“Cover me!” Cricket assumed the role of field commander. He stroked the pump of his water rifle three times. “I’m going after Thumper!” He tore across the dirt ground in the direction of the Oriole Cabin, roaring a war cry as he went.
Heath was reminded of the old expression, It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. He and Dunbar looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and chased after him. It had suddenly turned into a rescue mission to bring Cricket back alive.
“That was fun on a bun!” Cricket proclaimed as the trio of friends marched back toward the boys’ bathhouses, which was the nearest place to reload. “I swear, Dunbar, for a split second, you looked exactly like the house from the movie Up!”
“Shut up, Cricket,” Dunbar said, flicking a shred of green rubber at his head. Although they never found Thumper, they did manage to get themselves ambushed by a pack of ten-year-old girls from the Chickadee Cabin. They hit Dunbar with so many water balloons that they actually knocked him flat on his back, and of course Cricket had been laughing hysterically ever since. Dunbar was in a pretty sour mood for someone coated in melted candy. He ripped the empty string off his neck. “You just can’t trust girls,” he muttered as he headed back to their cabin to dry off, leaving Cricket and Heath as the sole survivors of Grosbeak. Heath kept an eye out for Will, but he doubted water fights were his thing.
“Heath, look over there.” Cricket pointed. “In the woods. Is that…Bigfoot?”
Heath saw it, too, a flash of brown scruffy hair just past the tree line. “Don’t get your underwear twisted in a knot,” he whispered. “I think it’s just a camper hiding in the forest. Trying to wait out the battle till the end.”
“Lame. Whoever it is”—Cricket cocked the pump of his squirt gun for dramatic effect—“let’s go melt his candy.”
They split up. The plan was simple. Cricket would charge from the front while Heath would circle around and flank their target from the far right, in the hope of catching him off guard.
Cricket stayed hidden behind the trunk of a large pine tree, awaiting Heath’s signal (they forgot to discuss what the signal should be, but Cricket was sure he’d recognize it when it was given). Heath crouched low, moving quickly, careful to stay hidden behind shrubs and tree trunks as he closed in on his quarry. His route skirted the edge of the forest, but he didn’t stray too far from the dirt path. He was hoping to find an opening in the tree line that would allow him to get behind the boy, close enough to ambush without giving himself away beforehand.
Heath froze abruptly. Again he thought about the howling he’d heard that morning. He wondered if he wasn’t foolishly serving himself up as dinner for a wolf. But then, through the brush, he caught a glimpse of blue plastic. It was a water wing wrapped snuggly around a massive, muscular arm. Floaties’s arm. Heath wasn’t stalking an animal or Bigfoot. But something just as dangerous.
Attacking Floaties would be a pretty dumb idea. Heath remembered how agitated the kid had been at the picnic pavilion. And Floaties was huge, almost as big as Thumper. Not quite as tall, but definitely broader and more muscular. He wisely decided it would be best to call off Operation Floaties’s Revenge.
Heath heard a rattling sound, like reeds rustling against one another, followed by a low grunting noise. The grunts grew louder, interspersed with whistles and whines. If Cricket was trying to signal him, he was going about it in an odd way.
Suddenly, up ahead, Floaties roared. “Get away from me! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
Heath assumed he was yelling at Cricket. He bolted out of the forest, sprinting down the dirt path as fast as he could toward the tree where he’d left his friend, expecting to have a fight on his hands. But Cricket was still there, intently watching the forest. When he saw Heath, he pointed at the rustling bushes. “There’s an animal in there!”
“An anim—?”
Floaties came crashing out of the woods in a wild panic. Something resembling a long stalk of hay was poking out of his right water wing, deflating it rapidly. His eyes were wide and buggy, and he had leaves and bits of twig in his hair. He came rushing at them like an escapee from a mental hospital. Cricket was right. A creature rocketed out of the forest after him.
