by Will Hobbs
Neal went in and sat down on the gravel. His bald eagle walked right over to him, and they looked into each other’s eyes. They were nose to beak, that close.
“I’ve seen a lot,” Jackie said, shaking her head. “This is right up there. Death was winning, no doubt about it. But not this time. Not this time.”
I squeezed Cody’s hand and he squeezed back. He looked up at me. “Everything is going to be okay, Shannie, isn’t it?”
17
A WHOLE DIFFERENT FROG
Liberty had a future now, at least as one of Jackie’s distinguished guests, but Neal had something more ambitious in mind. He told me that Jackie used to have an eagle she could take to school programs. “Wouldn’t it be something if Liberty could do that for Jackie? Be an ambassador for the whole animal kingdom?”
“She’d have to be trained, right?”
“It would be a long shot. Most eagles don’t have the disposition for it—not just the training, but being around so many people. The first step is to get her used to the glove.”
The heavy falconer’s glove reached almost to Neal’s elbow. That first day, when Neal extended his good arm into her cage, Liberty wouldn’t get onto the glove at all. The second day it was like, Okay, I’ll step on your arm but only with one foot. The third day it was, Okay, I’ll use both feet but only for a second. The fourth day it was, Yeah, you can take me partway out of my cage, then I’ll jump right back in. Finally it was, Okay, I’ll let you walk around with me on your arm. Hey, this is fun!
We got another call from Whidbey Island, about that same orphaned bear cub near Coupeville. I was determined to bring it back home this time no matter what. As soon as the call came in I ran to tell Tyler. He flashed a killer smile and said, “I’ll tell Gnarly that a buddy is on the way.”
“Gnarly?” I teased.
“Not that he knows his name. I can’t talk to him. Gotta keep him wild.”
“What will you name the other cub, if we get lucky?”
“I guess I’d wait until I see what it’s like. Say, don’t let the cub’s size fool you. Pound for pound, bears are stronger than you would believe.”
“Forget everything I know about teddy bears?”
“Definitely.”
“Thanks for the tip. You’ll come to visit me in the hospital?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
I gave him a nudge. “Just kidding, Tyler.”
I took him seriously. On the way to Whidbey Island, I made Neal stop to buy a goalie’s mask to add to my rescue outfit.
The old woman who met us lived alone about a mile out of Coupeville. Her vegetables and flowers were her pride and joy. The cub had rampaged like a hurricane through parts of her garden.
Her black lab was on guard in front of a big open shed. We went to look before we let Sage out of the ambulance. The lab started barking as we approached, but not at us. The dog was going nuts.
A big wooden pole in the middle of the shed supported the roof. The cub, the spitting image of Gnarly except for a bigger white patch on its chest, was up above the rafters and clinging to the pole, snarling and growling at the dog below.
The first thing we did was have Mrs. Pasqualetti take her dog away. Then I suited up Sage with her flak jacket.
“Gonna be tricky,” Neal said, looking up at the cub. “Too bad there’s no door on this shed. That cub can move faster than you’ll ever guess, but you’ve got Sage on your side.”
With the heavy coat over a life jacket for extra padding, I looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy accessorized with welding gloves and a hockey mask. All in all, I looked utterly ridiculous. Fortunately no one had a camera.
It was a warm day and I was cooking as I started up the ladder. The idea was to scare the cub down. Mrs. Pasqualetti was back from confining her dog in her basement. She asked unhelpfully, “How many times have you done this, dear?”
“I’m making this up as I go,” I said. “Back up, Cody, so the bear doesn’t jump on you.”
When I stuck my head up above the rafters, the cub sort of screeched, sort of growled, sort of whined. “You’ll starve to death if you don’t come home with us,” I said, but I wasn’t speaking the bear’s language.
“You sure are cute,” I said. “Nice nose, cute face, darling ears. Your teeth, though, they look awfully sharp.” Now I really had it riled up. “Don’t be such a whiner, you big baby.”
