Mysteries in Our National Parks: Deadly Waters: A Mystery in Everglades National Park

DEADLY WATERS

A MYSTERY IN EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK

GLORIA SKURZYNSKI AND ALANE FERGUSON

To Danny and Kathy,

who radiate grace and bring us joy.

Text copyright © 1999 Gloria Skurzynski and Alane Ferguson

Cover illustration copyright © 2007 Jeffrey Mangiat

All rights reserved.

Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents is prohibited without written permission from the National Geographic Society, 1145 17th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

Map by Carl Mehler, Director of Maps; Thomas L. Gray, Map Research; Michelle H. Picard, Martin S. Walz, Map Production

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to living persons or events other than descriptions of natural phenomena is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Skurzynski, Gloria

Deadly waters / Gloria Skurzynski and Alane Ferguson.

p. cm.—(National parks mystery: #3)

Summary: While visiting the Everglades National Park with their parents, the Landon children uncover the mystery of dying manatees and learn important lessons about the natural environment.

ISBN: 978-1-4263-0966-3

1. Everglades National Park (Fla.)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Everglades National Park (Fla.)—Fiction. 2. Manatees—Fiction. 3. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Ferguson, Alane. II. Title. III. Series.

PZ7.S6287De 1999

[Fic]—dc21 99-23985

Version: 2017-07-05

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are sincerely grateful to the experts who have helped with this book. Captain David S. Nolan of the real Pescadillo; Teri Rowles, Fishery Biologist of the National Marine Fishery Service; Sentiel Rommel, Research Scientist at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Marine Mammal Pathobiology Laboratory; Tom Pitchford, Assistant Research Scientist at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Marine Mammal Pathobiology Laboratory; John Tyminski, Shark Biologist at the Center for Shark Research, Mote Marine Laboratory; Captain Frank and Georgia Garrett of Majestic Everglades Excursions; and The Everglades City Sheriff’s Office Substation. In Everglades National Park, our sincere thanks to Jim Brown, Maureen McGee-Ballinger, and Rangers Kelly Bulyis and Carl Hilts. A very special thanks to Skip Snow.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

PARK DATA

STATE: Florida

ESTABL ISHED: 1947

AREA: 1,506,539 acres

CLIMATE: Subtropical. Rainfall averages 60 inches each year. From mid-December to mid-April it is usually warm and dry; from mid-April to mid- December it is hot and humid, with lots of mosquitoes.

NATURAL FEATURES: Freshwater sawgrass marshes, pinelands, mangrove forests and islands, dense stands of tropical hardwood trees, extensive estuaries and open-water marine habitat.

The snake’s five-foot body stretched across a thick tree limb overhanging the Everglades waters. Its unblinking black eyes watched the man. For a brief instant, the man’s gaze locked onto the snake’s before he returned his attention to the object in his hands. “Good thing a snake doesn’t talk,” he told himself. “I’d have to kill it.” Mosquitoes whined around him, landing on his arms, but he didn’t bother to swat them off.

“Whatever it takes,” he told himself. “Almost done.” There was no room for mistakes, not on something like this. He had to be careful, careful….

And then he saw them, three figures huddled on the wooden dock, two boys and a girl. They were far away, a couple hundred yards, maybe, but they were staring in his direction. And one of them was pointing something. A camera!

The snake flicked its tongue before it slowly wound its way down the tree to disappear into the dark tangle of mangrove roots. Coolly, the man started up the engine of his boat and headed it toward the dock, toward those kids.

“Whatever it takes,” he told himself again.

CHAPTER ONE

Upstream, two round alligator eyes blinked just above water. The gator was middle-size: about five feet from its tail tip to its blunt nose. As it skimmed forward, it left behind a rippled wake that barely disturbed the canal’s surface. While Jack Landon fumbled for his camera, his sister Ashley pointed, following the path of the dark shape in the water. The gator was closing in fast.

“Look, Bridger, he’s after that duck, or whatever it is,” Ashley murmured to the boy standing beside her. “Should I yell to warn it?”

