by Peter Nelson
“Whoa,” Jordan said.
“Great Scott,” Alistair added.
“No.” Eldon smiled. “Great Peggy.”
Peggy tilted her antlered head and shook her floppy, silky-white ears, sandblasting the three of them below.
“We must’ve woken her up,” Eldon said. “Don’t make any sudden noises or moves. We’ve got to very carefully get her to go back into her burrow, or she’ll run.”
“Got any giant carrots?” Jordan muttered.
The Giant Desert Jackalope sat with a dazed, empty look in her eyes. She sniffed the air, then lifted a leg to scratch herself. She sniffed again, then yawned.
“Just move very slowly, and remember—no sudden noises,” Eldon repeated.
Peggy lifted her giant leg and scratched again, this time right below her neck. A flurry of fur floated down over the three of them. Jordan and Eldon looked over at Alistair. He was holding his nose. Which was about to explode.
Huhph . . . huhph . . . HWAHHH-TCHOOO! A violent sneeze blasted from his face. Peggy shot straight up into the air. They all looked up but lost her in the sun.
“Gesundheit,” Jordan said.
“Thanks,” Alistair said.
BOOM! The ground shook again, this time from the other side of the rock. The three of them ran around it and stopped dead when they saw what Jordan imagined to be a Creature Keeper’s worst nightmare: Peggy the Giant Desert Jackalope was hopping full speed across an open desert in broad daylight, straight for an unsuspecting little desert town.
“Gentlemen,” Eldon said. “The bunny has landed.”
18
Jordan’s sneakers filled with sand as he raced behind Eldon through the hot desert sun, a sprint made even harder as every ten yards or so he was forced to run down and then up one of Peggy’s sofa-sized footprints.
When they finally reached the small town, they found it oddly quiet for a place where a Giant Desert Jackalope had presumably just bounded through.
“Where is she?” Jordan panted. “Where is anybody?”
Eldon looked up and down the empty, dusty road. “Peggy’s very shy, but she spooks easily. One of the easier cryptids to keep, actually, so long as you don’t send her off in a blind panic. If we’re lucky she’ll jump at the first person she sees and flee back to her burrow. That’s why I had Alistair stay behind.”
Jordan’s lungs burned as he tried to catch his breath, and he wished he had gotten to stay back. He pictured Peggy having a cozy water bed like Nessie’s, and Alistair napping on it in the cool shade of her burrow.
“Can I help you folks?”
A friendly, laid-back voice startled them half to death. A leather-faced, middle-aged woman, with skin the color and texture of an old tangerine, smiled a crooked-toothed grin at them. “Dang! Didn’t mean to spook y’all! You two jumped higher than a jackrabbit on a desert rock!” She stuck her hand out. “My name’s Bertha. Bertha—SWEET SCREAMING BLAZES!”
“Interesting name,” Eldon muttered to Jordan. “Must be Native American. The Tarahumaran tribe was indigenous to this region.” He reached for her leathery hand. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Sweet Screaming Blazes.”
“No, you buzzard brain! Look!”
Jordan and Eldon spun around, half expecting to see Peggy eating someone. All they saw were two semi-inflated balloons bobbing lamely in the sun.
“Hey! Balloons,” Jordan said, trying to sound innocent about it.
“Exactly! Those balloon-thievin’ swine swiped my dirigibles again!” She sprinted down the road, yelling back to them. “There used to be six, then there were five, and now there’s only two! That’s three more that are gone!” Eldon and Jordan followed, keeping a sharp eye out for Peggy.
“Lotsa things disappearing around here,” Jordan said.
Bertha stopped in her tracks and turned around slowly. She eyeballed the two of them, and didn’t like the way they were glancing around nervously. “Where’d you two come from, anyway? I ain’t never seen you around here before.”
“Ma’am, do you live alone in this town?” Eldon said, ignoring her suddenly suspicious stare.
“Just me and my husband, Milo.” She backed up slowly until she reached a little balloon-rental shack. “Milo ain’t here now. Went to Midland to pick up some tourists. But he’ll be back any minute, so don’t try any funny stuff—” She suddenly pulled a shotgun from the shack and aimed it at them. “Balloon burglars!”
“Please, ma’am,” Eldon said. “You’re mistaken. I can explain.”
