by Rosa Jordan
“At least we can help stop the ones left in the wild from getting captured,” Danny said firmly.
“We?” Wendy shot him an amused glance. “I thought you were the one going to the rainforest to work on ocelot conservation.”
“Yeah,” Danny grinned. “But it takes money to buy land and hire guards. I was thinking that you could go to schools and places and talk to people. Maybe take Radar and Santiago with you and explain about how wild cats are getting killed and their habitat is destroyed and all that. You could ask people to donate money to help create safe places for them. In the wild.”
Wendy stopped hammering for a minute, and thought about what Danny had said. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Santiago’s a little monster; I wouldn’t trust him as an ambassador for his species. But Radar loves attention.”
“Sure,” Danny said. “Just find a band to play ‘Wild Thing’ and he’d go anywhere.”
• • •
On the morning of New Year’s Day, they moved Lucky into her new enclosure. At first the young bobcat crouched on top of her den and swatted BB when he came too close. But little by little she became less hostile toward him. Soon they began playing chase-and-pounce games around their adjoining enclosures. Wendy and Danny watched for a long time to make sure BB didn’t get too rough with Lucky.
Finally, satisfied that they would be okay together, Wendy said, “Let’s go in. I’m freezing!”
It started snowing before they reached the house. After supper, it was still snowing hard. Just before bedtime, Wendy picked up a flashlight, and said, “Danny, I’m going out to check on the animals one more time, to see how they’re doing in this heavy snowfall. You want to come along?”
“Sure!” Danny jumped up from where he had been watching TV with Kyle, pulled on his jacket, and followed Wendy outside.
Velvet was in her shed in a deep bed of fresh hay that Danny had piled there earlier. She lay with her head folded back flat against her side, the way fawns sleep.
“It’s too bad she has to be alone,” Danny said.
“Yes,” Wendy agreed. “But I really don’t trust Machu and Picchu. They have accepted the cria, but I don’t know how they’d treat a fawn. Anyway, I have a better idea.”
“What?” Danny asked.
“In another three months it’ll be spring, which is when most fawns are born. I usually end up with a few that have been injured by dogs or an orphan whose mother got hit by a car. I was thinking that from now on, any fawn I get, I’ll put it with Velvet. That way, even if it has to be hand-fed for a few weeks, it’ll be with a member of its own species and not so likely to bond with humans. That might make it easier to release it back to the wild.”
“Yeah!” Danny’s eyes lighted with anticipation. “We could duct tape a bottle to Velvet’s belly and the fawn would think she was the one feeding it.”
Wendy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think we can count on Velvet being that co-operative. But I’m sure she’d snuggle with it at night.”
They walked on to the llama pen. The llamas were lying close together, sharing their warmth with each other. “If I had to sleep outdoors tonight,” Danny said, “I’d get right in the middle of that pile of llamas. That would be the warmest place, for sure.”
Zari and Kenya were in their den boxes, as they always were at night. Lucky and BB were inside, too. Were they in separate den boxes, or together?
“Now you see why all my den boxes have a little window on the side that backs up against the fence?” Wendy said. “It’s so when a cat hides in its den, I can slip around behind and peek in to make sure it’s okay.”
Wendy shined her flashlight through the window into BB’s den box, but it was empty. Then she walked over to Lucky’s den and beamed the light in there. There they were, so tightly curled together that you couldn’t tell where one body ended and the other began. The two young bobcats lifted their heads and blinked golden eyes in surprise at the unexpected visit.
“It’s just us, checking up on you,” Wendy whispered. “Go back to sleep!”
As they slipped away, Wendy said, “They looked so normal! As if they’d been living together ever since they were born.”
They walked on through the snow, which was now about a foot deep, toward the last pen. As Wendy turned the beam of the flashlight toward Namu’s enclosure, it caught a sudden wild movement. The lynx was rolling over and over in the snow. Then he leapt up and twirled like a dancer, his huge paws batting at the falling snow, which he couldn’t see, but could surely feel.
“Oh!” Wendy exclaimed in a low voice. “Can’t you just imagine him up in the Canadian wilderness, carrying on like that?”
“He wouldn’t survive,” Danny reminded her. “On account of being blind.”
“I know. Even if he was born in some snowy forest — and we don’t know if he was — there’s no way he could go back now.” She smiled. “But as long as he’s got a safe place and plenty to eat, maybe all it takes is a good snowstorm to make him feel normal.”
“Sometimes new normals are better than old ones,” Danny mused.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like Lucky and BB. They started off with their mothers in the wild but when their mothers died, they would’ve died, too, if somebody hadn’t rescued them. Then they got the idea that living in a house with people was normal, but it wasn’t. Now they’ve got a new normal with each other, which is probably going to be okay.”
“Looks like,” Wendy agreed.
For a long time they stood at the fence, watching the blind lynx frolic in the snow.
As they turned to leave, Danny asked, “If I figure out how to make more safe places for animals in the wild, will you help me?”
“Sure. I already said I would. You find the project and I’ll help.” Wendy laughed. “Or we’ll start our own. We can call it ‘do-it-yourself conservation on a shoestring.”
“I hope you don’t mind if it’s in South America.”
“Why South America? Because there are wild ocelots there?”
“Yeah. And llamas. Llamas are not endangered, but I still like them.”
“I know,” Wendy said, scooping a handful of snow into a ball and throwing it at Danny. “Because they spit.”
Danny grabbed a handful of snow and flung it back at her. “They have to. They can’t make snowballs, so they make spitballs.”
Laughing themselves silly, they ran slipping and sliding through the snow, back to the brightly lit farmhouse.
Acknowledgements
No one helped me more with this book than Tracy Wilson, upon whose life work the story is based. In addition, my veterinarian daughter Jona Jordan added her animal insights and know-how, especially regarding ferrets. Torey McCleskey also critiqued an early draft of the manuscript. Meanwhile, my partner Derek Choukalos was there from start to finish with every kind of support a writer needs, even to reminding me (often) of all the reasons why I should never try to make a pet of a wild cat.
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