Tahoe Blowup

by Todd Borg

  “Your dog presumably carried the lion by lightly clamping his teeth onto the back of the lion’s neck. That is a typical way for a mother to carry her offspring. The M.O., so to speak, is one of gentleness. The skin is loose and the fur thick. There would be much to bite onto without substantially hurting the animal.” The doctor pointed. “When we shaved her neck we found contusions here and here, consistent with being carried that way.”

  “So my dog caused none of the bleeding?”

  “No.” She lifted slightly on the lion’s neck. “A single bullet entered under this bandage, here, and lodged against one of the cervical vertebrae. It rotated as it passed through the soft tissue and did considerable damage, primarily to the windpipe and esophagus, but we think we’ve made sufficient repairs. One of the smaller arteries was severed and that led to substantial loss of blood.” Selma Peralta walked around the lion’s head and lifted an eyelid. “However, if we can prevent infection and keep her stabilized, she will likely recover from the gunshot.”

  “Will you be able to release her back into the wild?”

  “That’s the major question. The psychological and physical trauma will have serious effects on her after she is released. Will she successfully hunt? Gain her strength back? For a predator to survive in the wild without succumbing to the elements or other competitors requires nearly picture-perfect health.”

  “You don’t sound optimistic,” I said.

  “I’m not. Typically, such an animal will give up hunting and instead come into populated areas in hopes of finding food. If that happens she will be shot unless an appropriate zoo can be found to take her.”

  “Did you get the bullet out?”

  “Yes. It is over here.” She walked over to a counter, picked up a small jar and handed it to me.

  I held the jar up to the light. The deformed slug was small, but hadn’t disintegrated.

  “Can you tell what kind of gun was used?” the doctor asked.

  “I’m not positive, but it looks like a twenty-two caliber, far too small to effectively hunt big game with. I suspect that the shooter wasn’t hunting. More likely it was someone who was shooting wildlife just for kicks. And, if the shooter is sufficiently sick, there might be more kicks in merely wounding an animal with small caliber fire and letting it die slowly than in killing it fast with a big round.”

  Dr. Selma Peralta looked ill.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound too macabre.”

  “No, you are describing the real world. People like me need to face such things.”

  “May I keep the bullet? I’ll have some tests done, see if we can learn about the gun that fired it.”

  “Certainly.”

  “How much longer will the lion be in your care?” I asked.

  “A week to ten days. Hopefully she’ll be well enough to transfer to a holding facility for cats. Then, after two or three months she might be well enough to be released back into the mountains. We’ll know in a matter of a few days. If she isn’t up and angry by then we’ll probably be out of luck.

  “Angry?”

  “Yes. The hope is that she’ll be pacing and snarling at us, the feistier the better. A subdued cat can never make it back in the wilderness.”

  Selma looked up at the clock on the wall. “I better get going.”

  We left the room and took the stairs up a single flight to the ground floor.

  “I have what may seem like an unusual request,” I said to the vet as we left the building and walked down one of the campus sidewalks. “When the lion gets better, I’m wondering if we might let my dog see her.”

  Selma Peralta frowned at me, as if I were suddenly revealing some craziness that had previously escaped her. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Have you ever worked with search and rescue dogs?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve read a bit about it, but never seen them at work.”

  “When they recover a dead body they get depressed, sometimes profoundly so. The dogs have a clear sense of mission and duty, and a dead find makes them feel like failures. I’m afraid that’s what my dog is going through, and I exacerbated his depression by making him feel as if he were responsible for the lion’s injuries.”

  “You’re hoping that your dog will feel better if he can see the lion up and relatively healthy.”

  “Yes,” I said. “If, during a search, a dog makes a dead find, we arrange a live find to cheer the dog up.”

  “You mean you fake it, have someone hide and let the dog find them?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But it will take several days before we expect any noticeable improvement. Don’t you think your dog will have forgotten all about it by then?”

  “Possibly, but I think it will be worth a try.”

