Rescue at Lake Wild

by Terry Lynn Johnson

  Phrag chatters in excitement, grabbing and sucking with great enthusiasm. But then his mouth fills too fast and he spits up. He waves his little arms around as if he can’t figure out if he needs to push it away or pull it in.

  In his eagerness for more, he keeps flicking the nipple, squirting formula all over his face and my lap. His grunts of frustration mirror my own.

  “It looks like it’s too big for his mouth,” Aaron observes. “Do you have a smaller one?”

  I switch to an eyedropper, but quickly see that’ll take hours at this rate. Cooler shoves Phrag out of the way, his impatient cries surprisingly loud. In fact, the beavers haven’t stopped yammering this entire time. They go from humming to themselves, to mumbling as if they’re having a conversation, sounding like teenagers cursing under their breath.

  I try lining up the dropper into Cooler’s mouth, but he’s too eager. He grabs at it, knocking it off target until he’s covered in sticky white formula.

  “This isn’t working.” I pull out Nana’s logbooks from the top drawer of my workbench and search for clues on how to feed beaver kits. She had to fill these out when she was a wildlife rehabber. Our clubhouse logbook was inspired by them.

  As I leaf through, I toss the iPad I’d taken from the house to Aaron. “Can you research baby beavers?”

  “I thought you knew everything about orphans already.”

  I can’t tell if Aaron’s being sarcastic, so I ignore him.

  “Maybe they’re bored and just want to swim or something,” Jack suggests.

  I take a deep breath. I don’t know what to do for them, and I hate this feeling. If I’m a natural like Nana said, shouldn’t I know?

  I slump back on the wall of the clubhouse and run my hand over Phrag’s warm little body. There’s no expert here but me. And the most important problem right now is that the kits will die if I can’t figure out how to feed them.

  I try wiping their bums with a wet face cloth to stimulate them into doing their business like I had to do with the box of kittens. That hadn’t been in Nana’s logbook—I’d learned it from my rehabber magazines. But it doesn’t seem to work for the beavers.

  Cooler mutters indignantly and pushes me away from his tail. And Phrag just tries to hold my hand with his soft little fingers grabbing and wrapping around mine.

  The kits are sticky from the formula. I have to do something. I grab the hose from outside and fill a green Rubbermaid tub to wash them. Jack helps me place the kits into the water. They both start crying so loud, I think the neighbors down the lake will hear them. And then it happens. They poop.

  “Look at that,” I say. “They need water to do their business! I should’ve known that.”

  Phrag is frantically swimming after my hand, emitting a distressed moan. Cooler tries to jump out using Phrag as a ladder.

  “They don’t seem to like swimming,” Jack observes. “I thought all beavers liked water.”

  “Their house was dry,” I say, pulling the kits out of the tub. “Maybe they don’t like getting wet.” I set them on a bag of wood shavings.

  Cooler babbles while I pat his head with a towel. His fur is all spiky as he shakes himself. He starts rubbing along the base of his tail, then rubbing his hands through his fur. He seems intent on grooming every part of himself, even reaching around to get to the fur on his back. With his hand on his hip, he looks like he’s doing a mambo dance. He reaches for the other side of his back, balancing on his tail, and falls over.

  When I laugh, Cooler gives me a look so full of offense, it doesn’t take a whisperer to know that beavers do not like to be laughed at.

  Picking up Nana’s logbook again, I leaf through desperately. I have a lot to learn about beavers.

  “Beavers go to the bathroom in the water,” Aaron says, finally looking up from the iPad.

  “You’re supposed to be telling me things I don’t know.”

  “They also rid themselves of a secretion from the castor glands called castoreum in the water so it doesn’t attract predators on land,” Aaron reads. “Smart. Maybe that’s why they don’t smell bad. I’d thought they’d stink.”

  I run a hand over Cooler’s back and the kit grabs my finger to shove it into his mouth. Even though he has teeth, he doesn’t use them to bite. I know he won’t bite, because he’s not feeling threatened.

  He’s just hungry.

