The One and Only Ivan Read Free

He says we are losing money hand over fist. He says he is going to sell the whole lot of us.
    When Thelma, a blue and yellow macaw, demands “Kiss me, big boy” for the third time in ten minutes, Mack throws a soda can at her. Thelma’s wings are clipped so that she can’t fly, but she still can hop. She leaps aside just in the nick of time. “Pucker up!” she says with a shrill whistle.
    Mack stomps to his office and slams the door shut.
    I wonder if my visitors have grown tired of me. Maybe if I learn a trick or two, it will help.
    Humans do seem to enjoy watching me eat. Luckily, I am always hungry. I am a gifted eater.
    A silverback must eat forty-five pounds of food a day if he wants to stay a silverback. Forty-five pounds of fruit and leaves and seeds and stems and bark and vines and rotten wood.
    Also, I enjoy the occasional insect.
    I am going to try to eat more. Maybe then we will get more visitors. Tomorrow I will eat fifty pounds of food. Maybe even fifty-five.
    That should make Mack happy.

bob
    I explain my plan to Bob.
    â€œIvan,” he says, “trust me on this one: The problem is not your appetite.” He hops onto my chest and licks my chin, checking for leftovers.
    Bob is a stray, which means he does not have a permanent address. He is so speedy, so wily, that mall workers long ago gave up trying to catch him. Bob can sneak into cracks and crevices like a tracked rat. He lives well off the ends of hot dogs he pulls from the trash. For dessert, he laps up spilled lemonade and splattered ice cream cones.
    I’ve tried to share my food with Bob, but he is a picky eater and says he prefers to hunt for himself.
    Bob is tiny, wiry, and fast, like a barking squirrel. He is nut colored and big eared. His tail moves like weeds in the wind, spiraling, dancing.
    Bob’s tail makes me dizzy and confused. It has meanings within meanings, like human words. “I am sad,” it says. “I am happy.” It says, “Beware! I may be tiny, but my teeth are sharp.”
    Gorillas don’t have any use for tails. Our feelings are uncomplicated. Our rumps are unadorned.
    Bob used to have three brothers and two sisters. Humans tossed them out of a truck onto the freeway when they were a few weeks old. Bob rolled into a ditch.
    The others did not.

    His first night on the highway, Bob slept in the icy mud of the ditch. When he woke, he was so cold that his legs would not bend for an hour.
    The next night, Bob slept under some dirty hay near the Big Top Mall garbage bins.
    The following night, Bob found the spot in the corner of my domain where the glass is broken. I dreamed that I’d eaten a furry doughnut, and when I woke in the dark, I discovered a tiny puppy snoring on top of my belly.
    It had been so long since I’d felt the comfort of another’s warmth that I wasn’t sure what to do. Not that I hadn’t had visitors. Mack had been in my domain, of course, and many other keepers. I’d seen my share of rats zip past, and the occasional wayward sparrow had fluttered in through a hole in my ceiling.
    But they never stayed long.
    I didn’t move all night, for fear of waking Bob.

wild
    Once I asked Bob why he didn’t want a home. Humans, I’d noticed, seem to be irrationally fond of dogs, and I could see why a puppy would be easier to cuddle with than, say, a gorilla.
    â€œEverywhere is my home,” Bob answered. “I am a wild beast, my friend: untamed and undaunted.”
    I told Bob he could work in the shows like Snickers, the poodle who rides Stella.
    Bob said Snickers sleeps on a pink pillow in Mack’s office. He said she eats foul-smelling meat from a can.
    He made a face. His lips curled, revealing tiny needles of teeth.
    â€œPoodles,” he said, “are parasites.”

picasso
    Mack gives me a fresh crayon, a yellow one, and ten pieces of paper. “Time to earn your keep, Picasso,” he mutters.
    I wonder who