“What is that?” Heath instinctively jogged backward as Floaties and the strange animal came bounding toward him. At first Heath thought it was a dog or maybe a small bear; it was black, had a high arching back and stubby legs, and it swayed from side to side as it ran. When it was clear of the obscuring grass in front of the tree line, he realized what it was. “That’s a porcupine!”
Heath had seen one before at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, but that one was smaller, and its fur and quills were light brown. This one was almost black, except around its muzzle, which was bearded and pure white. When they used their quills it was usually to defend themselves from predators. Normally porcupines were timid, preferring to escape encounters with humans by climbing trees. The one chasing Floaties, on the other hand, had murder in its eyes.
“Out of my way!” Floaties reached the boys and plowed through them, knocking Cricket onto his back. The porcupine, sensing an easier target, changed direction, charging toward Cricket.
The source of the rattling was apparent. The long quills on the porcupine’s back were rustling against one another as the creature moved. The guide at the Woodland Park Zoo had described how painful it was to get stuck with porcupine quills, especially because of the little backward-facing barbs at the tip that made it hard to extract the quill from the skin. With thirty thousand quills protruding from its body, the porcupine could turn Cricket into a pincushion.
It kept pouncing at Cricket, its jaws snapping, its eyeballs nearly popping out of its skull. It was possessed by rage. Cricket kicked at it, fending off the creature with his foot as he tried to scurry to safety. The porcupine latched on to the sole of his sandal with its teeth, but Cricket slipped his foot free of the strap and yanked it clear. “Get it off me!” he cried shrilly.
“Hang on, man!” Heath knew he couldn’t touch the porcupine, so he did the only thing he could think of. He aimed his squirt gun and sprayed the animal in the face, hoping to at least startle it enough to give his friend a chance to escape. As soon as the jet of water hit the side of the porcupine’s head, the animal let out a horrible, prolonged yowl and flopped to its side, inches from Cricket’s leg. It lay in the dirt, motionless.
Cricket scrambled to his feet. Heath kept the squirt gun trained on the porcupine’s head for a long time. They watched the creature for any sign of movement, ready to spring into action at the first twitch. A full minute passed before the boys agreed it was dead. Heath lowered his pistol and remembered to breathe.
“You killed it,” Cricket panted. He placed his dirty hands on his knees and doubled over. His whole body trembled.
“I didn’t mean to,” Heath said apologetically. He’d never killed anything before, besides mosquitoes and horseflies, and he’d even curbed back on that since becoming friends with Cricket.
“No, I mean, Thanks! You killed it!”
“Oh. You’re welcome, I guess.” He couldn’t take his eyes off the creature. “I don’t get it though. All I did was spray it with water.”
“Maybe Floaties hurt it in the forest.”
Heath knew that wasn’t right. “With what? His fists? His arms would have been covered with quills.”
“What if he threw a rock at it?”
“I don’t think so. The porcupine was fast. It didn’t seem injured.”
“It’s filthy.” Cricket crinkled his nose. “And it smells bad…like it died a week ago.”
Heath broke a branch off of a nearby tree and used it to lift the porcupine’s head so they could get a good look at its face.
“What is that stuff?” Cricket asked, pointing to the animal’s mouth.
During t
he confusion of the attack, Heath had assumed the white on the porcupine’s muzzle was a tuft of beard extending down from its lower lip. Up close he saw that the black fur of its chin was actually caked with foamy saliva.
“Well?” Cricket repeated. “What is it?”
Heath lowered the porcupine’s head back to the dirt carefully and slowly so that no spit would flick loose and land on his skin. He tossed the stick far into the woods as if it were on fire, then wiped his hands on his pants several times for good measure.
He turned to Cricket and grimaced. “I think it has rabies.”
Timmy was my cabinmate,
He liked to water-ski.
Then one day he broke his neck,
And they did an autopsy.
Poor Timmy was a goner,
So they gave him to Chef Moe.
He ground up Timmy’s body.
Enjoy your sloppy joe!
