Carl Hiaasen - Hoot

He groped around until he located his flashlight, but at first it didn't work. He shook it a few times and finally the bulb flickered on faintly.

Sure enough, he'd stepped in another owl burrow.

Officer Delinko got to his feet and smoothed the creases of his trousers. "Good thing Curly's not awake to see this," he mumbled.

"Heh," came a small raspy voice in reply.

Officer Delinko slapped his right hand on the butt of his gun. With his left hand he aimed the flashlight toward the unseen intruder.

"Freeze!" the patrolman commanded.

"Heh. Heh. Heh."

Back and forth went the yellow beam of light, revealing nothing. The runty, asthmatic-sounding voice seemed to come out of nowhere.

Officer Delinko carefully took two steps forward and aimed the flashlight down the hole in which he'd tripped. An inquisitive pair of bright amber eyes peeked up from the blackness.

"Heh!"

The patrolman took his hand off his gun and cautiously dropped to a crouch. "Why, hello there," he said.

"Heh! Heh! Heh!"

It was a baby owl, no more than five or six inches tall. Officer Delinko had never seen anything so delicately perfect.

"Heh!" said the owl.

"Heh!" said the policeman, though his voice was too deep to do a proper imitation. "I bet you're waiting for Momma and Poppa to bring supper home, aren't you?"

The amber eyes blinked. The yellow beak opened and closed expectantly. The little round head rotated back and forth.

Officer Delinko laughed aloud. He was fascinated by the miniature bird. Dimming the flashlight, he said, "Don't worry, sport, I'm not going to hurt you."

From overhead came a frenzied flutter, followed by a harsh kssh! kssh! ksshhh! The patrolman glanced up and saw, framed against the starlit sky, two winged silhouettes-the baby owl's parents, anxiously circling their frightened fledgling.

Officer Delinko slowly began backing away from the burrow, hoping that the grown-up birds would realize it was safe to land. In the blue-gray sky he could see their dusky shapes wheeling lower and lower, and he quickened his retreat.

Even after the two owls alighted, even after he watched them disappear like feathered ghosts into the ground, Officer Delinko continued moving away, backing up step by step until…

He bumped into something so big and so cold and so hard that it almost knocked the breath out of him. He spun around and switched on the flashlight.

It was a bulldozer.

Officer Delinko had clonked directly into one of Curly's earthmoving machines. He glared up at the steel hulk, rubbing his bruised shoulder. He didn't notice that the seat was gone, and even if he had, he wouldn't have given it a worry.

The policeman was grimly preoccupied with another concern. His gaze shifted from the massive bulldozer to the bird burrow, then back again.

Until that moment, Officer David Delinko had been so busy worrying about solving the Mother Paula's case and saving his own career that he hadn't thought much about anything else.

Now he understood what was going to happen to the little owls if he did his job properly, and it weighted him with an aching and unshakeable sorrow.

Roy's father had worked late, so Roy hadn't had a chance to tell him what he'd learned about the owls on the Internet, and that one of the pancake-house files had been removed from the building department. It seemed very suspicious, and Roy wanted to hear his father's theory about what might have happened.

But Roy went speechless the moment he sat down at breakfast. There, smiling kindly at him from the back page of his father's newspaper, was Mother Paula herself!

It was a half-page advertisement under a banner of bold, patriotic-style lettering:

MOTHER PAULA'S ALL-AMERIGAN HOUSE OF PANCAKES, HOME OF THE WORLD-FAMOUS MOUTHWATERING LICORICE OATMEAL FLAPJACK, IS PROUD TO BECOME YOUR NEW NEIGHBOR IN COCONUT COVE! MOTHER PAULA WELCOMES YOU TO JOIN HER IN PERSON TOMORROW AT NOON FOR A GALA GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY AT THE CORNER OF EAST ORIOLE AND WOODBURY, THE FUTURE LOCATION OF OUR 469th FAMILY-STYLE RESTAURANT IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND JAMAICA.

Roy dropped his spoon, launching a soggy wad of Froot Loops across the kitchen.

"What's wrong, honey?" his mother asked.

Roy felt sick to his stomach. "Nothing, Mom."

Then Mrs. Eberhardt spotted the advertisement, too. "I'm sorry, Roy. It's hard to think about those poor helpless birds, I know."

Mr. Eberhardt flipped the newspaper over to see what his wife and son were staring at. He frowned and said, "Guess they're moving along pretty quickly with that project."

Roy stood up in a dull fog. "I better go. Don't wanna miss the bus."

"Oh, there's plenty of time. Sit down and finish your breakfast," his mother said.

Roy shook his head numbly. He grabbed his backpack off the chair. "Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad."

"Roy, wait. You want to talk?"

"Not really, Dad."

His father folded the newspaper and handed it to him. "Don't you have current events today?"

"Oh yeah," said Roy. "I forgot."

Every Tuesday, Mr. Ryan's history students were supposed to bring a topic for a current events discussion. On those days Roy's father always gave him the newspaper so that he could read it on the bus and pick out a timely article.

"How about if I take you to school today?" his mother offered.

Roy could tell she felt sorry for him because of the news about the pancake house. She thought the owls were doomed, but Roy wasn't ready to give up hope.

"That's okay." He stuffed the newspaper into his backpack. "Mom, can I borrow your camera?"

"Well…"

"For a class," Roy added, wincing inwardly at the lie. "I'll be real careful, I promise."

"All right. I don't see why not."

Roy carefully packed the digital camera among his books, gave his mother a hug, waved to his father, and streaked out the door. He jogged past his regular bus stop and kept going, all the way to the one on West Oriole, Beatrice Leep's street. None of the other Trace Middle kids had arrived yet, so Roy ran to Beatrice's house and waited on the front sidewalk.

He tried to cook up a good excuse for being there, in case Lonna or Leon noticed him. It was Beatrice who finally came out the front door, and Roy ran up so fast that he nearly knocked her down.

"What happened to you yesterday? Where's your brother? Did you see the paper this morning? Did you-"

She slapped a hand over his mouth.

"Easy, cowgirl," she said. "Let's go wait for the bus. We'll talk on the way."

As Roy suspected, Beatrice had not broken a tooth falling down the steps. She'd broken it while biting a ring off one of her stepmother's toes.

The ring was made from a small topaz charm that Beatrice's mother had left behind when she moved away. Lonna had pilfered the stone from Leon Leep's sock drawer and had gotten it made into a snazzy toe ring for herself.

Beatrice had taken exception to the theft.

"If my old man wanted Lonna to have it, he woulda given it to her," she growled.

"So you gnawed it off her toe? How?" Roy was astounded.

"Wasn't easy."

Beatrice made a chimpanzee face and pointed at a sharp stump where one of her incisor teeth used to be. "Broke the tip off. They're gonna make me a fake one so it looks like brand-new," she explained. "Good thing my old man has dental insurance."

"She was awake when you did this?"

"Yeah," said Beatrice, "but she probably wishes she wasn't. Anyway, tell me what was in the paper this morning that got you all freaked out."

She groaned when Roy showed her the advertisement for the Mother Paula's groundbreaking extravaganza. "Just what the world needs-another pancake joint."

"Where's your brother?" Roy asked. "You think he's heard about this?"

Beatrice said she hadn't seen Mullet Fingers since Sunday. "That's when the you-know-what hit the fan. He was hiding in the garage, waitin' for me to get him some clean shirts, when my dad walked out for another case of Mountain Dew. The two of 'em were just standing around talkin', perfectly friendly, when Lonna shows up and pitches a major hissy."