Carl Hiaasen - Chomp

“I’m Derek Badger’s production assistant,” she said. “I brought your contract.”

“Excellent,” said Mickey.

Wahoo noticed that Raven Stark had a strong accent. He tried not to stare at her hairdo, which looked like a sculpture made of red chrome.

She asked, “May I take a look around?”

“Nope,” said Wahoo’s father.

Raven Stark seemed surprised.

“First you’ve got to sign a release form,” Mickey said. “I don’t want to get sued if you fall into the gator pond and get bit.”

She laughed. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Mr. Cray.”

“You sign the release, my son will be happy to give you the grand tour.”

A few years earlier, Mickey Cray had invited Wahoo’s elementary school class to come see his wild animals. A boy named Tingley had ignored Wahoo’s warning and reached into one of the cages to tug the tail of a grumpy raccoon, which had spun around and clawed the kid’s arm so badly that it looked like a road map of Hialeah. Mickey paid for Tingley’s doctor bills, though not before telling his parents that their boy was dumb as a box of rocks. Ever since then, Mickey’s insurance company insisted that everyone who came on the property had to fill out a legal form saying it wasn’t Mickey’s fault if they got hurt.

While Raven Stark signed the release, Mickey signed the contract from Expedition Survival! Wahoo noticed that he scrawled his name crookedly below the line where it was supposed to go, which meant his eyesight was still jumbled.

“How long is the shoot going to take?” Mickey asked.

Raven Stark said, “Until we get it right.”

Wahoo’s dad looked pleased. “So it’s one thousand a day, plus location fees and the animal rentals.”

“Correct.” She took an envelope from her purse and handed it to him. “Here’s eight hundred dollars as a deposit.”

Mickey counted the cash and then turned to Wahoo. “Son, go show this fine lady whatever she wants to see.”

Because it was going to be an Everglades show, Raven Stark was keenly interested in Alice the alligator. Wahoo led her to the pond and unlocked the gate.

Raven whistled. “That’s a monster, eh?”

“Twelve feet,” said Wahoo.

“How much?”

“One hundred and fifty dollars a foot, so that’s…”

“Eighteen hundred even,” Raven said. “No problem.”

Wahoo couldn’t wait to tell his father.

“Do you have another one that’s smaller?” asked Raven.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Something Derek could wrestle?”

“Wrestle?”

“Maybe a four-footer,” Raven said. “Five feet, max.”

“I’ll have to check with Pop.” Wahoo foresaw trouble. His father didn’t like anybody messing with the animals.

“Where are your pythons?” Raven asked.

Wahoo led her to the heavy glass tanks where the constrictors were kept. South Florida had become infested with huge exotic snakes that, like the iguanas, had been imported for the pet trade. Hurricane Andrew had blown apart several large reptile farms and scattered baby pythons and boa constrictors all over the place.

“Derek wants a beast,” Raven stated.

Wahoo showed her a fourteen-footer that had been captured while devouring an opossum in a Dumpster behind the Dadeland Mall. The man who’d found the snake was supposed to turn it over to state game officers, but instead he’d sold it to Mickey Cray for three hundred bucks.

Raven agreed it was an impressive specimen. “But can he be handled safely?”

“It’s a she,” Wahoo said, “and she’s a biter.”

“Oh.”

“Pop can work with her. She’ll be okay.”

“I hope so,” said Raven Stark. “How much?”

“Seven hundred for the day.” Wahoo tried to sound steady and businesslike. He wasn’t used to handling the negotiations. The standard rental rate for pythons was fifty dollars a foot.

“Okay, fine. What did you say your name was?”

He told her.

“Is that ‘Wahoo,’ like the fish?”

Everybody made that assumption. “My dad named me after a wrestler,” the boy explained.

“How interesting.”

“Not really,” said Wahoo.

“Can I ask what happened?” She pointed at the white bump on Wahoo’s right hand, where a thumb should have been.

“Yes, ma’am. Alice got it.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Quickly Wahoo said, “It wasn’t her fault, it was mine.”

One day he’d been showing off for a girl who had come over after school to see the animals. Wahoo had brought her down to the gator pond for a feeding, but he stepped way too close to Alice, who jumped up and snapped the thawed chicken out of his grasp, taking his thumb along with it. The girl’s name was Paulette, and she’d fainted on the spot.

Changing the subject, Wahoo asked, “Where is Mr. Badger?”

“Paris,” Raven said.

Wahoo had never heard of any dangerous jungles or swamps in Paris, so he assumed the famous survivalist was taking a vacation.

Mickey Cray came outside and joined them at the snake tanks. Wahoo told him that Ms. Stark was interested in using Beulah, the big Burmese.

“Good choice,” said Mickey. He appeared to be feeling better.

“You’ve seen the program, of course,” Raven said.

“Sure,” said Wahoo. “It’s on Thursday nights.”

“And rerun every Sunday morning,” she said. “So you already know that we’re all about verisimilitude.”

Wahoo didn’t even pretend to understand what the word meant. His father just looked at him and shrugged.

“Making it real,” Raven explained. “On Expedition Survival! we’re all about making it real. Derek considers that his sacred mission, a bond of trust with our viewers.”

Wahoo glanced at the massive snakes, coiled in their tanks. They were real enough; they just weren’t wild and free.

The production assistant turned to Wahoo’s father. “Any questions?”

Mickey smiled. “We put our animals on TV all the time. That’s what we do.”

Raven Stark bent down and tapped a scarlet fingernail on the glass panel that separated her from Beulah the python.

“Well, Mr. Cray,” she said, “I promise you’ve never done a show like Derek’s.”

Derek Badger’s real name was Lee Bluepenny, and he had no training in biology, botany, geology or forestry. His background was purely show business.

As a young man he’d traveled the world with a popular Irish folk-dancing group until he broke a toe while rehearsing for a street parade in Montreal. As he waited in the hospital emergency room, he happened to meet a talent agent who had gotten ill from eating tainted oysters. The queasy talent agent thought Lee Bluepenny looked tough and handsome, and asked if he’d ever considered a career in television.

As soon as Lee Bluepenny’s dance injury healed, the agent arranged for him to fly to California and audition for a new reality show. The producers of Expedition Survival! loved Lee Bluepenny’s new Australian accent, which he had shamelessly copied from the late Steve Irwin, the legendary crocodile hunter. The producers also liked that Lee Bluepenny could swallow a live salamander without throwing up. What they didn’t particularly like was his name. Lee Bluepenny was okay for a jazz piano player or maybe an art dealer, they said, but it wasn’t rugged-sounding enough for someone who had to claw and gnaw his way out of the wilds every week.

After trying out a few different names-Erik Panther, Gus Wolverine, Chad Condor-the producers settled on Derek Badger, which was fine with Lee Bluepenny. He was so thrilled to be on television that he would have let them call him Danny the Dodo Bird.

Expedition Survival! got off to a rocky start. The first episode was staged in a jungle in the Philippine Islands, where the man now called Derek Badger was supposed to be lost and starving. Disaster struck on the second day, when Derek was bitten severely by a striped shrew rat that he was attempting to gobble for dinner. The rodent had appeared to be dead, but it was only napping. Derek’s punctured lips swelled up so badly from the bite that he looked like he was sucking on a football. A medical helicopter rushed him to Manila for rabies shots.