“Gator’s got to eat, too,” was all Bridger answered. A tall, lean, tow-headed 14-year-old wearing a Stetson hat, jeans, and cowboy boots, Bridger Conley had already proved himself to be a boy of few words. And strong opinions.

The three of them—Jack, Ashley, and Bridger—stood beside a canal in the Florida Everglades, watching the large bird that kept swimming underwater, with its whole body submerged. Every minute or so the bird’s small head and long, skinny neck would snake upward, breaking through the sun’s reflection on the water. Then back down it would go, gliding beneath the surface like a seal. It didn’t seem to notice the danger it was in.

“Hold it…hold it,” Jack muttered, twisting his lens to focus. Catching both animals in one picture would make a magnificent shot. Jack knew the bird didn’t have much of a chance, not with those quick jaws and razor-sharp teeth coming nearer and nearer as the alligator quietly shortened the distance between them.

“I don’t think I want to watch this…” Ashley began, her hands clutching the wooden railing.

Seeming unconcerned, the bird ducked its head beneath the water and came up with a small fish speared on its beak. Immediately the bird’s rope-thin neck snapped like a whip. Momentum flipped the fish into the air before it fell back into the open beak. As the bird swallowed its catch, the alligator slid even closer, advancing through the grass-edged water, only inches from its prey. Closer, and….

With a splash, the alligator struck—too late! One split second before the big jaws snapped closed, the bird had exploded skyward, leaving the gator with nothing but a mouthful of air. If an alligator could look disappointed, this one did.

“Yes! My duck made it! It got away!” Ashley pumped her fist into the air as she gave a little half-bounce. “Did you see that, Jack?”

“Yes, I saw it,” he answered. “Only it isn’t a duck, it’s an anhinga.”

“How’d you know that?” Bridger asked.

“Read about it in the visitor center. Anhingas swim submerged. Look at it now, on top of that tree—it’s drying its feathers.” Silhouetted against the sky, the bird seemed to be posing for Jack’s camera, stretching out its wings to warm itself in the sun.

“Well, whatever it’s called, I’m glad the gator didn’t get it,” Ashley said. “I know you said everything in the food chain’s got to eat, Bridger, but I hate seeing an animal get killed. I don’t even like to see fish die, but I guess that kind of thing doesn’t bother you, since you said you like to go fishing.”

“Doesn’t bother me at all,” Bridger answered.

He was the latest in a series of foster children who’d lived short-term with the Landon family: Jack, Ashley, and their parents, Steven and Olivia. Bridger was unlike any of the other foster children the Landons had sheltered. He seemed friendly; he just didn’t talk much. For Ashley, who talked all the time, this made Bridger a real challenge.

“Still, don’t you feel sorry for fish when they flop all over, trying to get back in the water?” Ashley persisted.

“Nope. They’re just fish,” Bridger said evenly. “People are people, critters are critters.”

Jack slapped a mosquito off his arm. “Better not let Mom hear you say that. She’s brought us all the way to Florida to try and save the manatees, which I guess to you are just ‘critters.’”

When Bridger shrugged, Jack felt prickles of irritation. Everyone in his family, from his father to ten-year-old Ashley, loved animals, but Bridger seemed almost indifferent. How could anybody not care about the manatees? “You know, Bridger, all the park rangers are freaking out over the manatees getting sick. This is serious. They’re an endangered species.”

“Yeah, Mom was up all night, reading through stuff and trying to figure out what could be wrong,” Ashley added. “She says none of the other marine life in the Everglades is getting sick, but some of the manatees have started to die. Not all of them, though. Mom told me it’s the most mysterious case she’s ever been called on.”

Jack took a sip of bottled water and scanned the sky for another possible photo shot. Normally he wouldn’t try to keep a conversation going with a guy like Bridger, but since his dad encouraged him to reach out to the foster kids, Jack searched his mind for something else to say. That was one of the harder things about foster kids: Jack couldn’t just walk away from them without seeming rude. It was like they were guests in the Landon house. “Well, anyway, you might hook something major tomorrow, Bridger, when we go fishing. Dad says Frankie’s the best guide around here. And the Everglades has freshwater fish and saltwater fish. Lots of big ones.”