  8

  “We need to get going,” Jack says, collecting the notes he’d been working on.

  “Where?” I ask, but knowing Jack and his obsession with being a game warden, I can already guess.

  “Duh! To the scene of the crime! We have to start the investigation before the trail goes cold. Don’t you want to figure out who did this?”

  I look at Phrag and Cooler, both busy grooming themselves. They run their hands near their tails, then rub every part of their fur, face, and even their armpits like a person having a shower. Though they don’t quite smell shower fresh, whatever it is they’re rubbing through their fur has a mild, sweet odor. Their faces are set with concentration. This is serious business.

  I think of how they’re orphans now, with only me to care for them. Who will show them how to cut down a tree without it falling on their head? How to make a house of sticks, and swim, and . . . do other beaver things? They should be living happy in their lodge with a family who knows what they’re doing. Anger surges through me quick and sharp. Some dumb person shot their parents and changed their world.

  “Yeah, I want whoever did this to get caught. But we can’t leave the kits. They need feeding every four hours. I’m going to make up a schedule so we can take turns.”

  “I can’t take a turn!” Jack says. “Lid and I have to track the poacher!”

  He pauses as we all hear gravel crunching on the driveway.

  “My parents are home! Quick! Hide the beavers!”

  I grab a cardboard box and line it with wood chips and the brown towel. After wrapping the hot water bottle in a dry rag, I stuff it underneath my old teddy bear and place it in the box before lowering the kits inside.

  “But, your parents never come in here,” Aaron points out.

  “That was before Mom found out about the cat.” Whenever kids are doing something they’re not supposed to, adults tend to suddenly find us interesting.

  “We should go talk to them, to make sure they don’t come in.” I survey the box and pause. “You think the kits might feel trapped in there? What if they need to get out to use the bathroom?”

  I know from experience that baby animals have an instinct. They almost never go in their beds.

  Jack uses the box cutter from the workbench and cuts out a door opening on the side of the box. “How’s that?”

  I look it over. “Better. But now it needs to be hidden.”

  I find my largest box and tip it sideways. Then I put the bed box inside it and the tub of water, and close the flaps so no one can see inside. Now they’re secure. The beavers must be asleep already, because they’re quiet.

  We head out to face my parents. They’re unloading groceries from the car.

  “What on earth?” Mom says when she sees me.

  I look down at myself and remember the mud and how my tank used to be yellow.

  “What have you got all over your face?”

  “We were just playing,” I say, wiping off the drying grit.

  Mom presses her lips together but doesn’t say anything. Everyone grabs grocery bags and hauls them into the kitchen.

  “Seems like you’ve got enough helpers,” Dad says to Mom. “Going to catch the end of the game.” He wanders toward the living room, but stops to tweak my nose, the same way he’s done my whole life.

  I bat his hand away. “Dad!”

  “Can’t help it,” he throws over his shoulder.

  “Popsicles!” Jack says, pulling the box out of a grocery bag.

  Mom takes the box from him and stashes them in the back of the freezer. “Not before dinner.” She bends to place
a tub of yogurt onto a shelf. “What have you three been up to besides playing in the mud?”

  “Nothing,” I say. Too fast.

  Mom looks up suspiciously. I search for something quick. “We were helping Jack train Lid to do a track. We run and hide and then Lid finds us. We were just leaving to go finish the game.”

  Jack breaks into a grin.

  “Sounds like fun,” Mom says, shutting the fridge. “Be home for dinner. Your dad’s shift starts tomorrow.”

  Dad’s a traveling nurse, working two weeks away from home, then staying home for two. Normally I hate when he starts a new shift, but right now the timing works out. That means it’s mostly just my sister and me at home.

  On our way out, I find Marley draped over a chair in the den.

  “ ’Sup, mongrels?” she says.

  “We were wondering if you could meet us in the clubhouse to show us how to fill out our logbook properly. I mean, do you write the stuff you’re going to have a meeting about first, or do you write it after?”

