The first time I hit a pedestrian with my car, it was rather awkward for both of us. Not only was I new to it, but he seemed a novice as well. The man, who wandered into my blind spot as I was making a right on red, had the tall, lanky build of a fifty-year-old high-jumper. There’s a chance he wore a beret, too, but of this detail I cannot be sure. I pressed the gas, turned the wheel, and a flash of arm struck the rim of my peripheral. There was a dull thud, and I turned in time to see a man do something resembling a half-baked barrel roll over the hood of my car. With impressive agility, he landed on his feet, cat-like, beret still intact. Slightly shaken and, it seemed, a bit embarrassed, he continued on his way to the CVS across the street.  

At the time, I was unfamiliar with the protocol of running over a man. In fender benders, I knew enough that you avoid blurting out anything self-incriminating before undergoing the ritual of exchanging insurance information. But, being the pedestrian he was, the man was absent a car. And, as far as I knew, there was no such thing as pedestrian insurance—though I was thinking there ought to be. At a glance, he seemed to be in good condition, a slight limp, maybe, but I still felt obliged to find out for sure. I rolled down my window and said, “Hey! Sorry. Are you all right?” Here, an interesting thing occurred. The man, avoiding eye contact, nodded quickly, and picked up his rusty pace away from my car. It seemed he wanted nothing to do with me. My brain in a fog, I looked both ways several times before making the right turn I had set out to do earlier.

I got halfway to McDonalds before I snapped out of it and decided to turn back to check on the man once again. I found him inside CVS, his head floating down an aisle. As I homed in on him, he began moving faster toward the back of the store. I was getting out of breath when I tried to slow him down, “Hey!” I said. No response. We had both broken into a near full-blown sprint. “Hey!” I shouted. Heads in the greeting card aisle turned, but the man kept on target, his pace steady. I knew he’d heard me. Finally, there was nowhere left for him to run. I had the man trapped between myself and the pharmacy. The pharmacists, in their white coats, hovering over their half-filled prescriptions, eyed me nervously. Then, a funny thought came over me. Do I introduce myself as the man who hit him with his car? Or had these preliminaries sailed on the moment he rolled over my hood? “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. His face went flush and he averted his gaze. His beret was slightly ajar. The man seemed tortured not physically, but mentally by my dogging persistence. I decided not to push it any further. I said, “Okay,” offered another weak apology, and removed myself from the man’s sight as quickly as possible. It was rather awkward behavior on his part, I thought. I could not understand why the man was so bent out of shape. I left slightly offended.

Some years later, I clipped a college kid crossing the street. Once again I was turning right, but this time it was at the stop sign of a busy outdoor mall intersection. Amazingly, I got the same response from the kid as I did from the man in CVS. It just must be the standard, I concluded. As the poor kid hobbled toward the curb, I leaned out my window and asked cooly, “Are you all right?” Already having one hit pedestrian under my belt, I felt sure of myself this time around.

In the midst of a fast and slightly painful-looking getaway, he gave a curt response, “I’m fine.” I watched as he stiffly reached the door of the restaurant across the street. He was probably on his way to meet up with some friends. For a half-instant, I thought of going in after him to see if he really was okay. Instead, I checked for more pedestrians, stepped on the gas, and decided to do the kid a favor. I’d drive away and get out of his hair as soon as possible. And this time, I wouldn’t take it so personally.

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Jess and I decided to take off work Monday. Instead, we went to the zoo, a top priority on our list of things to do this summer. The zoo parking lot was all but empty when we arrived, and to our amazement, we drove right up to the front and found a nice parking spot in ORANGUTAN ROW 1. The sun’s power had increased considerably in the twenty minutes it took to get from our house to the zoo. Halfway to the zoo entrance, I became disappointed in my decision back home to forgo sunscreen. I could already feel my neck turning the tender color of raw calamari.

Inside the zoo, near where a bearded employee handled an armadillo before a gathering of moms and screechy kids, we went over the zoo map I had snagged from the ticket booth. The layout of the place appeared to run in one big loop. The animals were sorted by continent. Nonetheless, all the ”continents” we visited maintained the same steady sweltering climate of the Sahara desert. I feared my body would eventually run out of sweat.

North America was our first destination. I figured this part of the zoo would be nothing short of taking a leisurely stroll through my backyard. I was partially right. Three steps deep inside the Western Hemisphere, I caught a dreadful odor that rivaled that of our garage trashcan the day after I threw away the dead mouse we’d caught in our basement. Nonetheless, we pressed on.

Just off the walking path, a sign called our attention to a low patch of weeds. It informed us that black ants were in there. I strained my eyes but could not make out even one anthill, not even an ant. Slightly puzzled, Jess and I never arrived at a solid conclusion over the ants’ whereabouts. The best I can come up with is that they probably filed their way to the nearest overflowing trashcan and got tangled up in a swath of cotton candy. To be honest, as long as they didn’t end up in my pants or something, I was fine with not knowing their mysterious location. By the time Jess had me posing for a snapshot with a tired old goat with stubs for ears, the ants had left my mind.       

Counting the invisible ants, there must have been a million animals in the zoo. Many seemed immobilized by the noonday heat, either slumped in a shady corner or sprawled out inside a hollow tree trunk. Some animals came off as rather pedestrian, like the mallards, that swam and quacked like the ones back home, but some were worth noting, namely the penguins.

Heavily influenced by Coca-Cola commercials, I have always pegged penguins for snow birds. These particular ones, however, were out and about in the sizzling sun. Not to be mean, but the poor birds looked diseased, as if they constituted a sort of bird leper colony. Instead of donning their usual tuxedo coats, the penguins hobbled out in something more like a dung colored blazer with the stuffing coming out. They were losing their feathers in clumps. What feathers remained mashed into a chaotic mess, looking as if the zoo staff had taken to cooling them off with fire hoses.    

It occurred to me that the penguins might be contagious. As I considered how life might be like living in quarantine, I read up on the penguin facts posted outside their habitat.  Apparently they make nests out of mounds of seabird guano, aka, bird poop. I wanted out. Though not totally undone of my suspicion, I was put partially at ease when I overheard a lady in a zoo polo shirt explaining to an equally uneasy observer that this is molting season.

So maybe they weren’t diseased. But it was an image I knew would stay with me for a long time. I’ve heard of molting, but never witnessed it first hand. I learned a lot from my visit to the zoo. Although it has its plusses, Nature can be very ugly at times. Especially during molting season.

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