I don't particularly want to because it makes me feel more of a mutant than ever but I suppose I should emphasize that life at Smokehill is kind of bizarre. Certainly us kids were always being told (or asked) that wasn't the way we lived peculiar. Uh, pardon me, but I was born here. So I didn't like being asked (or told). Other kids were the worst. They said things like, No pizza? Like you might say, No oxygen? Of course we have pizza. But no, we couldn't call up the local Super Pizza to deliver, that's true.
Eleanor wouldn't touch the bugs and beetles, and the bigger live (or soon-to-be-knocked-on-the-head) stuff Eric or Katie would deal with, but she'd put the vegetables and fruit in the buckets after Martha or I cut it up if it needed cutting. (Madagascariensis is such a lazy slob it won't eat its carrots unless they are chopped up first.) She wasn't really that much help since we had to keep a sharp eye on her; she felt that fairness meant that everybody got the same thing, but most of the fun food is whatever the Wilsonville and Cheyenne supermarkets feel like sending us of the stuff that's still around after its sell-by date and, for example, citrus gives russo diarrhea. But Eleanor will get older, and living at Smokehill is weird enough (okay, okay, I admit it) so it's good if you feel involved. But how many kids get to help out at a zoo? Who needs normal?
Although Martha and I both put our hours in at the orphanage. But then the orphanage is pretty good too. I like little furry baby things, which there aren't any of at the zoo. Maybe I'm more normal than Eleanor. After the lot at the zoo, something warm and furry or feathery is a nice change too, even if it may throw up all over you. And then there's warm and furry like a Yukon wolf cub. If Eleanor's lucky some day she'll get to hold the broom for it to tear the throat out of while the guy with the sedative gun gets into position.
We'd only just started by the time Katie arrived. Katie makes everyone feel nicer and calmer just by being there, even her daughters. I mean, even Eleanor. Martha is a lot like Katie herself. But after Katie got there Eleanor stopped arguing that since she didn't like celery nobody else was going to like celery either. (Madagascariensis, I swear, likes celery because the sound it makes slowly crunching it up reminds it of the crack of small bones, without any of the effort of hunting something. You'd think carrots would be even better, but no. Maybe it only hunts things with osteoporosis.)
Then Eric showed up and things went into a decline again - even Katie can't do much with Eric - but Dad says he's a good keeper and not everyone wants to live a hundred miles from the nearest real restaurant, work twelve or fourteen hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, and get paid badly, and we're lucky to have him. That's Dad's way of saying "shut up." It's a lot better than saying "shut up" but nothing is ever going to make me like Eric.
We got the buckets sorted and started carrying them out. Eleanor is not only only seven and the youngest but she's not exactly large even for seven (Martha's small for her age too but she's twelve) and only an Eleanor-type seven-year-old would insist on carrying a bucket too big and heavy for her, but of course she does. "I'll take russo," she says every day. Russo's her favorite. Russo is also at the far end of the row of cages and Martha and I have to dawdle getting the others set out to give her time, and then she and Martha have this little ritual of Eleanor pretending not to notice that Martha has to lift and dump the food through the chute, because Eleanor can't.
"She's going to wear that bucket out, dragging it like that," snapped Eric.
"You tell her," I said. Eric glared at me, but I was doing him a favor, giving him an excuse for a good glare.
Once Eric was there to deal with the serious food Katie and I could get started on the cages. Here's a good example of what passes in Eric's case for a sense of humor. When I