AUGUST 19, 2020

A Tale of Two Geralds ~ A story written with Bill Kirton

Strength in Numbers describes the following image of meerkats used for episode 97 of the WordCount Podcast.

The theme of animals continues!

For this story, author Bill Kirton and I are collaborating again.

Bill started the story and wrote part 3, while I wrote part 2 and the conclusion. If you’d like to learn more about our process, feel free to read Bill’s post on it. It’s a great summary of what we do in case you want to collaborate on a project with another writer.

Listen to Bill and me reading the story here

The Wordcount Podcast will be ending after its 100th show! It’s been a great run for 10 years and Richard is moving on to other projects, so I hope you will have a listen!

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It used to be easy being a meerkat. Just living in a pack. Plenty of beetles and other insects to eat. Frogs, snails, even a few birds and lizards, and if you’re a vegetarian, well, the world’s your oyster. Also, if you’re tall, (like me, I’m over 12 inches), you’re one of the dominant ones, which means you do all the breeding and the smaller guys have to look after the pups, so it’s a pretty good life.

And, as I said, it used to be easy. That’s until that naturalist bloke came along and found we were made for TV. Now we’re all over the place – documentaries, pets, kids’ toys, even adverts for insurance companies. Meerkat heaven. At least, that’s what it seems like to non-meerkats, but I tell you, it’s made a helluva difference, in ways you’d never guess at.

Take Gerald, for example. That’s him in the shot with his back to the camera. He’s not very tall so, unlike me, he has to do most of the looking after the kids and that stuff. Or, rather, that’s how he used to be. He’s not all that bright, either, so he often used to get things wrong. The rest of us had to keep reminding him to know his place, and just get on with his child-minding jobs.

Then along comes that BBC crew. They didn’t bother us, just pointed their cameras and the presenter guy would sit nearby whispering stuff about us. Some of it was quite interesting, quite instructive. We listened, but mostly we just got on with being meerkats, standing tall to keep an eye out for predators, looking cute without really trying to, that sort of thing.

But Gerald felt left out of it. Because of his size, he wasn’t in shot much. He was sort of hidden in the bunch. That’s why he got fed up with it and turned his back to the camera. Of course, as meerkats, all of the rest of us were looking in the same direction. And one of the cameramen spotted him and started telling the others about him and soon they were all ignoring us and pointing their cameras at him, trying to get close-ups, even shooing some of us out of the way to get better angles. At least, that’s what they were saying.

So, suddenly, Gerald’s a star, and he starts behaving like one. Says he wants to be alone. Imagine that, a meerkat asking to be alone! He won’t get the kids’ breakfast, refuses to change nappies. In fact, in a way, he stops acting like a meerkat at all. And, weirdly, rather than seeing the way he was behaving as a sort of betrayal, some of the females started fancying him, and the whole structure of the pack began to crumble.

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Charlotte Anderson found herself slumped over the armrest when the sound of music woke her up. She pulled herself upright on the couch. She’d drifted in and out of sleep while watching TV—again. Since the pandemic hit more than three months ago, her nightly pattern had morphed into the following:

Wine with a friend over Zoom before dinner. Wine with dinner. Wine with her feet up while watching a show.

She’d become non discriminatory about almost everything—dinner was whatever she had the energy to throw together, wine was the cheapest she could find at the local store, and the nightly show was whatever would hold her interest for more than ten seconds.

Tonight, Animal Planet featured some odd creatures that caught her attention, so she stuck with the program. That was, until she fell asleep. The credits were rolling now, so she’d missed most of the hour-long episode. One thing she remembered was the narrator talking about Gerald. It was probably the name of the scientist or animal activist or producer of the show.

The name stuck because her husband’s name was Gerald, described as he was in the program, short, famous (at least in his own mind), and had a way with women. He certainly wooed her tirelessly when they first met. Their marriage, a love affair headed toward its thirtieth year, would’ve been celebrated like no other. They had planned a two-week tour of Europe—Rome, Milan, then Barcelona, and lastly to Paris—their favourite city in the world where they had honeymooned. She even booked the same room in the same hotel in the 5th Arrondissement.

It took her six months to plan the trip.

It took only two days to plan Gerald’s funeral. She couldn’t even be by his side during his final hours.

