Gator on the Loose!

The call came in at 10:40 a.m. on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Keisha was at the desk, Razi and Daddy were out back bottle-feeding the raccoon cubs and Mama had taken the baby with her to the farmers’ market. It was Grandma’s turn to be at the desk, but she had traded with Keisha so she wouldn’t miss her favorite show:
How Not to Look Old
.

Keisha looked at the ringing phone. It might be someone calling for information. But if her parents had to go out on a call, that meant Grandma would take them to the Grand River city pool’s opening celebration. Grandma was not fun to be with at the pool. She made everyone wear big floppy hats, even in the shade. Plus, her swim cap had purple flowers on it, and instead of pinching her nose when she jumped in like everybody else, she wore a color-coordinated nose plug.

Keisha checked the caller ID and was surprised to see that it
was
the city pool. She picked up.

“You have reached Carters’ Urban Rescue,” she said in a deep voice. “Our office is now closed. If this is an emergency, please dial—”

“Is that you, Keisha?” It was Mr. Ramsey, the pool manager.

“Yes, sir,” Keisha said.

“I need to talk to your mom or your dad.”

“We’re going to be there in an hour,” Keisha said. “I’m working on my cannonball today.”

“’Fraid not, honey. You know that big alligator the kids climb all over? The one that spouts water out of its nose?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.” When Keisha was little, she spent a lot of time climbing on that alligator and sliding down its tail. But she could go on the diving board now, so she didn’t hang around in the kiddie area.

“Well, it appears it had a baby.”

“A baby? As in a baby alligator?”

“That’s affirmative.”

Keisha got out an intake form. At least it sounded interesting. She wrote Mr. Ramsey’s name at the top.

“Tell me what happened, Mr. Ramsey.”

“This morning when I came to open up, there was a real alligator lying in the pool below the fiberglass one.”

“How big is it?”

“Big enough to make me jump back over the fence. And I’ve got knee problems.”

“That doesn’t tell me how big, Mr. Ramsey,” Keisha said in her calmest voice. “You have to talk in inches and feet.”

Keisha knew a little something about alligators. She had written a report on them in Mr. Frost’s class last year. Then she watched a special on TV. She loved the way they bobbed in the water with only their eyes showing. She planned to try floating like an alligator herself this summer. If Mr. Ramsey could give her an idea of the size, she could probably tell how old it was.

“Is it bigger than the spine board?” Keisha asked, referring to the board that hung on the wall by the locker rooms, the one they used if anyone had a bad accident at the pool.

“No … no, not that big,” Mr. Ramsey said. “More like the rescue tube.”

Keisha thought a minute. The rescue tube was
about three feet long. That was no baby lying in the city pool.

“Including the tail?”

“I would say the tail is extra.”

“What about its snout?” Keisha asked. “Round or pointy?”

“Keisha. Do you really think I hung around long enough to take a look?”

“Maybe it’s a crocodile,” Keisha said, thinking out loud. “They have a reputation for being crankier, and—”

“Keisha! It probably doesn’t
know
whether it’s an alligator or a crocodile any more than I do. What I need to know is whether your mom or dad can catch it. I tried animal control, but everybody’s got the holiday weekend off!”

“And the zoo isn’t answering, either, I bet.”

“Not the office phones.”

Keisha nodded. The zoo had to cut their hours a few years ago. This meant that on weekends and holidays, Carters’ Urban Rescue got a lot more calls.

“I’ll tell my dad right now, Mr. Ramsey. He can be there in ten minutes.”

“He can’t get here soon enough for me,” Mr. Ramsey said. “What am I supposed to tell my Little Minnows
swim class? They were going to put on a synchronized swim show today.”

“Better tell them not to get in the water.”

“That’s very helpful, Keisha. Thank you. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Keisha hung up the phone. When people were upset, they could also be sarcastic.

“Holy Missoni,” Grandma said, making her way down the stairs. “My high-waisted jeans are strictly OL.”

If you hung around Grandma long enough, you knew “OL” stood for “Old Lady.” Grandma said your age was just a number and she chose number 48. Anything that was OL was not for Grandma.

“Grandma, there’s an alligator in the city pool. Mr. Ramsey just called to tell us.”

Grandma put her hands on her hips and looked past Keisha, thinking. Keisha could see that Grandma was trying to make the leap from jeans to alligators.

“Now, what would they want to do that for?” Grandma asked.

“They didn’t do it, Grandma. It just happened.”

“Do you mind explaining
how?”

Keisha shrugged. “Will you answer the phones while I go out back to tell Daddy?”

