Tiger Trap (3 page)

“Is your mother going to be okay about you bringing home a couple of kangaroos?” Mr. McCurdy asked.

I actually hadn’t thought of that. “I guess she will.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.” A smile came to my face. “After all, she’s never, ever said anything to me about not bringing home kangaroos.”

Both Vladimir and Mr. McCurdy burst into laughter. “That sounds like something your brother would say,” Mr. McCurdy said.

“Hey! There’s no need to insult me.”

“Sarah … Sarah, it’s time to get up,” my mother called. “If you don’t get up, you’ll be late.”

I opened one eye. It still wasn’t even light, so how late could I be?

“Come on, Sarah, get up and I’ll …
aaahhhh
!”

As soon as my mother screamed, I sat bolt upright and watched as she jumped into the air and thumped down onto my bed, her knee in my stomach, flattening me into the mattress, knocking the wind out of me.

“Rats! Giant rats!” she yelled.

It was the kangaroos! She was seeing the joeys! In the dim light she couldn’t see what they were — not that I could ever expect her to think there were kangaroos in my bedroom. She had been asleep when I brought them home in the night. I wanted to cry out and tell her, explain, but there wasn’t enough air in my lungs.

“Kangaroo,” I finally hissed.

“They’re jumping up!” she howled. “They’re trying to get us!”

The two little joeys were just doing what they’d been doing almost all night — jumping up to get my attention.

My mother started shrieking louder and kicking her feet. If she hit one of the joeys, she could kill it! I didn’t have much lung power, but I still had movement. I reached up, grabbed my mother, flipped her over, spun around and pinned her to the bed, me on top now.

“Sarah, what are you doing?” she screeched.

“Don’t hurt them,” I said, forcing the words out. “Not rats … kangaroos … they’re … kangaroos.”

Even in the limited light, I could see her face twist into a mask of confusion.

“Kangaroos,” I said again.

“But how did you —”

“Mom! Sarah! What’s happening?” Nick cried out as he ran into the room. Before I could answer or react, he slid out of sight, thumping noisily to the floor.

I leaped off my mother and the bed. “Nick, are you okay?”

He sat up. “I’m fine. I slipped. Why were you both yelling?”

In answer the two little kangaroos bounced over to my side and began bumping into me, trying to force me to ignore my brother and notice them so I could feed them again.

“We have kangaroos!” Nick shouted. “Kangaroos!”

Suddenly, the room became bright. My mother had turned on a light. Both joeys bounded up and bounced off my legs. Even though my mother now knew they weren’t giant rats, she still appeared anxious and upset.

“Sarah, why are there kangaroos in your room?” she asked.

“I figured it would be better to have them in here instead of your room,” I said.

My mother’s expression changed from anxious to annoyed, and Nick giggled.

“What are they doing
anywhere
in the house?” she asked. “And why didn’t you ask permission to bring them here?”

“You were already asleep by the time I got home, and I didn’t want to wake you up,” I said. That was true. I’d deliberately waited until I was certain it was late enough to ensure she was asleep. “Besides, I didn’t think you’d object.”

“I probably wouldn’t have objected, but you need to ask me. Besides, why did you need to bring them here instead of leaving them at Mr. McCurdy’s? They’re his, right?”

“No, Mom. I found them when I was walking home.”

My mother gave me a warning glance. I think I’d been hanging around my brother too much, because that sounded like something he would have said, too.

“Mr. McCurdy and Vladimir brought them home last night,” I said. “They rescued them. They’re red kangaroos.”

“They look brown to me,” Nick said.

“They are brown, but as they get older, they’ll develop a reddish tinge to their coats — especially the males. These are just joeys.”

“Joeys? You named them both Joey?” Nick said, saying almost the same words I’d used myself.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I snapped. “Baby kangaroos are called joeys. I thought
everybody
knew that.” There was no way I was going to admit I didn’t know that myself until yesterday. Part of the job of being a big sister was knowing things that your little brother didn’t know. The other part of the job was letting him
know
you knew things he didn’t and acting superior.

“Okay, Sarah, let’s hear it,” Nick said.

“Hear what?”

“Hear everything you know about kangaroos that I don’t.”

Apparently, Nick
did
know my job, too.

“Well?” Nick prodded.

“What would you like to know?” I’d spent some time, between feedings, surfing the Net to find out more kangaroo facts and information.

“Just the
Reader’s Digest
version — big stuff, important and interesting stuff.”

