Lea 3-Book Collection

by Lisa Yee

  Marcos let out a low chuckle. “Very sturdy,” he said. “We’re not going to tip over, Lea. I promise.”

  Marcos paddled toward shore where the caimans had been, and we heard splashes.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked.

  Marcos nodded. “They’re long gone,” he said, positioning the canoe against a tangle of trees and brush. He took out a long metal stick with a hook on the end and reached it into the leaves. Suddenly he turned and looked at me. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “For what?” I said.

  He pulled the pole out of the tree to reveal…an anaconda! It was huge. I mean, HUGE. I slapped my hands over my mouth to stifle a scream.

  “Don’t worry,” Marcos assured me. “I won’t let him near you. But while I have him here, do you want to take a picture?”

  A picture. Yes, a picture. Trembling, I reached for my camera.

  “Don’t use the flash,” Zac called out in a loud whisper. “There’s enough light from the moon.”

  I got my shots, enough to satisfy Dax, and put my camera down. Marcos released the snake into the water and it slithered away.

  As we canoed back to the house, my heart felt a bit lighter. Zac and Marcos were right. The animals had been there the entire time. I just had to be patient.

  I moved to one of the middle seats in the canoe and motioned for Zac to join me.

  I exhaled. “About this afternoon,” I began.

  “Later,” Zac said. “Let’s just enjoy this moment.” He put his arm around me. It felt right.

  We were both quiet for the longest time, looking at the stars, listening to the wildlife. But then I felt two little hands pushing us apart and Tomás sat down between us. He smiled up at me, and then turned his grin on Zac. Then the three of us broke into a laugh that echoed across the river.

  he next morning, I awoke to a gentle pitter-patter sound. I stretched out my arms as I yawned. Then my eyes flew open and I rushed to the window. It was raining. Did that mean that Zac and I couldn’t go on another rainforest hike today?

  Once I was dressed, I went into the kitchen and found everybody doing their daily morning chores. Zac was setting the table, Olivia was cooking, Marcos sliced the fresh fruit, and Tomás helped carry the food to the table. I assumed that I was expected to help, too. I wouldn’t have minded—after all, I had lots of chores at home, like doing the dishes, raking the leaves in the fall, and helping shovel snow in the winter—but those chores weren’t fraught with danger. Leaving the kitchen, I took a deep breath to prepare myself for another Galo Louco attack. I was about to head outside to the henhouse when Tomás came through the front door, his hair dripping wet with rain, and handed me a basket full of eggs.

  “Obrigada!” I exclaimed.

  Tomás gave me a shy smile, and we walked into the kitchen together.

  When we had finished setting the table, Olivia told us it would be a few more minutes until breakfast. “You two relax for a bit,” she told us. “I’ll let you know when breakfast is ready.”

  I followed Zac into the living room and we sat next to each other on the couch.

  “Zac, I am so sorry about what happened with the ants yesterday,” I blurted, wanting to get it off my chest. “I was careless and selfish and, well…you were right. I was thinking more about getting a great video than how that would affect the ants and their habitat.”

  Zac looked at me. “And I shouldn’t have gotten so mad at you,” he confessed. “It’s just that I care about the wildlife in the rainforest and I’d do anything to protect it.” He sighed. “I just wish I could do more—and I still have a lot to learn.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  Zac put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “I’ll tell you what, Lea. When the rain lets up, let’s take the rowboat out on the water. I know a place down the river where a bunch of monkey families hang out. I bet you could get some great photos for your blog there.”

  “I’d like that,” I said. I looked out the window. If only there were an off switch for the rain!

  But the rain kept pouring, well past lunch. While Tomás and Macaco, his stuffed monkey, watched the rainfall from his bedroom window, I opened Ama’s travel journal. I’d hardly had a chance to read it since I arrived in the rainforest.

  Not long after her trip to Alaska, Ama went to Tanzania, where she visited an animal rescue center:

  It was love at first sight when I saw Georgie, a skinny young giraffe with a cast on his long leg. I was told that he had been injured while fleeing a lion attack. Georgie’s mother hadn’t survived the attack, so he had been orphaned.