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The funeral itself did nothing to mark the new beginning for which she was hoping. Her husband’s presence was still everywhere, in the rooms she used, the day by day choices she made. Then, just a month into her widowhood, almost by accident, she found herself watching a repeat of the Animal Planet episode featuring her husband’s meerkat namesake. And this time, the hypnotic repetition of those two syllables ‘Ger’ ‘Ald’ kept her focus stolidly on the behaviours of the cute little onscreen creature. To her surprise, she stopped flinching at the frequent repetition of the name and began, instead, to identify it with the beast and its antics. So much so that, when the show ended, her first thought was to google the details of the programme’s makers and dash off a quick email congratulating them on their achievement and indulging herself in outlining what for her were the show’s highlights.

Of course, in the pack we knew nothing of all this. We heard the film crew talking of how some woman named Charlotte had written to them about their professionalism and achievements, but they were used to the adulation of lonely animal lovers. When we heard what she said about Gerald though, well, he became intolerable. She’d not only identified him as the star of the show, she’d suggested that the rest of us in the pack, the taller meerkats and the females, should perhaps be trained to resemble him and ape his behaviours.

The producers were all members of the Association of Certified Applied Animal Behaviourists and had masters’ degrees in biological or behavioural science and at least thirty semester credits of behavioural science, including ethnology, animal behaviour, animal learning and psychology, so they knew they should ignore her and rather than mess with evolution, just bask in the glow of her enthusiastic approval. But the rest of us had to actually live with Gerald’s bloated ego and its constant manifestations of his supposed superiority. Not only was he constantly surrounded by females wanting to bear his offspring, but he now had what he called ‘irrefutable proof’ that his genetic inheritance would necessitate a thorough reconsideration of the basics of Darwinian theory.

Of course, that meant it was up to me, as one of the pack leaders, to arrange a meeting with the BBC to deal with such potentially harmful revolutionary suggestions.

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They say that opposites attract, and this was certainly the case with Charlotte and Gerald. They had never really been tested in their marriage—two wonderful children, four grandchildren, annual holidays, and no money worries whatsoever. Gerald’s savvy business dealings saw to it that they were always comfortable.

Like Gerald the meerkat, Charlotte’s husband revelled in going against the crowd. “I think for myself” he said, proudly on many an occasion. “Those who don’t, are merely followers.”

For years, she admired this mantra from her husband. That is, until she binge watched all the meerkat episodes on Animal Planet, paying special attention to Gerald’s antics on the show. Only now could she reframe her husband’s words.

The epiphany gave her the strength to hound the producers of Animal Planet until they agreed to a call with her and their head writer, Steve Kent.

“Gerald is like a petulant child,” Charlotte said to him, when they finally spoke. “He thinks for himself, but it doesn’t mean his thoughts are well informed.”

“Yes, Mrs. Anderson, but he has star power,” said Steve. “His individualism makes him unique.”

Charlotte took a laboured breath. “Unique, yes, but perhaps he’s merely being a contrarian for the sake of it. He refuses to be a follower, but it will create mutiny and dissent within the tribe. I tell you this as a cautionary tale.”

“Oh?” said the writer.

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “I told you my husband died of Covid.”

“I know, my condolences,” he said. “These are difficult times.”

“They are, but what I didn’t tell you is I have since tested positive, and it doesn’t look good for me. Gerald did not follow the rules, and he died. That was his Karma. I did everything right, yet I will still die because he infected me.”

An uncomfortable silence ensued until the writer said, “I’m sorry, life is unfair, isn’t it? Unfortunately, we are a TV show, and we need to appease our sponsors. The viewing audience wants to see its star.”

“Yes, but—”

“Look …” he said, “I’m truly sorry that you are sick, but I think you’re confusing Gerald, our meerkat with your husband. Gerald is an animal, and animals don’t have human traits. He’s doing his own thing, and it has no bearing on his relationship with the rest of the pack.”

“He’s part of the pack,” Charlotte said, “Of course his behaviour affects them.”

“I must hang up now. Our time is up,” said the writer. “I wish you well, Mrs. Anderson.”

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A week later as Charlotte scrolled through the online BBC news, a picture of a meerkat caught her eye. The headline read “Good-bye Gerald.”

She took a deep breath before reading the article:

Animal Planet regrets to announce that Gerald, the star of the meerkat series has died suddenly. He sustained fatal injuries while inside his social group.

An investigation shows he was bitten multiple times by a predator, but the film crew has found no sign of any known enemy in the vicinity.

The rest of the pack is not talking.

PS. Bill HATED my ending and actually wrote an alternate one. Maybe he’ll share that on his blog one day!