Of all unlikely places

Really, Gabby thought, it wasn't the worst day she'd ever had on the job. Not really. Not if you counted the day the meerkats got into the gift shop and made off with the giant lollipops. The care and keeping of a meerkat on a sugar high wasn't anything her college courses had prepared her for.

The day had started pretty well, actually. Tom had finally agreed to let her help with the penguin show, and then she'd done such a good job - well, that's what she'd inferred from his gruff "you'll do" - that he'd let her take Linus on his walk - his shuffle - round the edge of his enclosure. Linus was old, now, and had never been fast even in his youth, but she treasured every moment she got to spend with the old walrus. Raised in captivity and forced to perform, his early years hadn't been the happiest. But he was living out his retirement at Tom's Town, now, and insisted on greeting his public, and Gabby felt privileged to be allowed close to such a majestic creature. Even if his breath did stink of fish.

No. The penguins and Linus hadn't been the problem.

It was incredible, really, what kind of animals people thought they could care for outside of a wildlife park, and sometimes even in their own actual houses. She could kind of see how you could start with a bear cub - although where you might find one and why on earth you'd let it live in your child's bedroom was completely beyond her - and then have a change of heart when said cub began to bump its head on doorframes and look hungrily at the family cat. But the ostrich? Elpheba was a surly, vicious creature, whom even Tom gave a wide berth. Tom's gave them all a second (or third, or, in the case of one particularly light-fingered macaque, eighth) chance and a quiet-ish place to indulge what natural instincts were left to them, though, regardless of temperament. The setup kept life interesting, but it did mean the mix of animals in the park was not quite what they might have selected, given the choice.

That was the problem.

More specifically, Algernon was the problem. Algernon, the permanently bored macaw who was too clever for his own (or anyone else's) good. At least, he was the start of the problem. It was only when he'd appeared at her elbow at lunchtime and deftly extracted the tomato from her sandwich with a satisfied "thank you!" that Gabby had realised he'd got past the latest set of locks. It was much, much later that she realised the full extent of the havoc he'd wreaked in the meantime.

The small boy tugging on her sleeve had given her the first clue (once Algernon had been returned to his aviary, the locks reset, the combination tumblers changed, and the makeshift lockpicks removed from his habitat to squawks of dismay). "Miss! Miss, there's a tortoise!"

"Yes, I know," she'd replied, smiling fondly at the child. "She's amazing, isn't she? She's over a hundred years old, you know."

"An' she's there!"

"She's what? Oh! Oh, Geraldine, how did you get there?"

The giant Galapagos tortoise had blinked sleepy eyes at her and, to Gabby's relief, willingly if ponderously returned to her enclosure in pursuit of the cabbage leaf Gabby had dangled in front of her nose. Gabby had frowned at the clasp on the gate, in which Geraldine had never previously shown any interest, and then her eyes had caught the telltale scarlet feather half-hidden in the grass below, and her stomach had sunk.

A quick circuit of the wildlife park had revealed Sami the otter eyeing up the aquarium, a goat kid being chased from the ice cream stand, and Dolores, the magestic Burmese python, contentedly sunning herself on a bench to the wondering horror of the nearby guests.

Gabby and Tom had returned them all quickly to their homes, called in a couple of other staff from their days off to complete a full inventory of the enclosures, and then joined forces to consider the last and greatest problem they'd found.

"How did he even get there?" Gabby asked, blinking up at the tree as if to do so would change the scene in front of her.

"Never mind that," Tom replied. "How are we going to get him down?"

Much like Linus, Dmitri was a relic of less compassionate days in the world of animal keeping. He'd toured any number of parks since his liberation from his first, wholly unsuitable habitat, but few parks were willing to commit the space to, not to mention foot the expense of, housing a single creature when there was no real prospect of ethically procuring him a mate or companion. Tom's didn't turn anyone away if they could help it, though, so they'd scrimped and saved and fundraised and Dmitri had a vast, elaborate, climate controlled space to call his own. He'd never previously shown any inclination to leave it. Nor, indeed, any interest in the huge oak tree that presumably - though Gabby had never gone up there to see for herself - commanded impressive views of the park from the height Dmitri had reached.

"Call the fire brigade, maybe?" offered an equally baffled-looking visitor, and Tom shrugged.

"Good an idea as any, I suppose," he agreed, reaching for his phone.

Gabby gnawed at her lip as Dmitri stretched out a paw and the branch wobbled beneath him. He returned, to her relief, to his more hunched posture snug in the crook of two large branches. To the extent that it was possible to tell from this distance - or, indeed, on his largely impassive face - he seemed to be regretting his adventure more and more with every passing minute.

"No," Tom was saying, a hint of impatience entering his voice. "This isn't a joke. I'm calling from the wildlife park. No. No, we don't. No. Because it's not a situation we've dealt with before! Or, quite frankly, ever imagined! No. No, I'm sorry, of course. Yes. Mmhm. I... well, no, I don't really know what I'm suggesting. Some... ladders maybe? A... one of those platform jobbies on a crane? Yes. Yes I can hold."

"We're going to have to sedate him, aren't we?" Gabby asked, quietly, and Tom nodded sadly.

"Assume so. No one's going to go near him otherwise. It's how to stop him falling out of the tree when we do that's the issue. Oh, hello! Yes, I'm still here. Thank you." His tone became a little more formal. "Good afternoon, Chief. Yes. Tom, from Tom's Town. Yes, sir. In a tree. What kind? An oak tree. Oh I see, sorry, kind of animal. A polar bear. Yes, really. His name's Dmitri."

No, thought Gabby, watching Dmitri peer miserably at the ground far below him. A meerkat on a sugar high had nothing on this.