antiaircraft guns. On that clear day, the sky broke open and whistling fire hurtled down, cages exploded, moats rained upward, iron bars squealed as they wrenched apart. Wooden buildings collapsed, sucked down by heat. Glass and metal shards mutilated skin, feathers, hooves, and scales indiscriminately as wounded zebras ran, ribboned with blood, terrified howler monkeys and orangutans dashed caterwauling into the trees and bushes, snakes slithered loose, and crocodiles pushed onto their toes and trotted at speed. Bullets ripped open the aviary nets and parrots spiraled upward like Aztec gods and plummeted straight down, other tropicals hid in the shrubs and trees or tried to fly with singed wings. Some animals, hiding in their cages and basins, became engulfed by rolling waves of flame. Two giraffes lay dead on the ground, legs twisted, shockingly horizontal. The clotted air hurt to breathe and stank of burning wood, straw, and flesh. The monkeys and birds, screeching infernally, created an otherworldly chorus backed by a crackling timpani of bullets and bomb blasts. Echoing around the zoo, the tumult surely sounded like ten thousand Furies scratching up from hell to unhinge the world.
Antonina and a handful of keepers ran through the grounds, trying to rescue some animals and release others, while dodging injury themselves. Running from one cage to the next, she also worried about her husband, fighting at the front, "a brave man, a man of conscience; if even innocent animals aren't safe, what hope has he?" And when he returned, what would he find? Then another thought collided: Where was Kasia, the mother elephant, one of their favorites? At last she arrived at Kasia's enclosure, only to discover it leveled and her gone (already killed by a shell, Antonina would later learn), but she could hear two-year-old baby Tuzinka trumpeting in the distance. Many monkeys had died in a pavilion fire or were shot, and others hooted wildly as they scampered through the shrubs and trees.
Miraculously, some animals survived at the zoo and many escaped across the bridge, entering Old Town while the capital burned. People brave enough to stand by their windows, or unlucky enough to be outside, watched a biblical hallucination unfolding as the zoo emptied into Warsaw's streets. Seals waddled along the banks of the Vistula, camels and llamas wandered down alleyways, hooves skidding on cobblestone, ostriches and antelope trotted beside foxes and wolves, anteaters called out hatchee, hatchee as they scuttled over bricks. Locals saw blurs of fur and hide bolting past factories and apartment houses, racing to outlying fields of oats, buckwheat, and flax, scrambling into creeks, hiding in stairwells and sheds. Submerged in their wallows, the hippos, otters, and beavers survived. Somehow the bears, bison, Przywalski horses, camels, zebras, lynxes, peacocks and other birds, monkeys, and reptiles survived, too.
Antonina wrote of stopping a young soldier near the villa and asking: "Have you seen a large badger?"
He said: "Some badger banged and scratched on the villa door for a long time, but when we didn't let it in, it disappeared through the bushes."
"Poor Badger," she lamented as she pictured the family pet's frightened appeals at the door. After a moment, "I hope he managed to escape" clouded her mind, the heat and smoke resumed, her legs returned, and she ran to check on the bristlemaned horses from Mongolia. The other horses and donkeys—including her son's pony, Figlarz (Prankster)—lay dead in the streets, but somehow the rare Przywalski horses trembled upright in their pasture.
Antonia finally left the zoo and crossed Praski Park, between rows of linden trees haloed in fire, and headed back to the lampshade store downtown where she and her son sheltered. Blurred and drained, she tried to describe the plumes of smoke, the uprooted trees and grass, the blood-splattered buildings and carcasses. Then, when she felt a little calmer, she made
Antonina and a handful of keepers ran through the grounds, trying to rescue some animals and release others, while dodging injury themselves. Running from one cage to the next, she also worried about her husband, fighting at the front, "a brave man, a man of conscience; if even innocent animals aren't safe, what hope has he?" And when he returned, what would he find? Then another thought collided: Where was Kasia, the mother elephant, one of their favorites? At last she arrived at Kasia's enclosure, only to discover it leveled and her gone (already killed by a shell, Antonina would later learn), but she could hear two-year-old baby Tuzinka trumpeting in the distance. Many monkeys had died in a pavilion fire or were shot, and others hooted wildly as they scampered through the shrubs and trees.
Miraculously, some animals survived at the zoo and many escaped across the bridge, entering Old Town while the capital burned. People brave enough to stand by their windows, or unlucky enough to be outside, watched a biblical hallucination unfolding as the zoo emptied into Warsaw's streets. Seals waddled along the banks of the Vistula, camels and llamas wandered down alleyways, hooves skidding on cobblestone, ostriches and antelope trotted beside foxes and wolves, anteaters called out hatchee, hatchee as they scuttled over bricks. Locals saw blurs of fur and hide bolting past factories and apartment houses, racing to outlying fields of oats, buckwheat, and flax, scrambling into creeks, hiding in stairwells and sheds. Submerged in their wallows, the hippos, otters, and beavers survived. Somehow the bears, bison, Przywalski horses, camels, zebras, lynxes, peacocks and other birds, monkeys, and reptiles survived, too.
Antonina wrote of stopping a young soldier near the villa and asking: "Have you seen a large badger?"
He said: "Some badger banged and scratched on the villa door for a long time, but when we didn't let it in, it disappeared through the bushes."
"Poor Badger," she lamented as she pictured the family pet's frightened appeals at the door. After a moment, "I hope he managed to escape" clouded her mind, the heat and smoke resumed, her legs returned, and she ran to check on the bristlemaned horses from Mongolia. The other horses and donkeys—including her son's pony, Figlarz (Prankster)—lay dead in the streets, but somehow the rare Przywalski horses trembled upright in their pasture.
Antonia finally left the zoo and crossed Praski Park, between rows of linden trees haloed in fire, and headed back to the lampshade store downtown where she and her son sheltered. Blurred and drained, she tried to describe the plumes of smoke, the uprooted trees and grass, the blood-splattered buildings and carcasses. Then, when she felt a little calmer, she made
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