Neal moved everybody, including Sage, out of the cub’s view. “Coming after you, little bear,” I said. “Like it or not.”
I climbed into the peak of the shed. As I stepped to straddle two joists, I hit my head and saw stars. It felt like I’d been stabbed in the skull. “Doing all right?” Neal called.
I waited a few seconds, teeth clenched until the pain began to clear. “Sure is warm up here,” I said. “Okay, Teddy, I’m coming after you. You’re supposed to bail out, okay?”
The bear was about ten feet away. I wished I had something to shove at it, maybe a rake, to get it moving. But it would take time to round up a rake. Crouching, I started toward the cub. I was convinced I was scary enough to scare off Godzilla.
The last thing I would have expected to happen, happened. The teddy sprang from the pole, front legs outstretched, and right onto me, fastening onto my jacket with its sharp claws. I had this screaming, terrified, angry bear on my chest and no clue. Fortunately, thinking was not required. Up went one hand to protect my throat and I raked the other hand down, sweeping the bear off my chest with more strength than I knew I had.
The cub clung to the joists for a second, then shinnied down the pole. It hit the ground running. From the corner of my vision I saw Sage dart in and head it off.
As quickly as I could, I climbed down the ladder and joined the fray.
“You all right, Shan?” my little brother yelled, carrier in hand.
“Never better,” I yelled back, and stalked toward the cub. It was darting this way and that. Sage met every zig with a zag. Her flak jacket was taking flak; she was using her side like a backstop.
By now we were in the middle of the vegetable garden. Too bad for the cherry tomatoes. The cub seemed to be tiring, though; it might have been weak from hunger. I saw my chance and leaped. I had it pinned to the ground.
“Awesome, Shannie,” I heard Cody yell, and then he was right there with the carrier, placing it by the bear’s angry face, all growls and needle-sharp teeth. I let up a little, felt it squirm toward the carrier. I let up a little more. It had nowhere to go but inside.
Neal helped me up, and that was that. Off came the goalie’s mask. I felt like I’d been inside a sauna for three hours and beaten with a stick. I threw off the coat—shredded down the front—and started unbuckling the life jacket. I was dripping with sweat but seemingly intact underneath. The top of my head was still pounding. “Would you like some milk and cookies now?” Mrs. Pasqualetti inquired.
When we got to the center I told Tyler, who was awed at the sight of the cub and looking at me like I’d hit the ball out of the park, that he didn’t have to think of a name for the little she-bear. I already had it: Sweetness.
Tyler and I watched as Gnarly and Sweetness met. They were on either side of the guillotine door separating the rooms of the bear den. No fur flew. The cubs were real cautious of each other, real interested. Sweetness went to a far corner when Big Bear, Tyler, brought in a huge bowl of fruit salad. Big Bear left and Sweetness made short work of the fruit. On the clinic side of the door to the bear den, Tyler took the head off his costume, held it under his arm like a football, and gave me a bear hug. “Now they’ve got each other,” he said. I’d never seen Tyler happy like that. I only wished Neal hadn’t gone straight to Liberty, that he’d seen this instead.
The next day took us to the foothills of the Cascades. A hiker had come across a raven caught in leg-hold traps.
“Traps?” Neal asked me as we got under way. “More than one? You’re sure they said traps?”
“I can’t explain it,�
�� I said. “That’s what I heard.”
When we got there it was obvious enough. The raven had been trying to get at a piece of meat suspended over two steel leg-hold traps camouflaged under the pine needles. These traps were supposed to be illegal. Hopping around and trying to get at the bait, the raven had stepped into one trap and then the other.
The big black bird was a pitiful sight. One leg had been shattered and almost severed. The other leg Uncle Neal had hopes for. The trap had caught it high on the drumstick where there was quite a bit of meat to protect the bone.
“I don’t get it,” Cody said. “Why would people want to catch ravens?”
The bird kept eyeing us, head cocked to the side, black eyes flicking. No doubt it figured we were there to kill it.