  We bonded quickly, and he followed me everywhere. I wanted so badly to take Georgie home, but I knew that was impossible. Imagine, a giraffe in my tiny house! But I hated the thought of leaving him behind. I wanted to do what I could to help him survive and thrive on the savanna. That’s when I decided to adopt him! Well, not in the literal sense of the word. But I made a plan to donate some money to help pay for his food and medical bills.

  It was hard to say good-bye to Georgie, but knowing that he was in good hands was a comfort. And knowing that I had made a new friend—one with very long legs!—warmed my heart.

  I closed Ama’s journal and felt a rush of impatience. I couldn’t wait to get back outside to see some more animals.

  I sat at the small table next to Tomás’s bed and worked on a blog post about my hike in the rainforest and the night cruise. I was pleased that Zac was in the background of the photo of the ant mountain so that my friends could get an idea of how big it really was.

  The minute I posted my blog, comments and questions about the rainforest started pouring in from my classmates. (There was only a one-hour time difference between here and St. Louis, I realized, which meant that it was library hour.) Even Dax was impressed by my photos of the ant mountain—and especially the anaconda.

  Then I moved on to my e-mails. I was excited to hear from Camila, who told me that her family was planning a trip to Chicago in April.

  Quickly, I wrote back. The drive from Chicago to St. Louis isn’t very far! And I’ll be on spring break for a week in April! Fingers crossed that you can visit me then!!!

  I e-mailed Mom and Dad to be sure that Camila was invited, and Mom got right back and assured me that she was. She also reported that my father was going a little stir-crazy from not being able to go anywhere because of his broken leg—but that she was surfing up a storm.

  Tomás brought out a big bin of crayons and some paper and sat next to me, propping up Macaco in his own chair. I watched as Tomás began to draw the river and the trees along the banks. Then he drew an outline of a dolphin under the water. As he rooted around his bin, I spotted a gray crayon and handed it to him. He shook his head, instead reaching for a pink one.

  What an imagination! I thought as he colored the dolphin pink. Next he drew a kitten—or maybe it was a leopard since it had spots. I chose some brightly colored crayons and handed them to Tomás, thinking that a purple-and-green leopard would go well with his pink dolphin, but instead he reached for yellow and brown and black.

  Olivia appeared in the doorway. She squatted down next to the table to look at Tomás’s drawing. “Bom trabalho! Good job, Tomás.” She turned to me. “He sure loves margays.”

  What’s a margay? I wondered.

  I typed “margay” into my web browser and there was the animal Tomás was drawing, right on my screen! It looked like a leopard, but smaller, with little rounded ears and huge brown eyes.

  Tomás looked over my shoulder at the margays on the screen. He pointed to one and then to his picture.

  “It’s the same,” I said, nodding. “Margay!”

  Just then, Zac popped into the room and said in a fake stern voice, “Lea! What are you doing sitting around when you could be cruising down the Amazon River?”

  I looked outside. The rain had stopped and the sun was shining!

  The rain left a clean fresh scent in the ai
r. Zac led me to a small, faded green rowboat on the other side of the dock from where Marcos kept his big canoe tied up. The rowboat looked as if it could barely float. When I boarded, it rocked back and forth, and I quickly sat down so as not to go for another unscheduled swim.

  Zac was an expert with the oars, and soon we were skimming along the river, flanked on either side by lush forests. The trees were still dripping and steaming, the leaves shiny and sparkling from all the rain. Brightly colored parrots flew overhead and perched high in the tree branches. I took out my camera, zoomed in, and got some great photos.

  “Look!” Zac said. He pointed to the water just a few feet away.

  I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was real. It took my breath away.

  “A dolphin!” I cried. But it wasn’t just any dolphin—it was a bubblegum pink dolphin, just like the one Tomás had drawn!

  “That’s a boto, a freshwater dolphin,” Zac said as he slowed the rowboat. “When the water level is low, you’ll see more of them around here.”

