The Koala

I was browsing the mystery section of the library when I found the koala.  I jumped back, dropping the books I had been holding.  I picked them up, not drifting my gaze from the marsupial.  I took steps behind me, using the shelves as a guide.  At the end of the row I turn and bolted for the first employee I saw.  He had a bushy beard and was sitting on the reading benches in the children section eating a burrito. 

            “Excuse me,” I called, “I need your help right now.”  He was listening to music, bopping his head as he took a sip of his drink.  I grabbed a hold of his arm.  “Come with me!” I said, as he dropped some of the meat filling on his oversized bowling shirt. 

            “Oh come on, it’s my lunch break!”  he said, managing to put his food down before I yanked him off his undersized seating and towards the animal infested aisle.  “What’s wrong with you lady?”  We turned into fourth row from the walls and I pulled him through the shelves.  Beside the bookend, however, there was no sign of any life.

            “Where is the koala?” I said, looking up and down the book-stacks. 

            “Why don’t you check the nonfiction section.” he huffed, and went back to his burrito.  I called for him to stay but to no avail�"he was gone and so was the damn koala.  I looked around a little more, but saw nothing that even resembled the furry creature.  I flipped through a few more mystery novels before realizing I brought the employee to the wrong aisle.  I turned around and dashed out the narrow space, bumping into an older gentleman on my way out.  I threw a sorry over my shoulder and stood in the center of the adjacent historical fiction sector.  The next person wearing a name tag was bespectacled, and returning used book to their shelf homes in the creative nonfiction section. 

            “Excuse me, what do you know about the koala?”

            “Nothing, but you could probably find it near the shark-o-lopedia in aisle 9 or�"

            “No no, it’s not a book, there’s a real koala in the mysteries!”

            “Maybe you’re looking for the Gunn Zoo books, they’re back there.” He said, pointing his lanky arm in the direction I came from.  He returned to his work, only after picking his pants out of his butt.  None of the employees would listen to me.  I asked every one I could find and they all told me to check the science categories, except for the smelly guy with the ponytail to told me it was on the shelf with the young adult vampire novels.

            After a few minutes of searching for someone who might listen, I gave up my search and returned to the aisle I started in.  I had lost track of the books I had been collecting and needed to start anew.  I gathered fresh books and approached the counter where the man with the burrito was standing to check out my books.  When he went to scan my final book, he opened the back cover to find no barcode. 

            “Could you go back and see if there’s another copy?  I can’t give you this one without a barcode, but the computer says there’s another one on the shelf.”  I turned and started back for the aisle in which I first saw the marsupial.  Searching the rows of novels, there was in fact one more print of this book�"How was I supposed to get it from under the koala?