“Probably it was coyotes or bobcats they were after,” Neal said. “A lot of the time they end up catching somebody’s dog, or an eagle, or who-knows-what.”
“Look at that beak,” Cody said. “Shannon, it’s huge. That raven could hurt you bad.”
“I’ll wear gloves. Too bad my hockey mask is back at Jackie’s. How strong is that bill, Neal?”
“You don’t want to find out. Talk nice to Raven. This one might have been unlucky, but he’s way smart. They live year-round from the arctic to the deserts of Arizona. What other bird can do that? Raven stole the sun to light the earth, stole the moon and the stars, too.”
Cody was all confused. “From who?”
“From an old man who kept them in a box. The world was completely dark before then. Raven invented mosquitoes, too. Known for his tricky sense of humor.”
Cody was eyeing the bird in the traps. None of this was adding up.
“Sounds like stories,” I suggested to Cody.
“You bet,” Neal said enthusiastically. “Native American stories. Raven’s the star of lots of them. He’s a clever hunter, too. Up north—I’m talking about real life now—he’s known to lead wolves to moose. When the wolf pack brings down the moose, the raven eats.”
By now I had the gloves on and my courage up. After Sweetness, I was ready for anything. Neal coached me on how to open the jaws of the trap.
Neal and Cody backed off as I approached the big shaggy-throated bird, talking softly. “I’ve come to help you, Raven,” I said as soothingly as possible. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m extremely attached to my body as it is. Hey, you’re some bird.”
As I knelt, the raven flinched, cocked its shiny head, and looked at me sharply. I was afraid it would struggle in the traps and hurt itself even more. It didn’t.
On my knees, I went to work and freed the bird from those nasty traps. Strange, but I could have done it without gloves. That raven never went for me even once. As I released the second leg, the less injured one, I covered the bird lightly with one of my legs so it wouldn’t fly. Then I took the raven in my arms, and into Cody’s carrier it went.
We hurried to the closest vet who worked with Jackie. It turned out to be Dr. Minorca, who’d operated on Liberty. She amputated the leg that was hanging on by a thread, at the knee, if that’s what you call it. There was already a good chance that infection had set in, so she started the raven on antibiotics. Dr. Minorca said they were tough birds, and our raven, a male, would probably survive. We could come back for him in a couple of days.
Back at the center, working with Liberty, Neal mentioned that he was going to have to find someone else to help train her. “How come?” I asked.
“It can’t just be me. She has to get used to working with other people. It can’t be I’m the only one or she’ll never be able to go on the road for Jackie. You know that bald eagle on the side of the van? When Liberty grows into her white plumage, I’ve got this idea that everywhere she goes, people will figure that’s her.”
“Let Tyler work with her,” I said without hesitating.
Neal looked stunned, wounded in the heart.
“Yes, Tyler,” I insisted. “Trust me on this, Uncle Neal. He’s in the clinic right now, cleaning cages. Go talk to him about it.”
I was pleasantly surprised to see he was thinking about it. He was slowly turning it over. At last Neal said, “You sure about this?”
“Positive.”
“You want to come with me to talk to him?”
“I don’t think so. This has to be between you and him. I never gave you the idea, okay?”
So far so good, but I was so afraid Tyler would turn him down. Tyler might say no out of reflex, just because he was so wary of Neal and not good with people to begin with.
I gave them ten minutes, then peeked. The two of them were together in the enclosure. The falconer’s glove was on Tyler’s hand.
Now it’s your turn, Liberty, I thought. Come through for me this time. I was crossing my fingers so hard. It took fifteen or twenty long minutes before the eagle stepped from her perching branch onto the glove for Tyler. Quickly, she stepped back. It took another ten minutes for her to step onto the glove again, but this time she stayed on. Tyler walked her slowly around the pen, pretty as you please.
This had taken some bravery on Tyler’s part, no question about it, on account of Neal and on account of the bird. With her bill, she could have put his eye out so fast. Tyler’s expression was as serious as could be. Eventually the grim line of his mouth changed to a faint smile. He was pretty proud of himself.