When Bridger nodded in reply, Jack recapped the bottle, then leaned over the wooden railing to get a better look at the water below.

A hundred feet away, downstream, stood the round building that housed the Shark Valley ranger office, where Jack’s mother and father were gathering as much information as they could about the temperature, rain cycles, and wildlife of the area. Here in Shark Valley, and in all the rest of Everglades National Park, lived birds and animals and marine life that Jack had never seen before. Strange, exotic breeds that, if photographed just right, could maybe make a picture good enough to get published in a magazine. Jack had saved his money for almost a year to buy a telephoto lens he’d dreamed of owning ever since he could remember, a lens powerful enough to bring distant objects into crystal-clear view.

“Bridger, did you know that Frankie’s taking us kids all the way toward the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow?” Ashley chattered. “Mom’s here to concentrate on the manatees, so Frankie’s going to keep us busy. Except I’ve decided I’m not going to fish, I’m just going to sit in the end of Frankie’s boat and watch for manatees.”

Jack was startled by a loud smack as Bridger smashed a mosquito on his neck. “Buggy here,” he said. He pushed his Stetson back on his head, then wiped the sweat from his pale eyebrows. All the Landons were in T-shirts, shorts, and sandals, but Bridger had insisted on wearing his usual Western clothes, in spite of the Florida heat and humidity. Squinting against the bright sun, he asked Jack, “So, are you gonna stick your pole in the water? Or are you afraid of hurting some fish’s feelings, like your sister is? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just…girls.” He smiled, shaking his head.

“Hey—what do you mean—‘just girls?”” Ashley stuttered, her cheeks suddenly bright.

Bridger shrugged. “No offense. Most females feel like you, worrying about animals same as if they were human. Guys are different. We’re natural-born hunters. Right, Jack?”

“Don’t ask me. I fish, but I don’t hunt. The only thing I shoot is pictures.” Snapping the lens cover back onto his camera, Jack tried to give his sister a look that would tell her not to let Bridger’s comments get under her skin. They already knew that Bridger had a different way of looking at things.

The first night Bridger had come into the Landons’ home he’d told Steven how great it was that he was a wildlife veterinarian.

“No, it’s not me, Bridger,” Steven had corrected him. “My wife, Olivia, is the veterinarian. I’m a photographer—well, when I’m not running the photo lab. My favorite job is to follow Olivia around, photographing the animals she’s working with.”

A look of confusion had spread across Bridger’s face. “You mean you work for your wife?” He’d said it as though it were the strangest thing he’d ever heard.

“Not really,” Olivia had answered. “Oh, I couldn’t do my job without Steven’s help, but he doesn’t work for me. See, Bridger, whenever an animal or certain species is in trouble, the National Park Service calls on me to investigate. Steven comes along to take photographs. Lots of times I miss things that I discover later when I examine Steven’s photos.”

Olivia seemed ready to say more about married people helping each other, but she caught herself. Before Bridger came to their home, a social worker had told the Landons about his background—that his parents were divorced and his mother lived far away in Australia, that she’d left him when Bridger was only five years old. “Tell us about your dad,” Olivia had said instead.

“My dad’s a bull rider. You’ve heard of him, right?” Bridger had looked from Olivia to Steven expectantly. “Skip Conley—the Rodeo King?”

Olivia shook her head no, explaining that even though the Landons lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the heart of cowboy country, she’d never really seen a rodeo. “If I had, I’m sure I’d have heard of your father,” she apologized.

“He’s a star. Twelve-time finalist, eight-time bull-riding champ. Soon as he’s out of the hospital, me and him’ll be back on the rodeo circuit.”

“We heard your dad got gored by a bull, but he’ll be OK,” Steven said, his voice assuring.

Olivia nodded. “And we’re glad to have you stay here with us, Bridger, until your dad gets well.”