  We came to an intersection in the sidewalks and Selma Peralta indicated that she was heading toward the edge of campus where the parking lots were.

  “You seem like a very dedicated dog owner,” she said.

  “No more than usual. I just have a very depressed dog. Perhaps you’d care to take a look. He’s in my car over in this next lot.” I pointed off to the right.

  The vet nodded and we were at the Jeep in a minute.

  “Hey, Spot,” I said as I opened the rear passenger door. “I want you to meet Selma. She’s a dog doctor.”

  Spot was lying on the seat. He did not lift his head. I stepped aside so Selma Peralta could take a look. She leaned in the door and pet him. “Hi, Spot. I hear you’re not feeling well.” Selma gently ran her hands over Spot, feeling under his jawbone and under his armpits. “Now that I see his size I can understand how he dragged that lion up the mountain.” She felt Spot’s ribs. “Has he been drinking and eating?”

  “Not to speak of. I think he’s lost some weight.”

  The vet lifted Spot’s jowls and looked at his gums, pressing her finger against them and watching the pink color slowly return. “He’s pale and quite dehydrated,” she said. He needs fluid.” She looked at her watch. “I don’t have enough time to...”

  “I’ve taken enough of your time,” I interrupted. “I’ll bring him by my local vet.”

  Selma looked relieved. “Good,” she said, turning back to Spot. “I don’t want to alarm you, but you should do it first thing. The dehydration appears significant.”

  “I’ll stop at Doctor Siker’s the moment we get back to Tahoe.”

  Selma Peralta gave me a polite smile. “With fluid and time he’ll get better. And, yes, I’ll make sure he can visit the lion when she gets better. Do you have a card? I’ll call when the time is right.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  On the way back up to Tahoe I caught a weather report that said the current high pressure zone over the Tahoe Basin would be hotter and last longer than previously expected. We could expect even stronger afternoon winds than previously forecast. It was a troubling report, a prescription, especially after a long, dry summer, for deadly forest fires.

  I went directly to Dick Siker’s animal hospital when I got back to Tahoe. He took one look at Spot and agreed with Selma Peralta’s assessment that my dog was in trouble. We left Spot in the Jeep and Dick brought out a large, clear bag of fluid with a tube and needle.

  “You figure an IV will do the trick?” I asked.

  “Not an IV. I’m not putting this into a vein, just under his skin. It will kind of slosh around in there until it is gradually absorbed into his system.”

  He inserted the needle under the loose skin at the base of Spot’s neck, then gave the bag of fluid a gentle squeeze. In a few minutes the liquid was transferred and Dick pulled the needle out. “He’s going to leak a little out of the needle puncture, but don’t worry about it. Bring him home and make him rest. He’ll be better tomorrow. Give me a call and let me know how he’s doing.”

  I thanked Dick Siker and drove home.

  The vet wasn’t kidding about sloshing and leaking. Spot’s neck skin ballooned when he stood up to get out
of the car and it wobbled like an out-of-balance washing machine as he walked into the house. And instead of the gentle wet leak I expected to find in the neck fur, water dripped out at a rate that would prompt a quick call to the plumber if it were my faucet instead of my dog. I filled Spot’s bowl with food, but he immediately lay down in the corner.

  I unwrapped a new leather dog bone and while he didn’t show any enthusiasm, he at least took it from me, a sign that we were approaching détente. After getting a beer, I sat down cross-legged on the floor next to him, lifted his head over my thigh and told him the story of Pussy Cat while he chewed on the leather bone and slobbered all over my pants.

  It was late in the afternoon and I still hadn’t had any lunch. I figured someone in the house should eat, so I went to the kitchen to grab a bite. I was pulling out sandwich fixings when my cell phone rang.

  “Owen McKenna,” I answered.

  “Owen, this is Linda Saronna.” Her voiced was rushed. “We’ve got a ground fire off High Mountain Road, just below Tallac Properties. It’s small, about sixty feet by two hundred, but it’s growing fast and heading up a meadow toward a large stand of dead Lodgepole pine. Not too far above the trees are several houses.”