“Okay. Kangaroos are from Australia.”

“Even I know that,” Nick said.

“They’re marsupials, which means the females have pouches and they carry their young in those pouches.”

“Gee, I know that, too,” Nick said. “Maybe you don’t know anything about them that I don’t know.”

Okay, if he wanted to be that way. “And I guess, of course, you know how many species of kangaroo there are, right?”

“A bunch,” Nick said.

“Forty-seven is the correct number, ranging in size from the smallest, the rock wallaby, up to the largest, the red kangaroo, which stands as tall as one point eight metres and can weigh up to one hundred and forty kilograms.”

“Wow, that’s big! I’d hate to meet up with a herd of them.”

“A herd? What do you think they are — cows?”

“I don’t know what you call a lot of kangaroos,” Nick said.

“I do,” I said smugly. “You call them a mob, and they can be large. It would be impressive to see them travelling. They can go as fast as seventy kilometres an hour. The big males can cover up to nine metres in one bound.”

Nick whistled. “These guys will be able to jump that far someday?”

“Someday. The red kangaroo, or as it’s called in Latin, the
Macropus rufus
, is an impressive animal.” I didn’t know if I’d said that correctly, but Nick wouldn’t know if I made up words and said them in
pig
Latin. “
Rufus
, of course, means red, and
macro
refers to the largest. A female kangaroo is called a doe, flyer, roo or jill, and the male is called a buck, boomer or jock. And, of course, the baby, as
everybody
knows now, is called a joey.”

“So if they’re not called Joey, what are their names?” Nick asked.

“Officially, they don’t have names, but I sort of named them. This one,” I said, pointing at the slightly bigger of the two, “is Kanga. And the other one is called —”

“Roo!” both my mother and brother said in unison.

“Yeah. The kangaroos from
Winnie the Pooh
are the only ones I know.”

“They’re not very big,” my mother said. “How old are they?”

“It’s hard to say, maybe four months. Do either of you know how big a kangaroo is at birth?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell us,” Nick said.

“Do you want to hear or don’t you?” I asked.

He nodded.

“When they’re first born, they’re as small as this,” I said, holding my fingers about two centimetres apart.

“Come on, no way,” Nick said.

“It’s true. They crawl up through their mother’s fur and climb into her pouch. They stay in there, nursing, growing, until they become big enough to peek out. Altogether a joey is about eight months old before he completely abandons his mother’s pouch.”

“So these two should still be with their mother,” my mother said.

“They should be. They would be … if she were still alive.”

“What happened to her?” Nick asked.

“I don’t know exactly. I just know the place they were keeping them wasn’t very good. You know how bad some of these places can be.”

“So …” my mother said, “since they can’t be with their mother —”

“That’s why I had to bring them home. They have to be fed every few hours.”

“All night?” Nick asked.

“All the time,” I said.

“You were up all night feeding them?” my mother asked.

“Not all night,” I said. “I got some sleep.” Not much more than a few minutes at a time, I thought, but I had gotten some sleep. “They probably want to eat again.”

“Can I help?” Nick asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Please?”

“Well … I guess you can,” I said. I was actually going to ask him to help, because two kangaroos really required two sets of hands, but this way was even better — now he thought I was doing him a favour instead of it being the other way around.

“Thanks!” he cried.

“There are a couple of bottles over on the dresser,” I said.

Nick stood, took a step, then stopped. He lifted his foot and looked at the bottom. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a dark smear on the bottom of his foot.

I knew exactly what it was.

He touched it with his hand. “
Ugggh
 … it’s … it’s —”

“Kangaroo poo,” I said.

“That’s awful! That’s disgusting!” Nick squealed as he hopped around the room on one foot.

“It’s not awful. It’s fantastic!” I said.

“How can me stepping in poo be fantastic?” Nick demanded.

“Because you can’t poo unless you eat, so I know that at least one of them is getting enough milk,” I explained. “It’s hard to know for sure if they’re getting enough to eat because so much gets spilled or smeared on their fur, the floor or my clothes.”

“I’m glad you’re happy, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is disgusting!” Nick wailed.

“Don’t be such a big baby. Go and wash off your foot and come back. And if you’re not back soon, I’m not going to let you help.”

“Okay, okay,” Nick said, hopping out of the room.

“You better hurry up and feed them or we’ll be late,” my mother said. “I assume we have to deliver them to Mr. McCurdy’s on our way to drop you two off at school.”