  Marley snorts. “I wouldn’t go in there if you paid me. It smells like a barn inside a boys’ locker room next to a monkey factory.”

  As we head to the boat, I congratulate myself on my genius method of guaranteeing my sister won’t go snooping. For now, the kits are safe from being found.

  9

  I cut the motor near where we’d seen the dead adult beavers.

  We drift to the bank. I don’t want to look, but Jack somehow finds them right away while I secure the boat.

  “They’ve been shot!” Jack says. “Look at the hole.”

  Despite myself, I peer over his shoulder as he crouches next to the sleek carcasses.

  “That means maybe we can find the shell casings!” Jack jumps up. “Come on, Lid.”

  I didn’t think Lid knew how to find shell casings, but he seems to be searching for something. We walk the shoreline of the channel between Lake Little Hawk and Lake Wild, Lid’s nose to the ground. His expression is intense as he zigzags over fallen logs and tracks through mud.

  A hot summer wind blows in our faces, bringing the smell of earthy, damp bog. Lid throws his nose in the air and closes his eyes. I stop too when I notice the sun is warming my right shoulder. How did it get so low? We don’t have much time before dinner.

  “Maybe we should come back tomorrow,” Aaron says, seeming to read my mind.

  “The evidence could be gone by then,” Jack says. The look on his face is just as intense as his dog’s.

  The tall grasses rustle around us, sounding like whispers. Crows caw at us from the bush line, as if accusing us of killing the beavers. The beaver lodge sits in the middle of the channel, silent and empty. A monument to where I could’ve died. I try to shake off a feeling of foreboding.

  Aaron brushes at some burrs stuck to his socks. Back at the clubhouse he’d washed the mud from our ATV disaster off his shoes. He’s the only kid I know who insists on shoes instead of sandals in summer. Even though I’ve told him no one cares about the extra skin between his two toes.

  If I had a webbed toe, I’d show it off. I’d tell everyone I was part fish like Aquaman. No, I’d call myself BeaverGirl. Too bad Aaron doesn’t see the potential.

  Now, in an attempt to keep his shoes clean, Aaron leaps to balance on a stump, his lips pressed together. That boy does not like getting dirty. Even as a kid he’d cry if his hands got sticky. I remember him years ago when we were neighbors, holding out his fingers while his mom washed them off.

  Abruptly, I think of the beaver kits holding out their formula-covered fingers. We need to get back in time to feed them again.

  Lid stops and paws next to something red in the grasses. We all see the shotgun shells at the same time.

  “Good boy!” Jack seems as surprised as the rest of us. He tosses a dog cookie.

  Lid snaps it out of the air. While the dog crunches happily, Jack pulls out his “specialized game warden tools,” a Ziploc bag and a pair of tweezers. The bag’s been labeled with a marker, EVIDENCE KIT. Using the tweezers, Jack picks up the shells and drops them into the bag.

  We walk a little farther, avoiding the wet spots between clumps of tall reeds. A blue heron lets out a startled croak, scaring the fluffernutter out of us. It flies away, its long legs dangling. Frogs start to call in earnest as the day winds down, and I feel more and more like an intruder.

  Lid’s pawing near something else in the mud. I crouch to see a few dirty cigarette butts. “Gross.”

  “Don’t touch them!” Jack vibrates with excitement. “These can break the case wide open! There’s a whole episode where a case was solved by getting DNA off a cigarette butt and catching a moose poacher!”

  Jack’s obsession with everything game warden got serious once Lid arrived. It was also around the time that his dad left, when he needed something else to think about.

  He’d researched how game wardens train their detector dogs. They use a toy ball as a reward. Jack improvised with cookies since there isn’t much Lid won’t do for a cookie.

  While Jack’s busy telling us about his great knowledge of DNA collection, he fails to watch his dog.

  “Er . . .” Aaron says.

  “And that’s why I use these,” Jack continues, holding up the tweezers and pinching them. “So I don’t contaminate the evidence.”

  “Uh . . . Jack?” I say, pointing.

