The Pigman by Paul Zindel Read Free Book Online Page A

gorilla. He was imitating Tarzan and going
AaaaaaaaayaaaaaaaaaH!
—which I don’t think was the most original performance that gorilla had ever seen. Can you imagine what gorillas must think after being in a zoo a few years and hearing practically every boy who comes to look at them go
AaaaaaaayaaaaaaaaH
? If that isn’t enough to give an animal paranoia, I don’t know what is.
    It was obvious that Mr. Pignati was going to visit awhile with Bobo, and John and I felt like we were intruding.
    “Miss Truman and I are going to get on the touring car,” John finally announced.
    “Yes….” Mr. Pignati muttered, tossing another peanut to Bobo.
    “Mr. Pignati, we’ll meet you back here in twenty minutes.” I wanted to make sure he understood.
    “I’ll be right here with Bobo—”
    “I’m sure you will,” John added as we went out of the monkey house and got on this mechanical contraption that came by. It looked like a train, and it had five cars with rubber wheels because it didn’t run on a track. It only went about four miles an hour, and it’s a good thing because this blond-haired boy driving the thing looked like he didn’t quite know what he was doing.
    I was getting full about this time because I had eaten more peanuts than Bobo, so I just sat back and watched the landscape drift by. We passed the bald eagle (which is also the nickname for the principal of our high school), the white-tailed deer, tahr goats, three white-bearded gnu, lions in a pit, one otter, a black leopard, a striped hyena (“a raider of graves”), two cheetahs that were fighting, four Bengal tigers, a Kodiak bear, an American bear, a polar bear, two hippos (“which secrete a fluid the color of blood all over their body”), an eight-ton bull elephant, and a giant anteater.
    By that time we were almost back to the Primate Building, so we jumped off the tiny train and watched the alligators being fed. They were in a big outdoor pool, and two attendants were throwing huge chunks of meat and bone right at them. They ate the bones and all. It really made me feel like gagging. I mean, I just don’t see any point in having animals like that running around on earth. I think God goofed in that department, if you ask me.
    When we got back to Mr. Pignati, he had a fresh supply of peanuts and was still chucking them over to Bobo, who kept flashing his dentures at him. Then John decided to strike up a conversation with the gorilla. Only the gorilla started to make these terrifying noises, and John started to make believe
he
was a monkey and began screaming back at the gorilla. I joined in finally and got this pair of chimpanzees going.
“Uggauggaboo”
I told them, and they knew right away it was a game.
    I thought Mr. Pignati was going to blow his top with all that nonsense going on because at first he just looked at us, and I don’t mean with a smile.
    Then I heard this
“Uggauggaboo,”
and I’ll be darned if it wasn’t Mr. Pignati starting in. And before you knew it, all three of us were going
Uggauggaboo
, and we had Bobo, two chimps, and the gorilla worked up into such a tizzy I thought the roof of the monkey house was going to fall in.
    “I’ll miss you, Bobo,” Mr. Pignati said as we were leaving.
    And when Bobo realized he wasn’t going to get any more peanuts, you should have seen the expression on his face!
    P.S. The answer to the snake quiz is that only statements five and six are true.

7
     
    I don’t happen to buy all of Lorraine’s stuff about omens. She talks about me distorting, but look at her. I mean, she thinks she can get away with her subliminal twists by calling them omens, but she doesn’t fool me. The only difference between her fibs and mine are that hers are eerie—she’s got a gift for saying things that make you anxious.
    I happen to have enjoyed that little trip to the zoo even if she didn’t. I think it was sort of nice that a baboon had a friend like Mr. Pignati. I’d say that baboon was @#$%