“Maybe they’re adding on some sort of petting zoo.”
Grandma sat in the chair at the desk. “We got so many more visitors at the Twi-Lite Motel when the animals started coming around.”

Grandma grew up in the Upper Peninsula. During the summers, she and Grandpa Wally Pops helped her parents run the motel. It was deep in the woods, and they had salt feeders for the deer, peanuts on the deck for the chipmunks—all sorts of animals visited and the kids loved it. That is, until black bears started coming to the hot dog roasts and raccoons figured out how to get the lids off the garbage.

As if Grandma was thinking what Keisha was thinking, she said, “I’m not so sure
that’s
a good idea. We had a couple run-ins up there at the Twi-Lite that would scare the pants off of you—even tight, high-waisted OL ones.”

As soon as Grandma was settled in, Keisha slipped out the back door.

She ran past the empty raptor cage and the squirrel enclosure before she got to the shed that housed the raccoon babies. Daddy was sterilizing the empty bottles, and Razi was using the special bottle rack that could feed six babies at one time, though at the moment they only had four. At this young age, baby raccoons were a lot like little kittens—so cuddly—but they didn’t stay that way.

“Daddy, Mr. Ramsey just called. There’s an alligator in the city pool.”

Mr. Carter had strawberry blond hair and a fine sprinkle of freckles on his nose. He was tall enough to reach all the top shelves in the cupboard and skinny enough to stick his arm behind Keisha’s dresser when her comic books fell back there. The best thing about him was that he always took you seriously. In fact, he said kids were smarter than adults sometimes. He would
not
ask Keisha if she was making this up.

“How big is it?”

“The rescue tube plus a tail. I bet it’s a couple of years old.”

“Maybe it came out of the sewer!” Razi said.

“That was just a story Zack and Zeke told us,” Keisha said to Razi, who, at five, still had trouble telling the difference between what was real and what was make-believe. “Alligators can’t live in Michigan. It’s too cold.”

“Maybe it came up here for summer vacation,” Razi said as he finished feeding the sleepy baby raccoons. “Maybe it came up to visit relatives in the zoo and then it found out the zoo was closed for the day and then it got lost in that funny place downtown with all the one-way streets
and then
—” Razi paused to take in a big
breath. Breathing was a problem if you were trying to tell an “and then” story.

But Keisha knew that once Razi got going, he could last a long time. Razi’s record was sixty-two “and then’s.” By the time he said “the end” instead of “and then” when he told that story, Mama had finished her crossword puzzle and Grandma was asleep on the couch.

So Keisha rushed in with the words “I promised Mr. Ramsey we’d be there in ten minutes.”

“We’d better get a move on, then.”

“Can I bring my suit?” Razi asked as they walked back toward the house.

“Swimming’s not likely with an alligator sighting, bucko.” Daddy held open the screen door.

“They’ll probably have to shock the pool with chlorine,” Keisha said. “Just like they do after a baby poops.”

“I don’t want to wait until after,” Razi said. “I want to ride on the alligator’s back.”

“I think you’re confused about alligators.” Daddy picked up Razi and set him on his shoulders. “An alligator isn’t friendly like a dolphin or a porpoise. An alligator would be more likely to turn you into a snack than give you a ride on its back.”

“Hey!” Razi said. “That rhymes! You’re a poet and you didn’t know it.”

Keisha held the back door open, and Daddy bent down so that he and Razi could get through. When they got to the front desk, Daddy said to Grandma, “Looks like we have to go to the city pool to catch an alligator, Mom.”

Grandma looked up from the computer screen. Keisha could see she was researching “jeans for the mature woman.”

“What does ‘stonewashed’ really mean?” Grandma asked anyone who was listening. “That can’t really be washing with stones, can it? Is that washing?”

“It doesn’t sound clean.” Daddy set Razi down and ran his fingers through his son’s hair, thinking. “But back to the alligator … Maybe it was someone’s pet.”

“From what I know about alligators …” Grandma stood up and tugged at the waist of her OL jeans. “Well …” Grandma cleared her throat.

Everyone waited.

“An alligator’s mouth is the exact size needed to fit its teeth, which are large … as far as teeth go.” She opened the desk drawer, took out the truck keys and tossed them to Daddy. “Better get those raptor gloves.”

“Good idea. We need to hustle. You coming?”

“Coming? Of course I’m coming. I like to be close to the action just as much as you do.”

“I have an idea how we can do it, Daddy,” Keisha said, tugging on her father’s arm. “Catch the alligator, I mean. Do you still have that big noose … the one you used to catch the bull snake?”