  The boto glided in and out of the water. I glimpsed a second, smaller flash of pink beside her.

  “Look!” I exclaimed. “There are two of them. Is that her baby?”

  Zac grinned and nodded. I took some photos, and then began to record a video. My heart fluttered at the sight of the two of them together.

  “What’s she doing?” I asked as the mother boto nudged her baby.

  “She’s teaching her calf to come up for air as he swims,” Zac said.

  “Her calf? Zac—it’s a baby boto, not a baby cow!”

  Zac smiled. “That’s what baby dolphins and botos are called. Calves.”

  The botos swam beside us as we glided down the river. Before long, Zac started steering us toward the shore, and the botos continued on their way.

  The bottom of the boat dragged along the shallow riverbed, and we came to a gentle stop. Zac hopped out, tugged the boat onto the shore, and gave me his hand to help me up. After just a few steps, we found ourselves in the dense greenery of the rainforest.

  The leaves stirred above me, and I was able to get several photos of monkeys swinging through the branches. I got one great shot of a monkey in midair as he leapt from tree to tree.

  We ducked under a low branch, and I spotted a giant spider on it. At home, I normally screamed when I saw spiders. This time, I took photos of it instead.

  As we walked, I thought about the questions my classmates had asked on my blog. I had been getting a great response to each post, but since Ms. Swain had offered extra credit to anyone who asked me a question about Brazil that I answered, my inbox was flooded.

  I read that a lot of rainforest animals are endangered, Abby had written. What is causing them to die out?

  I wasn’t sure, so I asked Zac.

  “The animals here face many threats, but one big problem is poachers,” Zac said matter-of-factly.

  Poachers? Didn’t poaching have something to do with eggs? “What are poachers?” I asked.

  “People who kidnap animals and sell them as pets. Every year, the rainforest loses over ten million animals to poachers.”

  “Ten million?” I exclaimed. “That’s awful.”

  “Deforestation is also a problem,” he continued. “Cattle ranchers and farmers clear the land for their farms, and loggers cut down trees to sell the wood—trees that were once the homes of many animals. Imagine if someone came to St. Louis and began to destroy all the homes in Lafayette Square. What would we do? Where would we live?”

  I shrugged and shook my head, feeling helpless and horrified. Where would the animals go if the trees weren’t here? My heart ached when I thought about all the animals that had been kidnapped and sold away by poachers, and the poor birds, monkeys, and even spiders and insects that had lost their homes in the trees.

  We continued to walk in silence. After a while, we came into a small clearing. Zac went to inspect a large millipede that was squirming up a tree trunk. I kept my distance, but zoomed in my camera lens for a good shot. Then I panned around us, taking photos of the lush rainforest. The forest floor was covered with leaves, and when I looked closely I could see armies of ants and other insects scurrying every which way. Then I spotted something strange on my camera screen. Slowly I lowered the camera. On the ground ahead of me was a small pile of matted fur in the leaves. At first I thought it was a stuffed animal or—my breath caught—a dead one. But then I saw that it was breathing. As I approached, I could see that it was moving one of its arms very slowly. It had long black-and-white fur, and was curled up in the leaves—

  I gasped.

  “Zac!” I called out. “Zac, it’s a baby sloth!”

  autiously, I walked around the little sloth. It hardly moved, but then sloths are known to be slow-moving. Still, there was a knot in my stomach, and I had a feeling that something was wrong. Why was it all alone? Had it fallen out of the tree? Was it hurt?

  Zac ran over to me. We both bent down. The sloth let go of a heartbreaking sound that I will never forget. It was a weak bleating noise, like a baby goat.

  “It’s very young,” he said.

  “We have to help it!” I pleaded.

  Zac stood up. “Lea, you stay with the sloth. I’ll scout around. Mothers rarely stray far away from their babies. Don’t touch it, though. We don’t want to get our scent on it.”

  As I stood guard over the sloth, I bent down and spoke softly to it. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’m right here with you.”