“Actually,” I said, pausing and taking a deep breath, “I was hoping you could drop me off at Mr. McCurdy’s place, too.”

“You mean instead of going to school?”

I nodded. “I haven’t been away all year, and it’s not like I can’t afford to miss a day or two.”

“Two?”

“I meant later on, if I was sick or something, not that I’m not going to go to school tomorrow. Well …?”

“I guess a day would be okay.”

“Thanks, Mom. I really appreciate it.”

“Besides, it sounds like you were already doing a lot of work learning about kangaroos. Where did you learn all of those things?”

“Some I knew already. I did some surfing last night,” I said, gesturing at the computer on the desk in the corner of my room. Actually, I didn’t have much choice. One of the other things I’d learned about kangaroos — after they kept me up most of the night — was that they were nocturnal.

“Now you better get moving,” my mother said. “I still have to get out of here on time to get to work and get your brother to school, so if you want a ride you’d better hurry.”

“I’ll hurry … and thanks.”

“Good afternoon, Sarah,” Mr. McCurdy said. “Did you have a nice little nap?”

“It was good, but I don’t think it was that little.” I’d slept for close to two hours. “I guess I was more tired than I thought.”

“Napping is good. But you still look tired,” Vladimir said. “Go back to sleep if you wish.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

I probably would still be sleeping if one of the roos hadn’t tried suckling my nose. It was a rude awakening — my eyes had popped open and I’d found myself eyeball to eyeball with a kangaroo. I now understood why my mother had thought they were rats. For a split second when I opened my eyes I’d thought my nose was being gnawed by a gigantic mouse.

After I removed my nose from its mouth, I’d gotten up, given them both another bottle, and then gone looking for Mr. McCurdy and Vladimir. I’d finally found them huddled behind a small storage shed.

“So did you finish the pens for the new cats?” I asked.

“We put the lion in with other female lion,” Vladimir said. “Leopard in new pen. It’s all fixed up good.”

“Do you want me to help clean the pens?” I asked.

“Later,” Mr. McCurdy said. “Right now we have other things to take care of. We’re doing some observing.”

“What are we observing?” I asked.

“That man right there.”

“Right where?” I asked.

Mr. McCurdy motioned with his head. “Around the other side of the shed.”

I took a couple of steps so I could see around the side.

“Don’t let him spot you!” Mr. McCurdy hissed, jumping back out of sight.

“Why not?”

“Because we don’t want him to know we’re watching him.”

“But
why
are we looking at him?” I asked.

“Because I just got a bad feeling about him,” Mr. McCurdy said. “A real bad feeling.”

“Who is he?”

“Don’t know. Came early this morning, knocked on the door, asked to see the animals, gave a donation and has been here ever since. He’s been here almost six hours.”

“Maybe he just loves animals,” I suggested. The weekends were the busy times for visitors, but it wasn’t unusual for people to drop in during the week — there weren’t as many, but sometimes they were the serious animal watchers.

“Don’t know about that,” Mr. McCurdy said, “but he really does like that notebook of his. Do you see him making notes?”

I hadn’t seen anything in the few seconds I’d been observing. “I guess he wants to remember what he sees.”

“Doubt it,” Mr. McCurdy said. “I’d love to see what he’s writing.”

“If Angus wants to see book, then Vladimir will get book.”

“How would you do that?” I asked.

Vladimir shrugged. “Easy. I will go and take notebook from him.”

“You can’t do that!” I protested.

Vladimir laughed. “Of course I can. Vladimir
big
. I can just take notebook from him.”

“You can’t go around taking things from people,” I said. “That sort of thing can get somebody arrested.”

“Maybe somebody, but not Vladimir. Chief of police is Martin, and Martin is my friend. He would not arrest his friend.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” I said.

“Works that way in Russia.”

“Yeah, but in Russia you bribe people to get your licence,” Mr. McCurdy said. “Here, you hit somebody you could get arrested, even if the chief of police is your brother.”

I knew that Martin would help Vladimir or Mr. McCurdy deal with any troubles that came up. In fact, without Martin’s help, Mr. McCurdy’s farm would have been closed instead of turned into an exotic animal park. He’d made sure they met all the bylaws and regulations, helped build the pens, figured out how to get grain and hay for the grazers and arranged for the highway department to bring the roadkill over for the cats. He’d also, along with my mother’s help as a lawyer, made arrangements so that Vladimir was now allowed to stay in the country.

