Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

ZOOKEEPER

I took a baby panda home from the zoo. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to. I decided to keep my job there, at least for a while, so as not to look suspicious.

Dolores from reptiles almost got me.

“Aren’t those panda droppings?” she asked, pointing to my hair.

“I don’t think so,” I said. I put on a helmet. The panda and I were still working through bathroom and sleeping arrangements.

I named her Lulu. Pandas really like bamboo. That’s not a myth.

At the time I was living in a room of the Sleep-Eeze Inn. All my local calls were free, as was my cable. I put up a DO NOT DISTURB! sign but worried it might fall off, so I taped several others like it to the actual door.

One night I came home from work with some chicken tenders. I figured the two of us could share them. I did not bring enough for all the policemen who were outside my door.

I pretended to be part of the crowd. I pinched a mother of five on her elbow.

“What’s up?” I asked.

She covered the ears of her youngest. “They thought someone was making a pornographic film in that room. There were all these signs up and people heard growling and scratching.”

I saw them carrying out Lulu. She looked at me with her giant panda eyes.

“Mother,” she yelled.

I didn’t know that pandas could talk. It might have been an accident.

While the cops questioned me, Lulu and I tidied up what was left of the continental breakfast in the lounge. I stuck Fruit Loops on the tips of her canine teeth. She seemed to be smiling.

I went to jail. Lulu went to the zoo.

There’s a website, freelulu.com, that has a photo of both of us standing behind our respective bars.

Each month I write the zoo a letter, in cursive, asking them to send me a lock of her hair. They will not. When people ask me why I did it, I tell them, “She was soft.”