Carl Hiaasen - Chomp

The phone rang and Wahoo picked it up. His father weaved back to the couch and flipped through the TV stations until he found the Rain Forest Channel.

“Who was it that called?” he asked when Wahoo came out of the kitchen.

“Another job, Pop.”

“You send ’em to Stiggy?”

Jimmy Stigmore was an animal wrangler who had a ranch up in west Davie. Mickey Cray wasn’t crazy about Stiggy.

“No, I didn’t,” Wahoo said.

His father frowned. “Then who’d you send ’em to? Not Dander!”

Donny Dander had lost his wildlife-importing license after he got caught smuggling thirty-eight rare tree frogs from South America. The frogs had been cleverly hidden in his underwear, but the adventure ended in embarrassment at the Miami airport when a customs officer noticed that Donny’s pants were cheeping.

Wahoo said, “I didn’t send ’em to Dander, either. I didn’t send ’em anywhere.”

“Okay. Now you lost me,” said Mickey Cray.

“I said we’d take the job. I said we could start next week.”

“Are you crazy, boy? Look at me, I can’t see straight, I can’t hardly walk, my skull’s ’bout to split open like a rotten pumpkin-”

“Pop!”

“What?”

“I said we,” Wahoo reminded him. “You and I together.”

“But what about school?”

“Friday’s the last day. Then I’m done for the summer.”

“Already?” Wahoo’s dad didn’t keep up with Wahoo’s academic schedule as closely as his mother did. “So who called about the job?”

Wahoo told him the name of the TV show.

“Not him!” Mickey Cray snorted. “I’ve heard stories about that jerk.”

“Well, how does a thousand bucks sound?” Wahoo asked.

“Pretty darned sweet.”

“That’s one thousand a day.” Wahoo let that sink in. “If you want, I’ll call ’em back and give him Stiggy’s number.”

“Don’t be a knucklehead.” Wahoo’s father rose off the sofa and gave him a hug. “You did good, son. We’ll make this work.”

“Absolutely,” said Wahoo, trying to sound confident.

Hundreds of iguanas had died and tumbled from the treetops during the big freeze in southern Florida. As far as Wahoo knew, his dad was the only person who’d been seriously hurt by one of the falling reptiles.

Mickey Cray had been standing with a cup of hot cocoa beneath a coconut palm in the backyard when the dead lizard had knocked him stiff. Later, after he was brought home from the hospital, Mickey had ordered Wahoo to search the property, capture any iguanas that had survived the frigid weather and relocate them to an abandoned orchid farm half a mile away.

Wahoo hadn’t searched very hard. It wasn’t the fault of the iguanas that they’d frozen to death. They weren’t meant to be living so far north, but Miami pet dealers had been importing baby specimens from the tropics for decades. The customers who bought them had no idea they would grow six feet long, eat all the flowers in the garden and then leap into the swimming pool to poop. When that rude reality set in, the unhappy owners would drive their pet lizards to the nearest park and set them free. Before long, South Florida was crawling with hordes of big wild iguanas that were producing hordes of little wild iguanas.

The cold snap had put an end to that, at least temporarily.

On the first morning of summer vacation, Wahoo found his father in the backyard scanning the trees.

“See any, Pop?”

“All clear,” Mickey Cray reported.

Although months had passed since the accident, he was still paranoid about getting clobbered with another falling lizard.

“You must be feeling better,” Wahoo remarked. He was pleased to see his dad up and moving around so early.

“My headache’s gone!” Mickey announced.

Wahoo said, “No way.”

“All those pills the doctors made me swallow, they didn’t do a darn thing. Then all of a sudden I wake up and, boom, it’s like a miracle.” Mickey shrugged. “Some things just can’t be explained, son.”

But Wahoo had a theory that his father had been cured by five simple words: one thousand dollars a day.

Mickey said, “Go fetch some lettuce for Gary and Gail.”

Gary and Gail were two ancient Galapagos tortoises that Wahoo’s dad had purchased from a zoo in Sarasota many years earlier, when he was new to the wildlife business. These days there wasn’t much demand from the TV nature shows for Gary and Gail, because tortoises were not exactly dynamic performers. Mickey Cray kept them around mainly for sentimental reasons. Each of the animals was more than a century old, and he didn’t trust any of the other wranglers to treat them properly. The night before the big freeze, Mickey had gone out back and carefully cloaked Gail and Gary with heavy quilts so they wouldn’t die. Wahoo had watched from his bedroom window.

“I don’t suppose he’s interested in these two,” Mickey muttered while the tortoises munched loudly on their lettuce.

“No, they said he wants Alice,” said Wahoo, “and a major python.”

They were talking about their famous new client, Derek Badger. He was the star of Expedition Survival! one of the most popular shows on cable. Every week, Derek would parachute into some gnarly wilderness teeming with fierce animals, venomous snakes and disease-carrying insects. Armed with only a Swiss army knife and a straw, he would hike, climb, crawl, paddle or swim back to civilization-or until he was “rescued.” Along the way, he’d eat bugs, rodents, worms, even the fungus on tree bark-the grosser it looked, the happier Derek Badger was to stuff it into his cheeks.

Wahoo and his dad had watched Expedition Survival! often enough to know that most of the wildlife scenes were faked. They were also aware that at no time was Derek’s life in actual danger, since he was always accompanied by a camera crew packing food, candy, sunblock, water, first-aid supplies and, most likely, a large gun.

“Derek’s never done a show in the Everglades,” Wahoo said to his father.

“They say he’s a humongous pain in the butt, this guy.”

“Just be nice, Pop. It’s a lot of money.”

Mickey promised to behave. “So, when do we get to meet the man himself?”

“His assistant is supposed to stop by later.”

“What kind of python do they want-Burmese? African rock?”

Wahoo said, “Honestly, I don’t think it matters.”

They set to work building a pen for a young bobcat that was being delivered from a ranch up in Highlands County. The cat had been struck by a Jeep and suffered a broken leg that wouldn’t mend, so it could never be released back into the wild. Mickey Cray had agreed to raise the animal, and he hoped to make it tame enough for TV work.

Bobcats were strong, meaning the pen had to be sturdy. Wahoo knew that a person with double vision shouldn’t be using a nail gun, so he put his dad in charge of measuring and cutting the chicken wire. By noon Mickey’s headache came roaring back, and he was in misery. Wahoo steered him to the house and made him lie on the couch and fed him four aspirins.

Minutes later, somebody started knocking on the front door. Mickey raised up and said, “That’s probably the guy with the bobcat.”

Wahoo looked out the window and saw a woman with a shining stack of red hair. She wore tan shorts and jeweled sandals, and she was carrying a leather briefcase.

“No cat,” he said to his father.

“Well, open the darn door.”

“But what if she’s from the bank?” Wahoo whispered. The Crays were months behind on their mortgage payments.

Mickey peeked out the window. “She is definitely not from the bank.”

Wahoo invited the woman inside. She introduced herself as Raven Stark.