  “I’m on my way,” I said into my phone as I pulled Spot with me out to my Jeep.

  FIFTEEN

  I raced through town and headed out Lake Tahoe Blvd. toward a growing plume of smoke only to find that a squad car and two El Dorado County Sheriff vehicles with their lights flashing had blocked the entrance to High Mountain Road. I didn’t see anyone I knew and the two cops standing there waved me off.

  I jumped out of the Jeep. “My name’s Owen McKenna. I’m assigned to this fire by Linda Saronna. I need to get through.”

  They looked at me blankly. “Sorry, buddy,” one of them said. “I don’t know any Linda whats-her-name. You’re going to have to leave.”

  “She runs the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the Forest Service. She’s in charge of this fire.”

  “Let me check,” the cop said. He spoke into his walkie talkie. “Okay,” he said in a minute. “Captain Mallory said he’s parked by the last turn before Tallac Ridge Road. He wants you to find him when you get up there.”

  I got back in the Jeep, they stood aside and waved me through.

  High Mountain Road climbs up a relatively small, forested bump that rises one thousand feet above the valley floor. Most people don’t even notice it because it is so over-shadowed by the cliff face of Mount Tallac directly behind it. The housing development called Tallac Properties sits on the side of a ridge that extends out from High Mountain. The area looks down on Fallen Leaf Lake, a large, glacier-cut finger of water that stretches like a reflecting pond across the entire front of Mount Tallac. As Hollywood movie producers have discovered, Fallen Leaf Lake is perhaps the prettiest body of water in the entire Sierra Nevada.

  As I drove fast up the shallow incline, the plume of smoke above me grew larger and darker. Where the road stopped climbing I saw a blackened meadow off to the side in the forest. The fire had already moved out of the meadow and into the trees that surrounded the neighborhood houses.

  The first junction in the road was clogged with more squad cars and fire engines. I pushed the button to roll down the window as I eased through the congestion toward the fire. Firemen ran by me dragging a long hose. Loud radios squawked. People shouted. In the distance a child screamed. Behind the human commotion I heard the frightening sounds of the fire, the pop of green pine cones exploding, the cracking sounds of overheated branches, and the steady low roar of the fire wind.

  I pulled the Jeep off the road and into the woods, out of the way of the firemen and far enough back that I didn’t think the falling embers would land on it. As I walked toward the center of the activity it was clear that the fire had grown dramatically from what Linda Saronna described. She had mentioned a stand of Lodgepole pine above the meadow where the fire had apparently started. I saw that the trees were now fully involved and the flames roared a hundred feet into the air. Three groups of firemen directed their water cannons at the flames. I hurried forward and found Mallory next to his unmarked Explorer. He was yelling into a radio. He saw me and held up a finger. I trotted toward him.

  “McKenna!” he called out as I approached.

  We had to yell to be heard over the surrounding noise.

  “Linda Saronna says you’ve been working with the Forest Service!”

  “Tahoe Douglas F.P.D. hired me,” I yelled back, “but it’s obviously a group effort. How many houses are there on the other side of those flames?”

  “Five or six I think,” Mallory said.

  Any evidence of arson?”

  Mallory shook his head. “Nothing obvious yet,” he yelled back. The whump, whump of an approaching chopper made talking even more difficult. “The way this sucker is growing our only concern right now is evacuating the neighborhood.”

  The chopper whirled into view. Swinging on a cable in a wide arc below it was a bucket. The chopper pilot made a tight turn and the bucket swung out over the flames. The water that showered into the flames looked like a tiny gray splash against the black smoke, although I realized it was probably thousands of gallons. The chopper continued its tight turn and dropped down to Fallen Leaf Lake for a refill.

  “Have you seen Linda?” I yelled.

  Mallory pointed through some trees. “She was next to a Forest Service rig over there a few minutes ago.”