Originally, Vladimir had come from Russia as a visitor on a few weeks holiday. Instead of leaving at the end of his trip, he sort of disappeared. How something as big as Vladimir could disappear was hard to imagine, but he’d managed to stay out of sight for three years. Now, with his new status, he didn’t need to hide — he was legal.

“Let Vladimir go talk to man. I will just ask for the notebook. I will be polite.”

“I think it would be better if you stayed away from him, Vladimir,” Mr. McCurdy said.

“I agree,” I said.

“That’s good,” Mr. McCurdy said, “because I think you should go and talk to him.”

“Me?” I gasped. “You want me to go down and take the notebook away from him?”

“Of course not,” Mr. McCurdy said. “Just go down and talk to him. You can attract more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”

“Flies?” Vladimir said. “Why do we need more flies? There are lots of flies on the farm already.”

“No, I don’t want to attract flies,” Mr. McCurdy said. “It’s an old saying.”

“I can never understand old sayings of Angus,” Vladimir said, shaking his head. “They never make sense. The words never mean what they are supposed to mean.”

“It means that sometimes it’s easier to get what you want if you’re sweet instead of bitter,” Mr. McCurdy said patiently. “Understand?”

“Understand some. Why we want to attract flies?”

“We don’t want to get more flies!” Mr. McCurdy said, now frustrated and annoyed. “Sarah, can you just go up and talk to him? He doesn’t even know who you are. He knows Vladimir and I work here, but he hasn’t seen you. Make like you’re just another visitor here to see the animals.”

“You want me to lie?” I asked.

“No, of course not! I just want you not to tell the truth.”

“Now you’re sounding like my brother.”

“Shame Nick isn’t here or I could ask him to go. That boy has a real creative way around the truth.”

That was the most polite way I’d ever heard Nick described. He really didn’t lie, but he had an interesting way of stretching and massaging the truth until it became a story that was more a work of fiction than fact. I thought he had a serious career in the future as a writer, or a used-car salesman. Or maybe a politician.

“What would I say to that man?” I asked.

“Start with hello and go from there,” Mr. McCurdy said. “Or would you rather I send Vladimir here?” He gestured to his large friend.

“No, I’ll go,” I said. “I don’t want to, but I will.”

“We’ll wait for you here behind the shed,” Mr. McCurdy said. “We’ll watch and come quick if there’s any problem. Go.”

I took a deep breath, then stepped out from behind the shed. As I ambled along the path toward the man, I looked back over my shoulder. Vladimir was peeking out from the shed. He gave a little wave, then disappeared. I turned my attention to the pens I was passing, trying to appear casual, as if I was interested in the animals and not even noticing the man — the man who seemed like the only visitor to the park.

Suddenly, he glanced up and looked right at me. I spun around so I was now peering directly into the pen in front of me — Buddha’s pen. The big tiger sat at the back, holding a dead chicken between his massive front paws. Using his mouth, he was plucking it — pulling out the feathers and then spitting them out. The chicken was almost completely de-feathered. Buddha had this thing about feathers. Some big cats would just eat a chicken, feathers and all, while with others we pulled out the feathers before throwing the bird into their pens. Buddha liked to do it himself, though.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the man still standing in front of the next cage. He was making notes again. If I was standing behind him right now, I could see what he was writing. Slowly, sidestepping, I slid over toward the next pen. I had this strange thought that if I didn’t look at him, he couldn’t see me creeping up on him. I stopped when I was standing in front of one end of the same pen as the man. What did I do now? I turned my head ever so slightly so I could see him. Head down, he was taking more notes.

I cleared my throat. “Nice tiger.”

He glanced up. “What?”

“Nice tiger.”

He shrugged.

“I like tigers,” I said. “Do you like tigers?”

“Sure,” he said, going back to his notes.

Okay, that wasn’t working. “I know a lot about this tiger,” I said. “Would you like to know about it?”

“I think I already know about it. Siberian tiger, male, somewhere around fifteen years of age —”

“Seventeen years old,” I said. Maybe I should be more direct.

He nodded. “Seventeen years old. The coat’s nice. It looks like it’s been receiving adequate care.”

“Adequate?” I questioned. “He’s been getting
great
care. All the animals are receiving great care!”

The man stared at me. He didn’t seem angry, but he did have an intense expression, as if he were now studying me, as if I were one of the animals, as if he were going to make some notes in his book about me, as if he were trying to judge if I was receiving adequate care.