  The little sloth lay on its stomach at the base of a tall tree. It was the sweetest thing I had ever seen. Brown fur framed its friendly white face and dark eyes, and it had a tiny black nose. And even though its mouth was turned up in a smile, the frightened look in its eyes told me it wasn’t happy. Its breathing seemed shallow, and although it tried, it was too weak to crawl away. It smelled sort of bad, but I stayed close. Nothing could keep me away from this baby sloth.

  Soon my brother returned. He looked distressed.

  “Did you find the mother?” I asked.

  Zac shook his head. “No sign of her,” he reported. He ran his hand through his mop of brown hair.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. I thought of the boto mother who took such good care of her calf. Where was this sloth’s mother?

  “Most likely, the baby lost its grip on its mother and she wasn’t able to rescue her baby. Or something bad may have happened to the mother. Maybe a predator attacked her or a poacher took her.”

  Worry set in. I looked down at the helpless baby sloth. “So what else can we do? We have to save it, Zac!”

  He released a big sigh. “Okay, let me see if I can get it to latch on to the tree. It’ll be safer there.”

  I nodded.

  Gently, Zac picked up the baby sloth. I followed and took photos as he tried to get the sloth to latch. Slowly, instinctively, the creature reached out and tried to wrap its weak arms around the branch. It trembled and let out another cry. But as hard as it tried, it couldn’t hold on to the branch.

  Zac gathered the baby close to him and it clung to his shoulder as he inspected one of its front paws. “Come here,” he said. “Look.”

  I peered at the baby’s small paws, which had long toes, or fingers, almost like hands. A couple of its claws were broken off.

  “This is a three-toed sloth,” Zac explained. “I think its broken claws are part of the reason that it can’t latch on.”

  “Will the sloth be able to live on its own out here?” I asked. “It’ll be okay, right?”

  “I’m afraid it’s too little to fend off predators and too weak to search for food. The missing claws will make it impossible to climb, and at this age, it has no sense of direction, so it’s easy prey.”

  “Maybe we could bring it back to the Barroses’ house,” I suggested. “We’ll nurse it back to health, and then I can adopt it!” I knew a thing or two about taking care of animals in need. I always helped whenever Abby’s family took in rescue animals from the
local shelter. And last year at school I found a baby sparrow that had fallen from a nest. We fed him by hand, and he became our class bird. We named him Tweety. Maybe we could have a class sloth, too!

  “I’m sorry, Lea. That’s just not possible. Besides, it would be illegal for you to take a sloth out of the rainforest,” Zac said, bringing me back to reality with a thud.

  I bit my lip. “Then maybe Olivia and Marcos will be able to take care of it.”

  Zac shook his head. “To nurse this baby back to health would be a full-time job. They already have their hands full with Tomás and their jobs.”

  “Well, I could do it!” I volunteered.

  “Lea, you leave in three days.”

  “What about you?” I said, scrambling for solutions. “You’ve got another half a year here.”

  “Yes, but I have my research and studies, which will start up again next week,” Zac reminded me. “Besides, I’m not trained in wildlife rescue or rehabilitation. Caring for a wild animal, especially one this young, is very difficult.”

  “But—” I started. But what? I knew he was right. My voice trembled. “May I hold it?”

  When Zac put the baby in my arms, my body flooded with love for it. Was this how mothers felt when they cuddled their babies? The sloth clung to me, resting its tiny head on my shoulder. It weighed almost nothing. How could I leave this little baby sloth to die alone in the rainforest? I began to sob. I felt so helpless.

  Zac looked miserable. “I know this hurts,” he said gently. “Mother Nature can be cruel. I’m so sorry, Lea. But this sort of thing happens a thousand times a day in the rainforest.”

  “But it doesn’t happen a thousand times a day to this baby,” I blubbered. “Maybe I can’t stop the poachers or bring the trees back on my own. But Zac, I want to save this baby. You said you wanted to give back to the rainforest. Well, here’s your chance to help—one animal at a time.”