil critters. The scorpion in the ‘creepy crawlies’ room a while back was freaking adorable.”

Jasper cocked an eyebrow at that. “Don’t think I’ve ever met someone who considers scorpions ‘cute’, but I guess this job attracts the few people who do. Either way, though, this is definitely the room where you’re gonna lose that little spark of enthusiasm I see in ya.”

I furrowed my brows and looked back at him. “Huh? Why do you say that?”

He moved forwards and tapped his finger against the glass tank in the center of the room. I immediately winced.

“Isn’t that, like, a huge no-no? Tapping on the glass?”

“Not for this one,” Jasper said with a sigh. “It annoys her, yeah, but she’s fine. Honestly, the little shit deserves it.”

“Fuck you,” a voice called from within the tank.

My eyes widened and my brows furrowed deeper as Jasper flicked the glass again. I left the sugar gliders for now to check out the central exhibit for this room. The tank was odd—it wasn’t just a cube, it had a hole in the middle, like a square donut. You could get into the hole via a gate on the side, presumably in case you wanted to see the inhabitant from the center of the donut and look around at the whole environment.

Speaking of the environment, it was a lot more sparse than the other exhibits. The ground was red stone, with the occasional rock formation peppering the terrain throughout the tank, creating hills and valleys. Aside from that, the tank was the most sparse out of any I had seen in the zoo. There were a few plastic plants here and there, but not much else. A bowl of water made to look like it was chiseled out from a rock sat on one side of the tank, set up next to an indent in the ground filled with cotton. I could only assume the latter was a bed for the 5” tall nude woman curled up within it, arms crossed over her chest and back turned to Jasper as he looked down on her.

“This is the sole inhabitant of our parvinnet exhibit,” Jasper sighed. “Although some people tend to just call ‘em ‘tinies,’ as if using an adjective as a noun makes any sense when they already HAVE a name.”

He glanced down at the parvinnet’s tank and rested an arm atop it. “This is gonna be your most important job here, rookie. All the other exhibits just require basic upkeep, tidying up and feeding the inhabitants and whatnot. For this little thing though? On top of staying on top of maintenance, you gotta keep a VERY close eye on the state of the tank. She’s smart, and she’s nearly escaped before. Check every day for ropes leading through the ceiling, holes dug in corners and covered with foliage… it’s a bit of a pain, but over time we’ve worked on preventing her from doing much. If you’re wondering why the tank looks so empty, this is why. Gotta make sure she doesn’t have any tools to escape with.”

“Oh, and before you ask, yes, I do bite,” the parvinnet said cheerily. “And I fully intend to draw blood if you ever bring your hand anywhere near—“

She was cut off as Jasper slid open the glass lid and reached down, pinching the parvinnet’s ankle between his forefinger and thumb before lifting her in front of his face. Her eyes shot wide open, and from my viewpoint I could see the pitch-black colour that covered each eyeball in its entirety. I tensed at that, all my instincts telling me that what Jasper was doing was wrong, but I didn’t do anything more than stare. We’re… not supposed to handle the creatures like this.

“Forget your place again?” Jasper asked idly as the parvinnet averted her gaze, tense as she hung from his grip.

“…I’m sorry,” she whispered pitifully.

“Uh huh,” Jasper muttered as he roughly set her back down in her bed. She immediately curled back up in a ball. I couldn’t see any tears from my viewpoint, but something told me she was crying.

“She knows you’re new here,” Jasper said, looking back in my direction with a tired smile. “You don’t have to let her talk to you like this. She’s gonna try to, but you’re totally free to get her to stop. Think of it like obedience training for dogs—you gotta make sure you’re the dominant one.”

“M’not a fucking dog,” I heard the parvinnet whisper with a quiver in her voice. She flinched as Jasper flicked the glass again. She stayed silent after that.

“Anyways,” Jasper continued, “my little routine is to get in the middle of the tank through the gate, then poke around every corner to feel for holes she tried to dig in the glass. Move the little plastic plants around, check underneath the water bowl, look under the fluff of her little bed-nest thing… she hasn’t made any moves in a while, but since you’re new she’s probably gonna be a lot more proactive in finding escape routes. After checking around, food goes here and water in the bowl. Empty it out and clean it before refilling it, because sometimes she bathes in there.”

I just nodded, trying to stifle how disturbed I felt about this whole situation. Jasper moved along to the other six exhibits, telling me proper procedure for handling the inhabitants. My vigor was shaken, however, and my mental notes got a little fuzzy as my mind lingered on the woman in the tank behind me.

(A/N: this story is actually written up to part 8 in my lil google doc that you can find in my first post, I can’t be fucked to link it but it’s there somewhere)

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