Epiphany Ferrell
Instinctive
I listen at night to the sounds of screeching baby chimpanzees, and the snap of crocodile teeth. The nervous laughter of graduate students. My wife’s calm voice, urging them to record, to document.
She shows me video.
“This is ground-breaking,” she says. “Infant animals of disparate species vocalize distress, right? And we instinctively know the difference between contented sounds and frightened sounds.”
I nod so she’ll go on.
“Well, so do other animals. For some species, of course, hearing a frightened baby is like ringing a dinner bell.”
She pulls up a chair for me, scooches herself over so I can see the video. “Primate infants really let you know when they’re distressed, right? Chimps, bonobos. Humans. Now watch this.”
She hits play. I see her on the screen, sitting in a long, low boat with an outboard motor, a white awning covering most of it, giving the research team meagre shade.
“See,” she points at the screen with her pen. “We’ve got speakers set up there, and there, near the bank.” Her pupils are dilated, almost black in the computer blue light.
And then, our daughter’s voice, a whimper that escalates to a small cry. It’s our daughter’s pre-bath cry. Layla often protests at first. If we just give her a minute, she likes her bath. She splashes and giggles. If we just give her a minute.
I look at my wife. She watches the screen. “Jordan, watch,” she hisses.
Crocodiles slide off the bank, glide through the water to congregate near the speaker. They quickly lose interest.
I sit back. “She really didn’t like her bath that day,” I say, hating how judgey I sound. “She doesn’t usually cry that much.”
My wife waves me quiet. “The crocodiles responded to the sound—there was no visual or olfactory stimuli.”
Our baby wails. Really cries. A scared, pained cry that cuts my heart, takes me half-way to my feet in one motion.
A slender crocodile swims in from the edge of the water, comes within inches of the speaker, and waits there.
“You see?” my wife says, triumph in her voice. “She can hear there’s a baby in distress. She’s checking it out. You know, to see if she should help. Like there’s some instinct to help a baby, any baby. That’s our theory.”
“Why was she crying like that?”
My wife looks confused. “She’s not really making any noise.”
“Layla. Our daughter. Why is she crying like that?”
“It was her 12-month shots.” My wife is matter of fact. “It was a good opportunity.”
I’m still absorbing this when the cry comes again. This time, a huge crocodile bursts out of the water, snapping its teeth at the speaker. The scene wobbles as the grad student running the camera moves back with a soft “Whoa.”
“That was definitely predation, and that’s a male,” my wife says. “You see the difference?”
“Why was she crying like that at the doctor’s office? What do you mean it was a good opportunity? You just let her cry? You recorded it?”
“My God Jordan, it was only for a minute, she’s fine. It was three months ago. Did you notice any trauma from crying at the doctor? No, you didn’t.”
“You used our daughter as crocodile bait?”
“This is science, Jordan. We’re studying maternal versus predatory reaction to prey sounds. It contributes to the ongoing debate about maternal instincts.”
She’s looking at the screen again, her eyes following the crocodiles in the water. She puts on headphones, cutting me out, and over her shoulder, I watch crocodiles mill around in the water, sometimes lunging at the speaker or snapping at each other, excited to a frenzy by the sounds of our infant daughter shrieking uncomforted at the doctor’s office.
I go to our daughter’s room. She’s peaceful, her little fingers curled, her hair tousled. Crocodiles swim in the shadows, leer at me from the closet, peer with yellow eyes through the window. I can’t keep them away.
Epiphany Ferrell lives perilously close to the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail. Her stories appear in more than 70 journals and anthologies, including Ghost Parachute, New Flash Fiction Review, Bending Genres, and Best Microfiction. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, and a Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Prize recipient.
