#itzu

Joshwa was worried that Itzu’s bloody finger would dirty the backseat of his mother’s recently detailed Range Rover. The fact that Joshwa had to floor the gas pedal to make it out of the zoo complex before the police arrived was less daunting than his mother’s wrath. Joshwa hated when his mother called him “irresponsible.”

Sharon interrupted Joshwa’s obsessive thoughts when she quietly asked him over Itzu’s loud moans and garbled Malay, “where are we going?”

It had not occurred to either Joshwa or Sharon that they would be in a situation where they were on the run from law enforcement, smuggling a stolen tortoise and transporting a wounded poacher to an undecided upon location at such short notice.

In the moments after the initial shock, Joshwa swelled with fear and excitement at this unique opportunity to make it up to Sharon for getting them into this whole mess and made a decision that would impact his relationship with her forever. Joshwa sprang up from his fetal position and ran over to the Gorilla cage (Franklin had been sleeping through this whole ordeal; he could only be woken up by primal urges or with the smell of prunes and warm dung in the morning) and grabbed a large cardboard box that had been disregarded next to the fence separating his enclosure with Shelldone‘s.

Joshwa quickly looked up at Sharon to make sure she was watching (she was, flabbergasted at his decisiveness after what seemed like hours of macabre behavior during the heist). Then he swiftly returned with the box, courageously snatched up the semiconscious Shelldone as though he were a small paperweight and plopped him in the box.

Sweating profusely, Joshwa shut the lid on the box and hoisted it heroically above his head. He then stealthily instructed Sharon in a valiant voice reminiscent of an early Schwarzenegger film, “Follow me.”

Together, Joshwa and Sharon streamed across the Reptilian Village towards the exit. Just as they were in full stride, a portly security guard pulled up to the front of the enclosure in a golf cart where Itzu was gushing blood and continuing to yell unintelligible expletives. In something out of a James Bond movie, Itzu shot all four wheels on the golf cart with his automated weapon and then chased after Joshwa and Sharon as they raced towards the back exit.

The three zoo pirates left behind a decimated golf cart, a shell-shocked security guard, a thick trail of blood, an empty tortoise enclosure and the majority of their integrity.