Was that what all those notes were about? Was he inspecting the animals because he worked for some agency that was checking to see if the animals were up to standards? Was this one more attempt to close down Tiger Town?

“You know this place meets everybody’s standards, that all the animals and all the pens have been approved,” I said.

“I’m not an inspector, but it sounds like you work here.”

“No,” I said nervously. Technically, I didn’t
work
here — I
volunteered
here. “I just come here a lot and I know about the animals.” There, that wasn’t a lie.

“Do you know
everything
about the animals?”

There was a tone in his voice and a smirk on his face that suggested the question was more of an accusation. He was staring at me again. No, he wasn’t looking at me as much as he was looking right
through
me, and I was sure he could tell what I was thinking and knew I’d been feeding him a lot of half-truths.

Funny, that was the same expression Martin had sometimes. The same look lots of police officers had. Wait a second. This guy had short hair and thick-soled black shoes, and he was big and muscular. Maybe he was a cop.

“Do you know how much this tiger is worth?” he said suddenly, motioning to the animal.

“What?” I asked. I understood the question but didn’t know what he meant by it.

“Do you know how much a tiger is worth?”

“It depends,” I answered warily.

He smirked again. “I guess it does. A baby tiger is worth at least five thousand dollars because people can put them in petting zoos and bring them to events, let people have their picture taken with it. A full-grown tiger, especially an old one like this, is practically worthless.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “It could be worth a lot of money.”

The man stopped smirking. “It could be, but only if it stops being an old tiger and becomes a
dead
tiger.”

He studied me long and hard. Again I felt as if he could see right through me. I lowered my eyes to the ground.

“But the real question is, how would you know about that?” he asked.

“Well … I guess I don’t. Not really.”

“I see. Could I ask you a question?”

“Sure … I guess,” I stammered.

“Do animals come and go from here?”

“Come and go?” What did he mean by that? Buddha had escaped once — practically the first time I’d met Mr. McCurdy last summer — and we’d recaptured him, but that was the only time. That is, if you didn’t count the buffalo getting loose on the road. Or the time Peanuts, the elephant, wandered into the neighbour’s cornfield. It was amazing how much corn and cornstalks an elephant could eat. But why did he want to know this? Was he a reporter? I hated reporters.

“Well?” he pressed. “Do animals disappear from here?”

“Never,” I said. “They come — there’s always new animals — but they never go.”

“So you don’t think they’d sell me this tiger?”

“You want to buy this tiger?” I got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Now I knew who this guy was. He was one of those awful people who buy and sell exotic animals. He wanted this tiger so he could kill it and sell off the body parts! “They don’t sell animals here,” I said curtly.

“Are you sure? Maybe if I offered them enough money, they’d sell it. Why don’t you bring me over to meet the owners.”

“Me?”

“Sure. Isn’t that them over there, hiding behind that shed?”

I turned around in time to see Vladimir and Mr. McCurdy peek out from behind the shed, then disappear from sight when they realized we were watching them.

“That is them, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Maybe. I really didn’t see who it was.”

“You didn’t? That’s strange. I could’ve sworn you were standing there behind that shed with them before you came over to talk to me.”

That sinking feeling in my stomach became a gaping pit. I didn’t know what to say, what to do. I just wanted to run away.

“I’m going over to talk to them, so you might as well come along,” he said.

He started walking toward the shed. That really wasn’t a good idea. Once Vladimir found out the man was trying to buy tigers he’d pick him up and throw him off the property … say, that didn’t seem like such a bad idea. I scrambled to catch up to the stranger.

“Hello,” he called out as he reached the shed. Mr. McCurdy and Vladimir stepped out into the open. “Which of you two is in charge of this place?”

“Who’s asking?” Mr. McCurdy asked.

“Who’s asking isn’t as important as why I’m asking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mr. McCurdy demanded.

“It means I have a business deal to discuss and I need to discuss it with the person who can do that business.”

“What sort of business?” Mr. McCurdy asked.

“Are you the person in charge of this place?”

“I’m one of them,” Mr. McCurdy said. “And this here’s the second.” He gestured to Vladimir. “We own and run the place.”

“Excellent. Perhaps we could go and talk some business.”

“Whatever you have to say you can say right here,” Mr. McCurdy said.

The man looked at me, then back at Mr. McCurdy. “I really think this should be a private conversation.”