“Eldon,” Jordan whispered. “It doesn’t matter. Let her think we took ’em. Remember why we came here.” He spread his fingers behind his head like antlers and began to hop up and down.
“What’s he doing?” Bertha said. “Tell him to stop or I’ll shoot. It’s weird.”
Eldon turned to Jordan. “I’m a Badger Ranger, First Class,” he whispered. “I will not allow a fellow citizen to think I stole her private property.”
“Okay,” Jordan whispered back. “Then go ahead and explain how we crashed our seaplane into her ‘private property’ and dragged it across the desert!”
“Y’all did what now?” Bertha said. “What’re you two whisperin’ about?”
“Ms. Sweet Screaming Blazes,” Eldon said, straightening his Badger sash. “As a full-fledged First-Class Badger Ranger, I can assure you that I would never—”
“Oh, shut it, Ranger Rick,” Bertha said. “You two show up outta the blue with no car, no truck, and expect me to believe you had nothin’ to do with four of my hot-air balloons gone missin’? You think I’m stupid?”
“You said you already lost one. When did that happen? Did you get a glimpse of the thief?” Eldon pulled out his Badger Ranger official notebook and pencil. Click! He looked up to see the shotgun cocked and aiming right at his nose.
“Don’t you reach in yer pockets again!” she said tensely. “And as for getting any glimpses, I’d say I’m lookin’ at the dirty, rotten balloon snatchers right now. . . .”
“We don’t have time for this,” Jordan said, pushing the barrel away from Eldon’s face. “We’re on official cryptozoological business and—”
KABLAM! The shotgun went off, blasting into the sky, sending Jordan and Eldon diving into the dust and Bertha flying backward onto her bottom.
RUMBLE! The ground shook. Bertha looked down at the sand beneath her feet, then up at a very odd sight. A mound of sand was coming right at them. Bertha raised her shotgun at the approaching wave of sand. She got ready, took aim, and . . . CRASH! The incoming dune exploded before she could fire, knocking them all back and spraying everything with sand. Jordan saw a soft, white underbelly fly overhead, followed by a large, cottony tail. He sat up beside Eldon and turned around just in time to see Peggy land on the little rental shack in the balloon field, flattening it with a SMASH!
“Great horny toads!” Bertha stared in shock for a moment, then leaped to her feet and ran straight toward the giant jackalope, shotgun in hand. Eldon and Jordan scrambled to their feet and raced to save Peggy, who was staring mindlessly at a silver hubcap lying in the sand.
“No! Wait! Don’t shoot!”
“Stay back! This here devil bunny’s been stealin’ from my balloon park! Prob’ly thinks it’s some kinda giant radish farm!” Bertha aimed between Peggy’s sleeping bag–sized floppy ears. “An’ now it’s gonna git what it deserves. . . .”
She cocked the gun, closed one eye, and squeezed the trigger. . . . Click.
Bertha turned the gun upside down. A stream of sand poured out of the barrel, onto her boot.
Bertha tossed the gun away. Fuming, she stormed straight up to Peggy and began throwing a tantrum, kicking sand and yelling horrible names, trying to get the creature to fight. But Peggy stared off vacantly, her antlered head tilted slightly, transfixed by the shiny hubcap.
Jordan started giggling. “Wow,” he said. “Good thing there are no witnesses to this.”
“Yeah,” Eldon added. “Thank goodness Mr.
Sweet Screaming Blazes is in Midland.”
Kzzzrrt! “Bertha, it’s the Milo-Mobile, holler back, over?” The crackly voice came from under Peggy’s butt. Specifically, it came from a crushed CB radio that had somehow survived a Giant Desert Jackalope’s butt landing on it. Kzzzrrt! “I’m about a half mile out, got me a bus full of Bulgarian tourists with their eyes on the skies—and they got cash! Be there in a few minutes, so prep the balloons! Milo-Mobile out!”
“Oh, no,” Eldon said. Bertha turned toward the two of them and smiled.
“Hear that? Your freaky, furry friend here’s in trouble now!” She cackled. “My Milo’s the best desert-critter wrangler in all of Texas! He’ll hog-tie this here mutant zombie rabbit and we’ll charge five dollars apiece for a picture with her! We’re gonna be rich!”
