Mysteries in Our National Parks: Deadly Waters: A Mystery in Everglades National Park. Gloria Skurzynski

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      Olivia nodded. “And we’re glad to have you stay here with us, Bridger, until your dad gets well.”

      “Thanks, ma’am. Dad got slammed pretty bad on his last ride in Jackson Hole. Rest of the rodeo’s moved on, but Dad’s gonna be in that rehab place for a while longer. After he gets out, we’ll go back to the bulls and broncs on the circuit.” He could understand it, he’d told Olivia, that she didn’t know about his dad, her being a woman and all.

      That’s when Jack had figured out that Bridger viewed the world differently, with girls on one side, guys on the other. And now, after being in Florida for less than a day, he’d announced to Jack that guys were hunters and girls weren’t, as if everything and everyone fit neatly into life’s spaces.

      “Look!” Ashley exclaimed. “The alligator’s coming back again.”

      The gator’s snout had broken through the upside-down tree reflections, making the branches ripple on the water’s surface. Once again the big jaws opened and snapped, and this time the gator caught his dinner—a red-bellied turtle.

      “I can’t watch!” Ashley cried as the powerful jaws crunched right through the turtle’s shell. “It’s horrible!”

      “Gator’s got to eat,” Bridger said again. “Right, Jack?”

      Jack was so intent on capturing the scene that he didn’t answer. He fired off shots as if his camera were a machine gun spitting bullets. The pictures wouldn’t be pretty, but they’d be powerful.

      With a final crushing bite, the gator flung back its neck and gulped down its prey, then slowly lowered itself into the murky water.

      “Right, Jack?” Bridger asked again.

      “Let’s go find Mom and Dad,” was all Jack answered.

      CHAPTER TWO

      “Spray me, Mom.” Ashley stretched out both arms as her mother took aim with the can of bug repellent. “Mosquitoes sure do love you, honey,” Olivia said, covering Ashley’s arms with a fine mist. “Turn around so I can get the backs of your legs. Maybe you should have worn jeans, like Bridger, instead of those shorts.”

      “Jeans are too hot,” Ashley answered. “Anyway, it’s not fair. I get all chewed up, and Jack hardly has any mosquito bites at all.”

      Their father, Steven, said, “It’s because you’re so sweet, Ashley.”

      She started to giggle. “That must mean you’re sour, Jack.”

      “Hey, I can handle personal rejection from mosquitoes,” Jack answered. “No problem! But I’ll put a few squirts of that stuff on me, too, just in case.” The bite of insect repellent filled his nose as Jack squirted his skin. “Here you go, Bridger,” he said, ready to toss the canister, except that Bridger held up his hands like a traffic cop.

      “Don’t need it,” he said, which was probably true. Bridger was so covered up by his long-sleeved plaid shirt, blue jeans, boots, and Western hat that any mosquito would have had a hard time finding a place to land on him.

      Olivia raised her eyebrows. “You sure about that, Bridger? Try guessing how many different species of mosquitoes live in the Everglades.”

      “Don’t know,” Bridger said.

      “Twenty!” Ashley guessed.

      “Nope. Forty-three. But only the females bite.”

      Bridger asked, “So why don’t they get rid of the mosquitoes? You know, spray stuff from airplanes and kill them all?”

      “Can’t do it,” Steven answered, scratching his wrist where an early-breakfasting mosquito had already sampled him. “Much as we don’t like mosquitoes, they’re part of the ecosystem.”

      Bridger frowned. “Eco—what?”

      “That means,” Olivia began, “that all the creatures in the Everglades are linked together. Mosquitoes lay eggs that hatch into something called wrigglers, and they get eaten by Gambusia. That’s the scientific name, but usually they’re called mosquitofish. Other fish eat the mosquitofish: snook, snapper, redfish—the ones you’ll be fishing for today, Bridger. And then, of course, birds eat the fish, and other animals eat the birds, all the way up to the biggest animals in the park. If you take out the mosquitoes, everything gets affected.”

      “I get it,” Bridger said, nodding. “Chain reaction.”

      “No spraying for bugs, huh?” Jack considered that. “So then it can’t be pesticides that are making the manatees sick.”

      “Actually, the park people checked out another possibility, Jack, that herbicides used to kill weeds in the canals might have washed into the Everglades waters. But when they did the necropsies on the dead manatees—”

      “What’re ‘necropsies,’ Mom?” Ashley interrupted.

      “A necropsy is an autopsy on an animal. Anyway, the necropsies didn’t show any high level of herbicides in the manatees’ tissues. So it’s something else,” she told them, frowning. “And the biggest part of the puzzle is why only about 20 percent of the manatees are getting sick. The rest seem just fine. That’s the reason they brought me here: to find out what's happening with these sick sea cows.”

      “Cows?” Bridger asked, his pale brows knitting together.

      “Not your kind of cows,” Steven answered, laughing. “Sea cow is just another name for manatee, and not a very accurate name. Manatees are distant relatives of—get this!—of elephants.” Olivia put the half-empty can of bug spray into Jack’s camera bag as she added, “They call them cows because they graze on plants all day, just like dairy cows.”

      “OK, everybody,” Steven called out, “time to get into the car. Frankie will be waiting at the dock.”

      As the three kids jammed side by side in the car’s backseat, Ashley explained to Bridger, “Frankie was my grandmother’s friend even before my mom was born.”

      “Hmmm,” Bridger murmured, peering out the car window. Not too far from them, the waters of the bay sparkled in the sunlight. As Steven maneuvered the car along a palm-lined two-lane road, past houses that looked like boxes with legs, Bridger asked, “How come all these houses are built up on stilts like that?”

      “Hurricanes?” Jack suggested, and his father agreed, “Uh-huh. When hurricanes cause big waves to surge up over the land, houses built high on pilings don’t get damaged as much.”

      “Looks like they could just get up and walk away,” Bridger murmured.

      “Yeah, they do look like that. That’s a good one, Bridger,” Steven told him, grinning as they pulled over in front of a general store near the water.

      Ashley shouted, “There’s Frankie, waiting for us.”

      Scanning the sidewalk in front of the store, Bridger started to say, “I don’t see—” But by then Ashley СКАЧАТЬ