“WHAT A STINK!” Cricket complained, his voice muffled beneath his cupped hand. “Break a window, someone.”
“Heath, please open the window above the sink. Breaking it won’t be necessary.” Uncle Bill, an obese man in a Hawaiian shirt, directed the flow of traffic in the health center, a small, one-room building with a single examining table, a desk, a sink, and several tall white medicine cabinets lining the wall. Physically, Camp Harmony’s owner was hardly the type you’d expect to be outdoorsy, but he loved his camp and everyone in it. He liked to wear loud, colorful shirts, which always had dark stains in the armpits, even in the morning when it was cool out. He was joined by Marshall Cooper, the assistant director and a college junior who spent the rest of the year at the University of Washington in Seattle earning his degree in forestry. The men were standing over the examining table, opening the tarp they’d used to conceal the porcupine’s carcass as they’d walked it nonchalantly through the middle of the water fight. The animal’s quills had poked through it in places, making it a challenge to separate the tarp from the porcupine’s body.
“Cricket, see if you can find some rubber gloves,” Uncle Bill said. “There should be a pair or two around here someplace.”
“Sure thing,” Cricket replied.
As Heath struggled to open the window—it hadn’t been opened in years and the latch was crusted with rust and flecks of rubbery paint—he heard Uncle Bill and Marshall heatedly whispering. He couldn’t pick up every word, but he got the gist: Marshall said they should call the health department in Granite Falls. Uncle Bill was upset and said that if they called, the camp might be shut down by someone named Dee Heck. They couldn’t afford that. Marshall bookended the discussion by repeating his opinion that not calling was a bad idea, but that was the end of the disagreement—Uncle Bill won. The window latch finally turned on its screw, and Heath hoisted the window open.
“Open the wall while you’re at it!” Cricket said, adding an exaggerated cough. “I know dead animals smell bad, but this is beyond gross! It’s worse than our cabin on taco night!”
“Let’s agree to disagree,” said Marshall.
“What is that?” Heath asked. He was feeling slightly nauseated from the odor.
“That stench is coming from a patch of skin on the porcupine’s back called a rosette,” Marshall explained. “They’re kind of like skunks in that way. When they’re scared they emit a pungent odor from the rosette that rises up and escapes through the hollow quills above it.” Marshall was studying to be a park ranger, so he knew a bit about the local wildlife.
“It was scared?” Cricket was indignant. “When I saw that thing coming for me I nearly peed myself!”
“That would have only made matters worse,” Marshall told him. “Porcupines are attracted to urine.”
“Serious?” Cricket’s eyes opened wide. “That’s just…sick!”
“Not just urine,” Marshall elaborated. “They like pretty much anything with salt in it. They crave it. In the wild they get their fix from salty plants like liverwort and lilies, but they’ll also gnaw on fresh animal bones, mud, and tree bark. Sometimes they wander into human habitats looking for salt, too. They’ll take it any way they can get it—cured plywood, tool handles, doors, paint, rock salt used to melt ice on roads…you name it.”
Heath spoke up. “That’s not why it attacked Cricket.” He was annoyed. Everyone seemed to be ignoring the real problem; the animal was clearly sick with—
“Rabies,” Uncle Bill said, shaking his head woefully. “The porcupine must have rabies.”
Cricket held out a carton of disposable rubber gloves that he’d found in a medicine cabinet. Both Uncle Bill and Marshall plucked a pair from the box and pulled them over their hands with a snap.
“Let’s just be sure though, okay?” Uncle Bill insisted. “Marshall?”
Marshall used his gloved fingers to lift the skin covering the porcupine’s gums. Heath was surprised. He’d expected to see rows of jagged teeth, like in a dog. Instead the porcupine had four enormous chisels in the front and receding behind them were flat, crowned teeth resembling human molars.
“Porcupines are rodents,” Marshall said. “The third largest in the world.”