I’d been sitting and watching for so long, I’d forgotten all about Cody. I got up feeling uneasy and started looking around. Inside the clinic, no one had seen him. I was getting more and more concerned as I started checking the grounds. He was nowhere to be found.
An hour and maybe more had gone by since I’d seen him. I was just about frantic. I stopped to think, then ran toward the creek. It was the only other place I could think of.
There he was, just climbing out of the creek with his backpack in his hand. Ever since he’d heard about Dad being in Afghanistan, well, I had been expecting some sort of upset feelings episode. “Cody!” I practically screamed. “Don’t scare me like that!”
He hung his head. “Sorry, Shan, I couldn’t find you.”
“That didn’t mean you could go off by yourself. I thought we had an agreement.”
“I had to catch one of those frogs.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to calm down. “Did you catch one, then?”
“Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“I let it go.”
“Well, good.”
I made him promise not to disappear on me like that ever again. Promise or no promise, I was going to have to watch him like a hawk.
The next morning Cody slept in, which was unusual. I went to rouse him. Something gross was squashed flat next to him, a very dead frog. “Cody,” I said, “what is this road-kill doing in your bed?”
The poor kid was stricken. “Aw, Shannie, is he dead? He was alive when I put him in there last night.”
“Cody, I thought you told me you let the frog go.”
“I did. This was a whole different frog.”
18
TYLER AND LIBERTY
Every day or two Tyler and I visited on “the talking stump,” as we called it. He was smiling a lot these days, and it looked good on him. “Your uncle says animals all have their individual personalities. He said he didn’t know about insects. I asked him if Jackie ever rehabbed ants and he said no, but once she rehabbed a butterfly.”
“You and Neal are really getting along, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Tyler said, “he’s all right.”
I asked Tyler if he knew about Neal being treated for cancer. He did, and he was surprised that I knew. I told him how I’d found out, and that Cody still didn’t know. Tyler promised not to tell—and I trusted him.
Tyler was around the center more lately, six hours a day instead of four, so there were more chances for us to get together. He’d told his father he was working longer hours to get it over with faster, but he told me the real reason was that he liked
being at the center, liked the bear cubs crawling over him, liked training the eagle with Neal.
I figured out what Tyler didn’t say: whatever time he spent at the center he didn’t have to spend handing wrenches to his father. Well, and then there was me, I guess. I was somebody he could talk to.
One day as we were sitting on the stump Tyler came out with, “Three more years. Three more years.”
I couldn’t tell if something had happened at home, but he looked desperate to talk. “Until what?” I asked tentatively.
“Until I can get away. Until I’m out of high school, and eighteen. My dad thinks I’ll work at the shop with him, inherit the business one day and all that. There’s no way. I can’t tell him that, but there’s no way.”
“Why can’t you tell him?”
“He’d make me pay for it every day. So I let him think it’s a possibility. The day after I’m out of high school, I’m out of here. I’m on a bus.”
“A bus to where?”
“I don’t know. The army?”
“What about college?”
“Me, college?”
“Why not? Why not you?”
He seemed pleased I was even thinking of him that way, but his smile morphed into a frown. “No way. Anyway, they couldn’t afford it. If I need anything from him, it’s hopeless.”
“What about your mother? You never mention her.”
“That’s hopeless too. She won’t ever stand up to him. She just can’t do it. My mom just tries to get from one day to the next.”
“If you ask me, your family should have counseling, not just you.”
He laughed a desperate sort of laugh. “We did that earlier this summer. Three sessions, and it was torture. My dad just sat there like it was all my problem. I couldn’t come out with what it’s like at home—all the tension, all about how mean and sarcastic he is. As soon as we were out of sight of the counselor, he would’ve made me pay. My mother just sat there. She’d been through it years before—he used to beat her up. She just doesn’t want it to get worse again. My mom gave up a long time ago.”