“Okay,” Donovan agreed. “Fair enough.” He looked at the penguins. “We could read to them. Or show them movies or something.”
“Movies?” Jill asked. “Seriously?”
“Like porn? To get their libidos going?” Fiona asked.
Donovan laughed. “I was thinking films with ocean sounds like they’d hear in nature. Or hell, even cartoons. More for enrichment and stimulation. But hey, I’m open-minded.”
Jill shook her head. This was what her career had come down to. Planning raunchy movie nights to try to get a bunch of penguins laid.
“Sure, let’s just project porn up on the side of the penguin enclosure here in sweet little Autre, Louisiana,” Fiona said. “That definitely won’t bother anyone.”
Donovan chuckled. “Sweet little Autre, Louisiana? You haven’t been here long enough. Or hanging out with enough of the locals.” Then he leaned in. “Or are you thinking about a specific local who that would bother a lot?”
“Definitely. That man is an uptight, prudish rule-follower.” Fiona fanned her face. “And oh do I want to rile him up.”
“Who?” Jill asked, looking back and forth from Donovan to Fiona.
Donovan chuckled. “Knox.”
“The city manager?”
“Yep.”
She looked at Fiona. “Wow. You seem like total opposites.”
“We are. Total.”
“You think Charlie would want to sell tickets to our porno movie night?” Donovan asked. “We could have the kids’ movie night down with the baby goats and adult movie night up here with the penguins.” He grinned.
“I just hope Charlie will call it Porn with the Penguins,” Fiona said. “And not Penguin Porn, because that sounds like a whole different thing.”
They all laughed.
Donovan started toward the parking area. “Okay, serious idea that we can implement right now.”
“I’m listening,” Jill told him, falling into step beside him with Fiona on her other side.
“Penguin Parade,” Donovan said.
“A penguin parade?” Jill repeated. “What do you mean?”
“We take them on a walk around the animal park. Let them see something new. Interact with some other animals. Stimulate them.”
Jill was already shaking her head though. “I don’t know. Part of the program is to keep their environment controlled.”
“Well, babe…,” Donovan said.
And yes, she made a note of the fact that Donovan Foster had called her “babe”.
“This controlled environment thing isn’t workin’.”
Jill blew out a breath. He was right. Obviously.
“And you think taking them on a walk will help?”
“Shake things up. It’s an enrichment activity that lots of other places have used.”
“What if that makes things worse?” But she frowned even as she said it.
“Can you have fewer chicks than zero?”
Jill ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah, okay.”
“I mean, you have kept them pretty solitary and quiet and undisturbed,” Fiona said, nodding as she considered Donovan’s suggestion. “And it sounds like A.J. did the same. Maybe they’re bored. Maybe they need a little excitement.”
Jill looked back at her eight feathered charges. She had to admit that her first instinct was to say no to taking the penguins out of their safe haven and potentially rattling them. But at this point she was willing to try anything.
“Okay, I’m game. What do you think this looks like?”
“I’d say two or three of us walking with them right down this path, keeping them together and out of trouble,” Donovan said. “We’ll walk them down to see Slothcrates and Larry, Curly, and Mo. And the red pandas. They can look but won’t get up real close.”
“Yeah, we’ll shut the rest of the petting zoo down to visitors during that time,” Fiona said. “It’ll only be an hour or so. We’ll do it during the week, mid-afternoon, while the kids are still in school since we get busier after that.”
“Okay, let’s give it a try. Again, it’s not like they could get less interested in being parents,” Jill said.
And she was going to quit thinking about how ironic it was that, while she had been trying to get three penguins pregnant, she’d managed to get herself knocked up instead.
“Speak of the big, hot, I-want-to-do-all-kinds-of-naughty-things-to-him devil,” Fiona said, as they passed Slothcrates’s enclosure.
Jill glanced at Fiona. “What?”
“Knox is here.” Fiona lifted a hand and waved.
Jill looked toward the parking area. Sure enough, Knox was leaning against the side of Fiona’s huge, grape-purple truck.
“I’m still surprised by you being into him,” Jill said. “You seem so different.”
“We are. But two matches side by side are just two matches. Gasoline poured on more gasoline…nothing happens. But you put a match to gasoline? That’s how you get heat.”
Jill’s eyes widened. “A lot more than just ‘heat’.”
Fiona grinned. “Right?” She picked up her pace down the walkway.
Jill followed. She wanted to see this suddenly.
“Hey, Fritz,” Fiona said to Knox as she drew close.
“Nope,” he told her, pushing away from her truck and stretching to his full height.
He was a very big guy. He was an inch taller than Zeke and definitely wider through the shoulders.
“His first initial is ‘F’ but he won’t tell anyone what it stands for,” Fiona told Jill. She tucked her hands in her back pockets and peered up at Knox. “But I’m going to get it out of him someday.”
Knox rolled his eyes. “I’m here about the donkeys.”
Fiona smiled. “You met them?”
“Yes. All five of them,” Knox said.
“Aren’t they sweet?”
“Not the word I was looking for. I also noticed both camels.”
“And the two horses, I presume.”
“Why are you annoyed about those?” Jill asked. “Donkeys and camels and horses should get along fine with the alpacas and—”
“I’m not annoyed,” Knox said.
Fiona looked surprised. “Oh. Damn.”
He almost smiled. “Donkeys, camels, and horses don’t even need any special licensing in Louisiana.”
“We’ve done all the paperwork for everything else,” Fiona said. “Every animal I’ve brought to Autre is obtained legally and fully licensed. And they’re doing great here. They’re happy and well cared for and—”
“Causing an increase in traffic which is causing more congestion and tearing up the roads not to mention the increased number of people who are generating more litter and, even when they do manage to get stuff in the trashcans, they’re filling them up a lot faster,” Knox said.
“We’ve put up signage and enlisted the help of the church youth group to do garbage clean-up once a week and all the waste from the animal park is recycled or composted.”
“We?” Knox asked her, instead of commenting on her solutions.