Jordan and Eldon shared a look. Off in the distance, a sky-blue bus was making its way toward town, followed by a big trail of road dust.
Eldon grabbed Jordan. “C’mon!” They bolted past Peggy and Bertha, toward one of the last two balloons in the field. Eldon kept stopping and picking up small stones and tossing them away.
“What are you doing?” Jordan asked.
“Aha!” Eldon exclaimed as he handed Jordan a triangular stone. He pointed to one of his Badger Badges. “Native American studies,” he beamed. “That’s a genuine Tarahumaran arrowhead. As I said, they were indigenous to this region.”
“Yeah, but is now really the best time to collect samples?”
Jordan followed Eldon into one of the hot-air balloon baskets. Eldon gathered a rope, tying one end to their basket, and fashioning another into a lasso. He looked at Jordan. “Okay! Use the Tarahumaran arrowhead to pop the balloon!”
Confused, Jordan reached up and started stabbing their balloon with the dull arrowhead stone. “Not ours!” Eldon yelled. “That one!” He pointed to the other balloon, parked about twenty feet away. Jordan looked at him like he was crazy. Then he remembered something. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the slingshot that Alistair had given him. He placed the arrowhead in the sling, pointy side out, and took aim. He took a deep breath, pulled back, and let go. The arrowhead sailed through the dry desert air and pierced the other hot-air balloon.
PHHHHLLLLLTTT. . . . The air escaping from the hole in the balloon made a loud, long farting noise. Its sound snapped Peggy out of her trance. She leaped into the air and dashed across the field toward the open desert, straight for home, which also meant straight at Jordan and Eldon in their balloon. Eldon was ready for her. He swung his lasso as the giant jackalope approached, and hurled it, snagging Peggy’s antlers. Their balloon jerked into the air, snapping the anchor rope and yanking them over the fence. Peggy raced for her burrow, with Jordan and Eldon in tow.
Sailing through the air behind Peggy, Jordan glanced back. Bertha stood at the fence, looking astonished as she faded in the distance. Farther behind her, the sky-blue Milo-Mobile pulled to a stop as Jordan and Eldon soared away from them, across the desert, like parasailers.
19
As Peggy approached the bunny-shaped rock outcrop marking her home, it didn’t seem she had any intention of stopping. She’d had a very traumatic day, and was now running in a blind panic, way too fast. Eldon and Jordan sensed this, and didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t jump out of the basket without getting severely mangled. But even if they could abandon their bunny ship safely, Jordan knew Eldon wouldn’t. As head Creature Keeper, he could not allow a cryptid running around free without supervision. Who knew where she’d stop to blankly zone out? At this rate, she might run all the way to New York City, just to stare at the shiny buildings.
As the bunny rock loomed closer, they began yanking on the lasso to try to slow her down. Nothing was working.
Then they heard the booming sneeze of Alistair MacAlister. HWAAA-TCHOOO! “OI! UP HERE, YA HAREBRAINED HARE!”
Peggy glanced up, then immediately skidded to a stop in the sand. The basket drifted past her, floating gently to a stop near the top of the bunny-shaped rock. Standing atop the outcropping was Alistair, holding a shiny silver object over his head.
Jordan and Eldon slid down the rope, and then down Peggy, who stood motionless beside the rock, as if she were posing for a sculpture of herself.
“Nice little joyride, fellas?” Alistair jumped off the bunny-shaped rock, continuing to hold up a shiny cluster of silver spoons held together on a giant key ring. Peggy stayed mesmerized, following the spoons with her beady eyes.
“Sorry to interrupt your fun, but along with this little knickknack, I found some other stuff in that burrow that I thought you might wanna see.”
Jordan stared up at the zombified-bunny. “How’d you know to do that?”
“Oh, yeah. Found this, too.” Alistair pulled a beat-up old book out of his kilt and tossed it to Jordan: Raising and Caring for Your Giant Desert Jackalope.
“Nice work, Alistair!” Eldon exclaimed. “Can you get her into the burrow? We might have company soon.”
Alistair winked at them. “Check this out.” Peggy followed as he jingled the keys toward the bunny-shaped rock. “Okay, girl! Go get ’em!” He tossed the keys into a narrow space hidden at the base of the rock. Jordan heard them jangle as they fell somewhere deep below the desert floor.