  Jack whirls around in time to see Lid hoover up the last butt.

  “No! Drop it!” Jack crams his hand down Lid’s throat, but comes up holding nothing but slobber.

  “That’s just great,” Jack says, while Aaron and I try not to crack up. Lid folds his ears out sideways, looking pleased with himself.

  “At least you have the shells,” I say. “What will those tell us?”

  Jack studies his Ziploc bag. “We know now that the shooter stood right here and shot the beavers.”

  He stands on the spot and aims a pretend shotgun, mimicking the crime. Then he looks around, deep in thought. “Maybe we should go to Dillon’s Hardware and see if they’ll tell us who bought ammo lately. It’s worth—”

  Lid gives a short, high-pitched bark. The dog glances briefly back at us before bolting into the trees.

  We look at each other, then charge after him.

  10

  “He’s got a track,” Jack yells over his shoulder.

  I didn’t lie to Mom earlier. Jack applies the detector dog training techniques that he learned, and we help by hiding so Lid can practice finding us. And right before he finds us, he usually barks just like how he sounds now.

  Lid’s black tail wags above the grasses, giving us something to follow. We race into the brush till we come out on a trail.

  “Wait for us, Lid!” Jack calls.

  A flagging tail up ahead turns off onto a smaller path. In our haste not to lose sight of Lid, we crash headlong into a mean raspberry bush, the prickles shredding our exposed arms and legs. Jack and Aaron howl. They get tangled in each other and have a quick shoving argument. Aaron never wins that one.

  The lengthening shadows are getting longer by the minute. If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss dinner. But even more urgent—the beavers need their dinner. “We don’t have time for this,” I say, following Lid.

  And then we burst out of the bushes and find ourselves on someone’s fancy lawn. It stretches down to a lake. When I see the house, I recognize that we’re in a bay of my own lake. This is Mr. Kang’s backyard. He owns the florist shop in town and also works as a landscaper. His home and property are always perfect.

  “Look!” Aaron points to a row of trees lying on the ground.

  Almost always perfect.

  Four ugly tree trunks stick up out of the lawn, sad broken soldiers in a row. They look as though they’ve been chewed off by a beaver. Their trunks are gnawed around the whole girth of the tree. The gnawing has made the trunk get smaller and smaller until the tree couldn’t support the weight and came crashing down. Loose branches and wood chips lit
ter the area like pale teardrops.

  “Uh-oh,” I say. “You think the beavers cut down Mr. Kang’s nice trees? And then he got mad? Mad enough to want revenge?”

  Jack tosses another cookie to Lid. “Looks that way. I think we solved the case.”

  Aaron’s studying the trunks, wearing a puzzled expression. “Something’s not right.”

  We take a closer look at the trunks and see lime green paint marks.

  “Something bright green’s been scraped against the bark,” Aaron says, pointing.

  And those teeth marks look less like marks made by beaver teeth and more like many small chops from an ax. Were they intended to look like teeth marks?

  “What’re you kids doing?” A voice calls from the house.

  Aaron jumps, grabbing his chest.

  “Sorry, Mr. Kang,” I call up to the figure standing on the deck. “We noticed you’ve had some trouble with beavers.”

  “What?” Mr. Kang yells down at us. “Is that you? Ron Lewis’s girl?”

  “Madison,” I say.

  “If you think those were cut by beavers, you need glasses more than me!”

  “Do you own a shotgun?” Jack yells back. “ ’Cause we’ve got two murdered beavers and some strong evidence that the game wardens are going to find interesting.”

  Aaron slaps his face with both hands and drags them down his cheeks, pulling his eyes long. “We’re in so much trouble,” he moans.

  I’m as surprised as Aaron about Jack’s sass. But when he uses that voice around grownups, it almost sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. It’s possible he’s feeling brave because Mr. Kang is so far away.

  Mr. Kang scratches his head in astonishment and opens his mouth a few times. “Before you start accusing me of . . . whatever you’re trying to say, young man, I think you should start by looking into the meetings going on down at the hardware store.”