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“Lt. Washington wants me and my dance class to perform for the troops!” Razi was so excited he almost slipped on the pavement clicking his heels together to salute Sarge.

“Maybe if I have my new sleeve, you can teach me a step or two.”

“Maybe.” Razi didn’t seem sure. “But I don’t know how to dance with a pirate leg.”

As soon as they got to the Baxter Community Center that evening for their 4-H Wild 4-Ever meeting, Razi yanked his hand out of Keisha’s and ran to find Big Bob. Big Bob was the leader of the Grand River 4-H Club, devoted to learning about the wild animals that lived in the city. He was also Grandma’s boyfriend, but she hadn’t decided yet if he was “the one.”

Keisha searched the room for Savannah and found her standing alone near the dessert table. Though she
usually sat on the big comfy couch with her friends and Grandma, Keisha went over to join Savannah. Big Bob had called that afternoon to ask if Keisha would introduce their newest member to the group.

Razi was the first to draw attention to the big box of wood scraps sitting on the front table. “Is that new business, Big Bob?” he asked, pointing.

“Why, yes it is,” Big Bob responded.

“We’re going to use it to build birdhouses,” Zack Sanders informed Razi as he bounced on the big couch.

“I call the hammer!” Zeke started bouncing, too.

Razi was between them on the couch. Pretty soon, they looked like the row of mechanical ducks that popped up and down at the shooting gallery of the Green County Fair. Mama said the Sanders twins were good at getting Razi going.

“
And
it’s not our only new business,” Big Bob reminded the boys. “We need to welcome a new member all the way from Alabama—Savannah Dernier—plus, we need to discuss a perplexing squirrel dilemma at the Mt. Mercy campus.”

“And we need to eat my Grandma Alice’s dessert!” Razi called out without raising his hand at all.

“I call the meeting to order, please.” Big Bob smacked a hammer on a block of wood. “Old business comes first. Aaliyah needs to report on the public-information campaign we just wrapped up. Aaliyah?”

Big Bob scootched his seat over to the whiteboard.

Aaliyah stood up and tugged down her hoodie. She went to the front of the group. “On November twenty-second, we had tables outside the Nantucket Bakery, Kingma’s Market and Family Video,” she said. “We also put flyers on people’s doors. In case you weren’t there, Jorge is passing around the flyers now.”

Keisha glanced down at her flyer. Marcus had drawn a picture of the young deer with the plastic pumpkin
that got stuck on its head at Halloween time. He had also drawn a few other pictures from sources he got on the Internet. They included a raccoon with its head trapped in a peanut butter jar, a cat with its head stuck in a hubcap and a baby skunk with its head wedged in a soft-drink cup. Keisha had thought up the title of the flyer: “Is your trash a trap? Think about it!” Underneath, the Wild 4-Ever kids had listed three ways to avoid these problems. 1) Keep the lid on your trash. 2) Keep your recycling indoors until recycling day. And 3) Keep an eye out for potential wildlife hazards in your neighborhood—like six-pack rings, jars and disposable cups—and throw them away!

“So, in conclusion,” Aaliyah continued, “our public-information campaign was a capital B-I-G success. We educated seventy-two citizens face-to-face and put doorknob flyers on 136 houses. Marcus and I are creating an info sheet for ‘Trash Trackers’ to put on the 4-H Web site. If you want to hear what we’ve written so far—”

“Wow, that’s impressive.” Big Bob jumped up and clapped. So did the rest of the Wild 4-Evers. Zeke whistled. Razi hooted. Zack pounded the armrest of the couch.

Aaliyah seemed surprised that her report was already
at an end, but she was a good sport about it. “I will entertain your further questions during cinnamon twist time,” she said, and walked tall back to her seat. Obviously, Aaliyah had peeked under the aluminum foil on Grandma’s dish.

“Excellent work, Aaliyah. As the folks at Carters’ Urban Rescue tell us, education is the key to preventing many wildlife mishaps. Well, I think that’s it for old business. The first item of new business would be …” Big Bob squinted at his palm, where he’d written the agenda. “Ah, yes. The squirrel shenanigans over at Mt. Mercy College. I was
hoping
 … um … that club member Keisha Carter would give us a report.”

Mmmmm. From across the room, Grandma got an eye scolding from Keisha. She had told her granddaughter that
she
would fill in the Wild 4-Evers. Grandma just shrugged.

Savannah gave her a gentle push on the shoulder. “That’s you,” she whispered.

Keisha hadn’t been nervous during “old business” because she didn’t know she’d have to give a report. As much as Aaliyah liked all the attention on her, whenever Keisha had to make a report, she had the same fluttery feeling she got before she performed her freestyle program. She took a big breath.

“Alice thought you’d like to make the report, sweetie.” Big Bob looked sorry. Grandma was avoiding Keisha’s eyes.

“Some people need more practice performing,” Grandma whispered loudly to the boys surrounding her.

“Keisha has good nerves,” Razi told Zack and Zeke. “She practices them a lot.”

Keisha felt her knees go weak. The breath still hadn’t come out.

All of a sudden Keisha felt Savannah standing next to her. She was pressing her shoulder into Keisha’s. Keisha
knew
how she was going to introduce Savannah because she’d practiced what she’d say with Mama. “Savannah is from Montgomery Springs, Alabama, and her favorite 4-H activity was working with horses. She did dressage.”

Keisha and Mama had never heard the word “dressage” before, so they looked it up on the Internet. It was a special kind of horseback riding, and it was pronounced
druh-SAHZH.

Savannah took Keisha’s hand and looked into her eyes as if asking her:
Do you need help?