Peggy dived, disappearing into her burrow, squirming and kicking sand at the three of them. She also buried the object she’d been sitting on the entire time she was staring at the keys. Their trusty little seaplane was now a pancake.
Alistair gestured to his partners. “After you, gentlemen.”
Jordan entered the dark space where Peggy had disappeared and slid down a steep, sandy slope, landing on a cool floor deep beneath the bunny rock. The burrow was a large, circular, dug-out space with no corners or sharp edges. It was like being inside an enormous egg room—the perfect shape to house a gigantic, clumsy rabbit with sharp antlers and a habit of crushing things with its butt. Cracks in the rock above allowed narrow beams of sunlight in, as well as air. But not enough air, as Jordan immediately noticed—it smelled like a petting zoo on a hot day.
Peggy was snuggled up at the far end of the egg-shaped room, on a large pillow-bed. Upon closer inspection it appeared to be hand-knit, completely from silky, white bunny fur. Jordan noticed many things made from the fur: wall hangings and area rugs and even furniture, including a couch and a lovely end table.
Alistair hung the spoons on a hook in front of Peggy. She stared at them, then tucked her giant fuzzy face between her soft paws and drifted off to sleep.
“What a dump,” Jordan said. He sat down on a dark brown, slightly squishy stumplike seat. He sank into it a bit as he looked around. “Stinks in here, too.”
“Uh, especially where you’re sitting, I should think,” Alistair said, chuckling. Jordan and Eldon looked at him. “That’s no stool, I’m afraid—that’s a stool!”
Jordan looked down and sniffed. He was sitting on a giant bunny pellet. “Eww!” He leaped out of the chair and began scooting his butt along the sandy floor like a cat in a litter box. “This place is disgusting!”
“What do you expect?” Eldon approached Peggy, reached out his hand, and gently stroked her nose. “Poor girl. Abandoned by her Keeper, she had no one to take care of her or keep her burrow clean.”
“Shameful,” Alistair said. “Doesn’t deserve the honor of being called a Keeper.”
“Who was her Keeper?” Jordan asked.
“Harvey Quisling, age thirteen,” Eldon said. “Fully trained and experienced First-Class Creature Keeper. I have no idea why he’d leave his post.”
“This might help explain.” Alistair stepped to a messy desktop. Among the clutter, Jordan and Eldon saw a cross-Atlantic wind-pattern map, an ad for Milo & Bertha’s Hot-Air Balloon Tours, a calendar with dates circled in red, and a sketch of a flyer for something called Quisling’s Zoopendous Crypto-Zoo.
“Looks like he was quite a tailor,” Jordan said, noticing an old sewing machine beside t
he desk. “As well as a knitter.”
“I’d say more of a nutter,” Alistair concluded. “Check out the cozy little psycho-blankie he was workin’ on.” He held up a massive quilt draped over a fur-lined rocking chair. On it, the same stitched sentence ran across the quilt over and over again: “SITTING AND KNITTING BENEATH THE SAND WILL SOMEDAY MAKE HARVEY A RICH OLD MAN . . .”
“Okay, so it looks like Harvey Quisling went a little quilt-crazy down here,” Jordan said. “But it doesn’t explain who showed up the night Nessie disappeared.”
“No,” Alistair said, “but check this out.” He handed them a letter written in curvy, inked handwriting on fancy parchment paper. “This is what I wanted you lads to see.”
To: Mr. Harvey Quisling
Chihuahuan Desert Burrow, West Texas
From: Señor Areck Gusto
Mexico City, Mexico
Dear Mr. Quisling,
This Letter confirms the terms of our agreement. I,
ARECK GUSTO,
shall design, construct, and fully fund one (1)
CRYPTO ZOO
facility, to be built in the northern Everglades, off the west coast of Florida, USA. You,
HARVEY QUISLING,
shall be responsible for the capture and confinement of one (1)
LOCH NESS MONSTER
for public presentation in said zoo. All ticket sales, gift shop and snack bar proceeds shall be shared equally between us.
I very much look forward to our partnership.
Sincerely,
Señor Areck Gusto
“Impossible,” Eldon said, looking more upset than Jordan had ever seen him.
“Florida Everglades,” Jordan said. “It can’t be a coincidence.”