There once was a man, whose name was Federico.  

He worked at the San Diego Zoo, but he never enjoyed his job. He fed the animals by throwing food into the creatures bowls and spilling it in the animals faces. 

He enraged them and caused them to throw their food back. He never cared for the animals either, so one day he decided to take a walk on the beach. And on that rainy day during his break, “that’s a beautiful shell!” he said, as he crouched next to the bright blue seashell.  

Federico surprised himself because he never took interest in seashells. He carefully picked up the shell and saw it was attached to a black leather rope. He blew off the sand but instead of the little grains of sand flying off, a sparkly blue mist circled around him. 

Suddenly, the blue mist circling around him flew up into the sky, then the rain abruptly stopped—startling him. He put on the necklace and ran back to his job. He felt something new and no longer felt annoyed. As he passed through the hallways he heard a lot of bustling, he kept walking to his office. The noise started getting louder. “That’s odd!” he thought.  

“Here comes that annoying little rat,” said the gorilla. 

“He is super annoying,” replied the giraffe. “Everyone can agree with that, even his co-workers because all he does is complain about his job saying, ‘I wish I could stay home playing video games.’”

“Oh my God!” exclaimed the ape. “Remember when he threw the ape chow into my face and onto my fur? I had to wash for an hour to get rid of the dried chow. It was annoying.”

Federico stopped and looked around and thought to himself, who said that? Walking slowly looking around the corner, he saw no one down the hall. He still heard the voices, kept walking towards the animal cages and stared at the animals.  

As he stared at them, he realized that the animals were the ones who were talking. “You can talk?” he exclaimed.  All the animals looked in his direction and stared. The giraffe approached the metal fence, and Federico looked up at the tall neck.  

The giraffe looked down at him and said, “You understand us?” 

Federico’s eyes slowly turned blank, and he fainted.  A few minutes later he woke up. Still, he couldn’t understand what had just happened. He got up, approaching the metal fence again, and stared at the gorilla with a focused stare. The gorilla looked at him and said, “can you understand us?” 

Federico’s eyes opened wide with surprise and he fainted again. 

To be continued . . . 

Federico finally woke up and accepted what was happening. He walked around the zoo staring at all the animals and watching carefully how they all complained about him. Murmuring and staring his way, all the animals except the panda had something to say about the way he had treated them. He stopped with his hands on both sides of his hips and said, “Why aren’t you saying anything?” 

The panda looked his way as he was chewing a peeled bamboo shoot. “When I was in the wild, there was a balance in life.”  

The zoo keeper got closer to the fence with interest. “Go on . . . ” he said.

“All the other animals give you a hard time because you are mad, and you are mad because they give you a hard time.” The zoo keeper crossed his arms and grabbed his chin with a thoughtful look as the panda kept chewing. “There is no balance,” the panda said.  

He walked away thinking about what the panda had said. The next day he went to work like he did every day, but this time he had brought treats.  He’d given an individual animal a treat and asked how they were feeling. Federico also asked, “What was difficult about living in the zoo?” 

He used the information and began to improve the animal’s way of living. In return, the animals were happy and more approachable. Now they had someone who could help their way of living. Federico would bring a different animal to the petting area during operation hours, and people were happy to approach the different animals and touch them. No other zoo was capable of such a thing. From that point on, Federico enjoyed going to work and made all the animals happy.