not seem to bode well for me. I started backing up, aiming for at least a head start.
“Cat paws,” Miguel said, and dangled the stick thing near me. “Take it,” he offered.
I snatched it, thinking, Weapon.
Oh, yeah, like I was Wonder Woman and could fend off two men in their prime with a stick that had a cat paw on the end of it. For good measure, I kept backing up.
“Where’re you going?” Angus asked.
To hell, eventually, if you believe the preacher in my brother Delvon’s Pentecostal church. But my plan was to postpone the trip for a few more decades, and I was certainly in no mood today to be cast in that direction by loco boys with evil plans. I was contemplating running backward when I saw Miguel pull two more stick things out of the sack.
“All four paws. Anatomically correct. Made from plaster casts of real tracks.” Miguel grinned like a little kid with new Christmas toys.
The grin reassured me for a moment. But then he held up the Baggie. “Panther poop. Fresh. Totally authentic.”
I jumped when Angus touched my arm. “Look at the end of that. Look at that paw. Ain’t that a beauty?” he said.
“What the hell are you two up to?” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as spooked as I felt.
“Panther tracks by the creek. Panther scat in just the right places. A phone call to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife folks, and you know what you’ve got?” Angus asked.
Yeah, crazy people with poop fetishes thrashing in the woods, I thought, but then, I actually thought about it. And stopped backing up.
“Evidence of a protected species,” I said. And, a popular endangered species at that. The rare and elusive Florida panther, the darling of the armchair environmentalists, the poster child of the nearly extinct. A Florida panther needed a wide territorial range to hunt, breed, and survive, and to protect the drastically dwindling number of panthers, that range was protected under state and federal law. That much even I knew. What my loco boys were doing was setting up a rallying point for those who were trying to save the panther by saving its habitat.
“You’ve got a way to stop the mine,” I said. Between the state and fed regs that would protect the habitat and the influx of the save-the-panther crowd, those mining permits were, if not doomed, then at least on hold for a long time. And Olivia had managed, despite my inattention, to teach me this much: In the fight to save habitat, a long delay of the inevitable destruction was usually your only victory.
“Yep,” Angus said and grinned at me like he was the proud father and I was the mentally handicapped two-year-old who finally said my first word. “Once we show there’s an endangered Florida panther on this property, feds and other folks will come out of the woodwork to stop those permits.”
I looked at the end of the stick I held. It did indeed look like a model of a big cat’s paw. Cool, I thought, wait until I tell my brother Delvon, who had once lived in the woods and had run an unadvertised U-pick marijuana and opium farm until the Georgia Bureau of Investigations put him out of business. Delvon loved wild things, being one himself, and he loved the big cats. Also, he especially loved screwing with Official Big Boys.
“You remember, another panther was sighted here, a few months ago. When the fish and wildlife people confirmed it, those mining permits the Antheus people were pushing for came to a halt,” Miguel said. “For a while, anyway.”
I heard the sadness in his voice, and tried to remember. There’d been something I’d read in the newspaper about a panther and a mine site, but I only vaguely recalled it. Seems like I’d been in trial that week. When I’m in trial, nothing except that case sticks in my brain. But I didn’t think the story had a happy ending.
“Sons of bitches killed it,” Angus said, his voice low and angry.
“They killed it?” I said, in disbelief. Who kills a Florida panther? They are almost
“Cat paws,” Miguel said, and dangled the stick thing near me. “Take it,” he offered.
I snatched it, thinking, Weapon.
Oh, yeah, like I was Wonder Woman and could fend off two men in their prime with a stick that had a cat paw on the end of it. For good measure, I kept backing up.
“Where’re you going?” Angus asked.
To hell, eventually, if you believe the preacher in my brother Delvon’s Pentecostal church. But my plan was to postpone the trip for a few more decades, and I was certainly in no mood today to be cast in that direction by loco boys with evil plans. I was contemplating running backward when I saw Miguel pull two more stick things out of the sack.
“All four paws. Anatomically correct. Made from plaster casts of real tracks.” Miguel grinned like a little kid with new Christmas toys.
The grin reassured me for a moment. But then he held up the Baggie. “Panther poop. Fresh. Totally authentic.”
I jumped when Angus touched my arm. “Look at the end of that. Look at that paw. Ain’t that a beauty?” he said.
“What the hell are you two up to?” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as spooked as I felt.
“Panther tracks by the creek. Panther scat in just the right places. A phone call to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife folks, and you know what you’ve got?” Angus asked.
Yeah, crazy people with poop fetishes thrashing in the woods, I thought, but then, I actually thought about it. And stopped backing up.
“Evidence of a protected species,” I said. And, a popular endangered species at that. The rare and elusive Florida panther, the darling of the armchair environmentalists, the poster child of the nearly extinct. A Florida panther needed a wide territorial range to hunt, breed, and survive, and to protect the drastically dwindling number of panthers, that range was protected under state and federal law. That much even I knew. What my loco boys were doing was setting up a rallying point for those who were trying to save the panther by saving its habitat.
“You’ve got a way to stop the mine,” I said. Between the state and fed regs that would protect the habitat and the influx of the save-the-panther crowd, those mining permits were, if not doomed, then at least on hold for a long time. And Olivia had managed, despite my inattention, to teach me this much: In the fight to save habitat, a long delay of the inevitable destruction was usually your only victory.
“Yep,” Angus said and grinned at me like he was the proud father and I was the mentally handicapped two-year-old who finally said my first word. “Once we show there’s an endangered Florida panther on this property, feds and other folks will come out of the woodwork to stop those permits.”
I looked at the end of the stick I held. It did indeed look like a model of a big cat’s paw. Cool, I thought, wait until I tell my brother Delvon, who had once lived in the woods and had run an unadvertised U-pick marijuana and opium farm until the Georgia Bureau of Investigations put him out of business. Delvon loved wild things, being one himself, and he loved the big cats. Also, he especially loved screwing with Official Big Boys.
“You remember, another panther was sighted here, a few months ago. When the fish and wildlife people confirmed it, those mining permits the Antheus people were pushing for came to a halt,” Miguel said. “For a while, anyway.”
I heard the sadness in his voice, and tried to remember. There’d been something I’d read in the newspaper about a panther and a mine site, but I only vaguely recalled it. Seems like I’d been in trial that week. When I’m in trial, nothing except that case sticks in my brain. But I didn’t think the story had a happy ending.
“Sons of bitches killed it,” Angus said, his voice low and angry.
“They killed it?” I said, in disbelief. Who kills a Florida panther? They are almost
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