  The light green Forest Service trucks were easy to distinguish from the red trucks of the South Lake Tahoe Fire Department. I ran over and found Linda conferring with Joey Roberts, one of the South Lake Tahoe F.D. Battalion Chiefs. Linda looked very distressed. The circles under her eyes were dark blue and her eyelids were puffy red. It looked like she had been crying, although I realized it was more likely the smoke. As I approached, a Tahoe Douglas Fire Department pickup roared up and jerked to a stop. Terry Drier jumped out and ran over to Joey Roberts.

  He yelled as he approached. “Thought I’d bring some help from the Nevada side!”

  Joey yelled back, “We’ve already got half the vehicles from this end of the lake on this torch job, but it doesn’t look good. What did you bring?”

  “I’ve got two Type One engines and five men,” Terry shouted as a Nevada truck roared up.

  “Your boys got Nomex suits?”

  Terry nodded.

  Joey got on his radio. “I need another strike team! Type Three engines! And get a tanker if you can!”

  A fireman ran from the woods near the flames. He yelled over the roar of the fire and the fire engines. “I sent a team around the west side of the fire toward the houses! One structure is already involved! More are in danger. But the wind shifted toward my team!”

  Joey spoke to Terry. “Can you suit up a couple of your men and send them around the east side? Have them check to see if there are people in those houses!”

  While the firemen hurried about, I spoke to Linda. “Any indication yet if it’s arson?”

  “No,” she said. “We haven’t found anything.”

  “The tanker Joey Roberts called for,” I said. “Is that a big truck? Will it be able to get into this forest?”

  Just then a whistling noise filled the air as a huge burning tree crashed to the ground.

  Linda Saronna yelled back, “A tanker is a plane! It can pick up water in Fallen Leaf Lake and carry a lot more than a chopper.”

  “Who first reported the fire?”

  “A nine-one-one call came from a house in the neighborhood at the same time as our Angora Ridge spotter called it in.”

  At that moment Francisco ran up. “I found a match!”

  The young man looked alarmed. “It was half burned,” he said. “Right on the edge of the meadow where the fire started.”

  “Did you touch it or disturb the area?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, no. I know better than that. I was following the edge of the burn,” Francis
co said to me, concern wrinkling his forehead. “From the burn pattern I thought I could discover where the fire had started. Sure enough, there was the wooden match, plain as day.”

  “You’ll show the Fire Investigator as soon as possible?” Because we were in El Dorado County on the California side, the Fire Investigator was Bill Pickett, a man I’d met only a couple of times.

  “I think Linda said that Mr. Pickett is in Hawaii on vacation,” Francisco said.

  Linda nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll get Mallory. We can show him.”

  At that moment Linda got a call on her radio. She listened a moment, then said, “Frederick, Captain Mallory asked me if he could get some help with the press. He said there is a TV crew down the road and some reporters walking through the woods. Hurry. You know what to do.” She clicked the radio off. “Francisco, can you go help Frederick? He’s down at the High Mountain Road turnoff. Thanks.”

  He jogged off.

  “I’m curious,” I said to Linda. “What is it that Frederick will do regarding the press?”

  “We just went over it yesterday, in fact,” Linda said. “In dealing with the press it is important to tell them the truth but keep it narrow and without any speculation. Otherwise it inflames the reporter hoping to write an exciting story. When they ask if the fire was caused by arson Frederick will say, ‘we don’t know.’ If they inquire about another note Frederick will tell them that he understands there was another note but that he hasn’t seen it. The goal is to keep the arsonist from feeling like the press is another tool he can use to terrorize the local population.”

  “You speak of the arsonist as a ‘he?’”

  “Aren’t they all?” Linda said, her exasperation clear.

  Just then two firemen in bright yellow suits ran out of the smoke-filled trees just to the side of the wall of flames. One was carrying something large and dark flung over his shoulder. He picked his way carefully as he ran around a burning manzanita and stepped over a downed tree. The other fireman ran up to Battalion Chief Joey Roberts. His words came in bursts, punctuated by a fit of coughing. I heard him say something about a victim and smoke inhalation. He was cut off as Joey yelled into his radio.