Did Southern girls understand eye language?

Her mouth was completely dry, though she did manage to breathe out and back in again. She gave Savannah an eyes-wide look that meant—
Yes … help!

“Can I say something about squirrels at the University of Alabama?” Savannah asked Big Bob. Savannah’s Southern accent took all the attention off Keisha. Some of the kids giggled.

“Sure,” Big Bob answered, looking just as relieved as Keisha that she was off the hook.

“My big brother, Beau, goes to the U of A. Once, during Family Week, we were sitting on the lawn of the quad having a picnic, and a squirrel hopped up on the table and drank out of my cousin’s juice box.”

All the kids laughed about this.

“Did he use the straw?” Marcus asked.

“Well, how else do you drink out of a juice box?”

Keisha wasn’t sure if it was the image of a bushy squirrel slurping juice or the way everyone was cracking up that got her tongue unstuck from the bottom of her mouth.

“At Mt. Mercy, they’re running at the students and begging for food. They’re trying to get into the college administration building. They dangle on the window ledges and leap from the trees onto the side of the building. Mr. Fox, the man we talked to, said it’s hard to do business.”

“He could pull down the shades,” Zeke suggested. “That’s what we do when the Pipers use their leaf blower and get dirt on the side of our house.”

“My dad threw his shoe at a squirrel that was sitting on our grill,” Marcus added. “The bad part was his shoe went over the fence and the Thomases weren’t awake. When he tried to climb their fence, their dog Trixie tore his pants.”

Even Wen had a squirrel story. “I watch the squirrels drop black walnuts on the driveway. I think they mean to bury them, but a lot get left on the driveway and then there’s a big mess.”

While the kids were talking, Big Bob was taking pieces of wood out of the box and playing with how they fit together. Keisha wondered where they came from. They were all different sizes and shapes: angled ones that looked like a set of stairs, long thin ones and blocky pieces.

Big Bob let the group hear from all the Wild 4-Evers who wanted to tell their squirrel stories. After they were done, he said: “I understand that Mr. Drockmore has been teaching you about if-then hypotheses in science lab. I’m wondering if we could make some hypotheses about what is happening at Mt. Mercy.”

“
If
you feed squirrels,” Zack said, jumping up to sit on the back of the couch, “
then
they come back.”

“Yeah.” Zeke jumped on the back of the couch, too, to show his agreement.

“How about:
If
you are outside and you have
food,
then
you’ll see squirrels,” Aaliyah suggested.

Grandma raised her hand. “May I add something?”

Big Bob held his hand up for quiet. “Alice Carter has the floor.”

Grandma made her way to the front of the room. She squared her shoulders.

Keisha and Wen had an eye giggle. “It’s Grandma Professor time,” Wen whispered.

Grandma cleared her throat. She was waiting for Perfect Hear-a-Pin-Drop Quiet. The Wild 4-Evers became a little less wild. All this had to be over before they could get to cinnamon twist time.

“In my long association with the squirrel community, I have found that squirrels enjoy a narrow band of activities. They include chattering, chasing, burrowing, burying, gnawing, nibbling and, last but not least, napping. The most frequent of these is gnawing and nibbling on nuts, seeds, berries and, yes, grill grease, or to put it more accurately—our trash.”

Grandma rubbed her hands together. She was just getting started, and Keisha knew that when it came to animals, she had a lot to say. Zeke and Zack slid down the couch back until their heads rested on the cushions. It might be boring, but they knew not to interrupt Grandma when she was on a roll.

Unless you were Keisha. Aaliyah reached forward
and tapped her on the shoulder. “I’ll give you a box of Lemonheads if you save us from a Grandma Professor lecture,” she whispered.

Keisha loved Lemonheads. Whenever they went to Charley’s candy store, she picked up a box of Lemonheads and sometimes Pixy Stix and sometimes SweeTarts. But
always
Lemonheads. She raised her hand. “Can I talk again, Grandma?”

“If you come up here with me,” Grandma said.

Keisha shuffled up to the front of the room. Grandma pushed her forward a little but kept her hands on Keisha’s shoulders. “Um, they probably will never get rid of all the squirrels because they have so many trees at Mt. Mercy. The biggest problem is squirrels acting crazy around the administration building. But they’re not going to cut down the trees, so …” Keisha glanced out at all the kids. Looking at them looking at her made her decide to keep studying the floor for a while. “My if-then would be … 
If
there are lots of trees around the building
and
that means a lot of squirrels,
then
you just have to make sure they can’t get into the building and find a way to live in peace.”

“I vote for peace!” Big Bob said.

“Since there are trees all over campus,” Keisha continued, thinking out loud, “I wonder why the administration building is the only one they complain about at
Mt. Mercy. According to what Daddy says, ‘
If
squirrels are crawling all over a building,
then
there is food involved.’ ”

“Yes!” Grandma squeezed Keisha’s shoulders. “To test this hypothesis, we must conduct a thorough search around the administration building for squirrel-friendly food. Like in Dumpsters and such.”

“Like cinnamon twists!” Razi shouted. “We better eat them before the squirrels find them.”

The next day after jump rope practice, Keisha and Savannah stood just inside the school doors watching for their rides. Savannah had asked Keisha if she could watch jump rope practice. They didn’t have a team in Montgomery Springs.

Outside, Marcus and Jorge were climbing the huge snow pile the plow had made on the side of the blacktop.

“Coach is always easy on us the day before a meet,” Keisha explained. “That’s why we just did five-minute speed-jumping rounds, worked on the group jump and practiced our freestyle routines in slow motion.”