“So they’re basically giant rats?” Cricket scrunched his face in disgust. Coming from the city, he was all too familiar with rats.
“They’re in the same family, Rodentia, yes, but they’re different in many ways, the quills being the most obvious example. Whenever a porcupine feels cornered, it’ll lower its head, raise its quills and lash out with its tail. In fact, the word porcupine means one who rises in anger.”
“What are quills made of?” Cricket asked. “Bone?”
Marshall plucked one free from the body and held it out for the boys to examine. “Nope. They’re actually modified hairs coated in thick plates of keratin, the same stuff that makes up human fingernails and hair. Quills are light and spongy in the middle. That’s why porcupines can float in water like a Ping-Pong ball. The rosette quills, however, are hollow.” He paused. “Hmm. Looks like it lost a few of those.”
Marshall checked the animal’s eyes, then rolled the body as far as it would go onto its back. He had to press on its belly to crunch the quills flat. The creature had claws like curly fries. Its underbelly was covered in wiry hair, but no quills.
“Well?” Uncle Bill asked when Marshall had finished examining the carcass.
“I think so.” Marshall nodded. He pulled his gloves off and tossed them into the garbage can. “It has many of the symptoms of rabies—foamy saliva, paralysis of the jaw and throat. Its pupils are dilated—”
“I knew it!” Uncle Bill said. He was furious. “It’s them! Those…those…Something fishy is going on, I’m telling you! They’re mucking around in the forest, stirring up trouble.”
Heath wondered who “them” was, but he knew that asking wouldn’t get him any answers. This was what Uncle Bill called “grown-up talk,” which just meant he didn’t think enough of the campers to tell them the truth.
“Calm down, Bill,” said Marshall. “You’re being paranoid. I’ve talked to people at the Forestry Service about them. They assured me there’s nothing going on. I’m certain they had nothing to do with our porcupine’s death. To be honest, I can’t guarantee it even has rabies.”
“What exactly is rabies?” Cricket asked.
Marshall said, “Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the brain and central nervous system in almost all warm-blooded mammals, including humans. The word rabies is derived from the Latin word for madness, which is one of the final and most notorious symptoms of the disease.”
Heath remembered how vicious the porcupine had been when it attacked Cricket. It sure seemed crazy.
Marshall continued. “But that’s not all. There are other symptoms, too: paranoia, hallucinations, fear of water, violent movements, excessive amounts of saliva and tears. This all leads to paralysis, followed by coma, an
d then finally death.”
“Every time?” Heath asked.
Marshall said, “It’s almost always fatal if not treated quickly enough.”
“How does an animal get rabies?” Cricket sounded funny so everyone stopped and looked over at him. He’d found a set of giant plastic teeth, the kind used to demonstrate good brushing habits to little kids, and had shoved it into his mouth. He looked a bit like the Joker.
“Put those back in the drawer, please,” Uncle Bill scolded. Cricket spit out the chompers and when Uncle Bill looked away, he stuck them back into the drawer still wet.
“Usually rabies is transmitted through the bite of another animal,” said Marshall. “That’s what’s got me so baffled—I can’t find teeth marks on this porcupine’s body. No wound at all. Granted it takes weeks, and even months, for the rabies virus to take hold in an animal, so it might not be a fresh scar, but there should be a mark at least. If it has rabies, then something bit it.”
“That is odd,” Uncle Bill said in such a way that Heath suspected the man didn’t know the first thing about the disease. The camp director was a nice guy, but he was lucky he had a pretty smart staff to help him, or Camp Harmony would be in trouble.
“But that’s not all that’s weird,” Marshall said. “Porcupines almost never get rabies. Even a rabid dog will break off an attack once it gets a nose full of quills. That’s why it’s so rare, because it’s almost impossible for another animal to bite one.”
“Why do you think it died?” Heath couldn’t help feeling responsible.
“Honestly? I don’t know,” Marshall replied. “It skipped the paralysis and coma symptoms. You said it just fell over, Heath?”
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