10 Is It Stealing if it Isn't Wanted?

The car bumped as it sped along the roads. Despite the lack of ice during the wintertimes, potholes still covered the asphalt. Adah sat in the passenger seat, petri dishes and test tubes clinking in her pockets as they sped over the holes. She was empty-mindedly scrolling through her phone instead of thinking about her task.

She was stealing from an animal shelter.

If you think of it that way, its very immortal. But really, animals that shed fur don't really need that fur so it was more of…. Recycling if anything. Nevertheless, she did feel like it was a tiny bit shifty.

She continued to feel that swarm of not butterflies, but bees in her stomach as they slid down the final patch of road to the Center. The ground here was smooth, looked after by the Center's rich donors.

The road emptied out into a parking lot which accompanied two buildings. To the right was the normal shelter, for cats, dogs, and the occasional horse or pig. The building in the center was three stories tall, shaped like and L, and had an odd colonial feel. That was the office. And to the left was the fun place: the rehabilitation clinic.

A barbed wire fence bordered it to prevent its inmates (mountain lions and coyotes, mainly) from escaping. The large dome of aviary was visible over a set of tin-roof buildings that housed the animals during rain.

Mama unlocked the car doors and she exited the car at the same time as Adah. "Stay safe," Mama said to her.

"I will," Adah promised as she strode up to the entrance. Humid air weighed her lungs down as she breathed in, finally prepared for her task.

She knocked at the glass window of the admittance office. The supervisor turned around from the computer screens they were watching.

"Ah, Adah," the supervisor said. "Nice to see you."

"Nice to see you too," Adah replied. "What is there to do today?"

"Replace the pine straw in the mountain lion and brown bear area," the supervisor told her. Adah was not scared of that, she knew that when she went in to clean the animals would be locked into the buildings that were also used for when it stormed.

Adah padded into the employees office and loaded up a push cart with pine straw, shovels, a bucket, and some other things. She wheeled down the concrete path towards the mountain lion area. As she replaced the straw, she was on the look out for any strands of fur.

At last, she found some. She looked at the security camera, decided she didn't look too suspicious, and shoved them into an open petri dish in her pocket. She closed it by thwacking her elbow against it when turning around. It hit her funny bone, and she winced.

Before she moved to the brown bear area, she decided to stop in the aviary. She was able to collect a few feathers there from a bald eagle and a red tailed hawk. Then, she moved along to the brown bear area.

Brown bears are not native to Alabama. This one was kept as an exotic pet by someone until Animal Control found out. This bear, nicknamed Honey by the staff, was awaiting transfer to Pennsylvania.

A beep rung on her phone. Adah slit it out and saw it was Asher. [All going well?] It asked.

Adah stopped pushing the cart. She took of the protective gloves to reply. [Yes. Mountain lion, eagle, hawk.]

[Try and get some coyote and bear,] Asher told her after a second.

[Already on my way to bears,] Adah replied.

[Good,] Asher affirmed, sending a smiley face emoji. Coming from him, it was a tiny bit creepy, but she knew her twin was probably only trying to be encouraging.

How will I get coyote fur? Adah thought as she made her way to the bear area.

She began to clean it, and as she held a bundle of pine straw an idea came to her. The dirty pine straw! Only on wednesdays was the garbage tossed, and most of that garbage was pine straw.

I'll have to go dumpster diving, she realized.

She finished up the task and ran the push cart over to the dumpster. Before she threw the pine straw in, she kneeled down on the lid of the bin next to it and began to dig through. Eventually, she found a couple of tufts of fur from what she could only assume was coyotes.

Then, after she put the pine straw in, she texted Asher. [Done.]

Asher gave that a thumbs up reaction and then went into the group chat with their other friends to say, [Mission success! We meet tomorrow at 12 at my house. Lunch is on me.]