Sylvia pushes Nick’s pram toward the inner railing, beyond which the keepers will walk with their wheelbarrows of meat. Ted has lifted Frieda onto his shoulders and has moved in next to Sylvia. Along with the rest of the crowd, their voices are halted by the rising call of the lions. Sylvia can’t yet see them, but from the full-throated roaring, echoing now off the brick walls, she knows that the entire team of keepers has emerged, pushing their barrows. The huge Victorian barn of a building is rank with sour humidity and the glandular musk of lion. She knows this routine; as the lions pace, the keepers stop at each cage, their wheelbarrows piled high with great roasts of crumbling, brick-red horse meat. Each lion gets a hunk or two, lifted from the heap with a pronged stick and slid through a rectangular grate near the floor. Most of the lions crouch down immediately on their haunches, chewing great gobs of sinewy horseflesh; one or two usually get worked up over it, snarling and batting at the keepers through the bars as they pass.

But today, there’s something different happening. As the keepers break into view, Sylvia sees something furred and white in the pile on the barrows. It’s unmistakable. Rabbits.

The first keeper marks his chart, then lifts a rabbit in both rubber-gloved hands, holding it aloft on his wrists like a sacred offering before tucking it stiff through the grate. The lion stands and walks, loose gaited, toward the rabbit. He sniffs, and slowly drops, his face low. Huge amber eyes gaze at the crowd over a white rabbit muff. The keeper turns toward the visitors at the railing; people are asking questions. The fed lions begin to grow quiet, the deafening cacophony dying piecemeal as each voice fades.

The second keeper is approaching, hands gripping the wooden handles of a wheelbarrow piled with rabbits. Nearly in front of Sylvia he drops the handles, marks his chart, and begins to pick up a rabbit, but pauses. He leans toward the visitors’ railing, one gloved hand cupping his ear, the other resting lightly on the white fur. Ted’s hands are holding Frieda’s hands, and Sylvia senses that he’s about to lift her over his head and down to the floor. She knows he wants to go. Sylvia wants to see what happens with the rabbit; it and all the others are piled with their heads facing away from her, their pink-fleshed ears contracted over their backs, their bodies curled into sickles, spines rigid.

“—some of them just play with it. But I’ve saved a big one for him. He loves his bunny. This one’s nearly a stone.” The keeper before Sylvia turns his back to the zoo goers and picks up the rabbit under his hand. There is no blood, though clearly the guts have been scraped out. There is just a red hole.