“Thanks, ma’am. Dad got slammed pretty bad on his last ride in Jackson Hole. Rest of the rodeo’s moved on, but Dad’s gonna be in that rehab place for a while longer. After he gets out, we’ll go back to the bulls and broncs on the circuit.” He could understand it, he’d told Olivia, that she didn’t know about his dad, her being a woman and all.

That’s when Jack had figured out that Bridger viewed the world differently, with girls on one side, guys on the other. And now, after being in Florida for less than a day, he’d announced to Jack that guys were hunters and girls weren’t, as if everything and everyone fit neatly into life’s spaces.

“Look!” Ashley exclaimed. “The alligator’s coming back again.”

The gator’s snout had broken through the upside-down tree reflections, making the branches ripple on the water’s surface. Once again the big jaws opened and snapped, and this time the gator caught his dinner—a red-bellied turtle.

“I can’t watch!” Ashley cried as the powerful jaws crunched right through the turtle’s shell. “It’s horrible!”

“Gator’s got to eat,” Bridger said again. “Right, Jack?”

Jack was so intent on capturing the scene that he didn’t answer. He fired off shots as if his camera were a machine gun spitting bullets. The pictures wouldn’t be pretty, but they’d be powerful.

With a final crushing bite, the gator flung back its neck and gulped down its prey, then slowly lowered itself into the murky water.

“Right, Jack?” Bridger asked again.

“Let’s go find Mom and Dad,” was all Jack answered.

CHAPTER TWO

“Spray me, Mom.” Ashley stretched out both arms as her mother took aim with the can of bug repellent. “Mosquitoes sure do love you, honey,” Olivia said, covering Ashley’s arms with a fine mist. “Turn around so I can get the backs of your legs. Maybe you should have worn jeans, like Bridger, instead of those shorts.”

“Jeans are too hot,” Ashley answered. “Anyway, it’s not fair. I get all chewed up, and Jack hardly has any mosquito bites at all.”

Their father, Steven, said, “It’s because you’re so sweet, Ashley.”

She started to giggle. “That must mean you’re sour, Jack.”

“Hey, I can handle personal rejection from mosquitoes,” Jack answered. “No problem! But I’ll put a few squirts of that stuff on me, too, just in case.” The bite of insect repellent filled his nose as Jack squirted his skin. “Here you go, Bridger,” he said, ready to toss the canister, except that Bridger held up his hands like a traffic cop.

“Don’t need it,” he said, which was probably true. Bridger was so covered up by his long-sleeved plaid shirt, blue jeans, boots, and Western hat that any mosquito would have had a hard time finding a place to land on him.

Olivia raised her eyebrows. “You sure about that, Bridger? Try guessing how many different species of mosquitoes live in the Everglades.”

“Don’t know,” Bridger said.

“Twenty!” Ashley guessed.

“Nope. Forty-three. But only the females bite.”

Bridger asked, “So why don’t they get rid of the mosquitoes? You know, spray stuff from airplanes and kill them all?”

“Can’t do it,” Steven answered, scratching his wrist where an early-breakfasting mosquito had already sampled him. “Much as we don’t like mosquitoes, they’re part of the ecosystem.”

Bridger frowned. “Eco—what?”

“That means,” Olivia began, “that all the creatures in the Everglades are linked together. Mosquitoes lay eggs that hatch into something called wrigglers, and they get eaten by Gambusia. That’s the scientific name, but usually they’re called mosquitofish. Other fish eat the mosquitofish: snook, snapper, redfish—the ones you’ll be fishing for today, Bridger. And then, of course, birds eat the fish, and other animals eat the birds, all the way up to the biggest animals in the park. If you take out the mosquitoes, everything gets affected.”

“I get it,” Bridger said, nodding. “Chain reaction.”

“No spraying for bugs, huh?” Jack considered that. “So then it can’t be pesticides that are making the manatees sick.”

“Actually, the park people checked out another possibility, Jack, that herbicides used to kill weeds in the canals might have washed into the Everglades waters. But when they did the necropsies on the dead manatees—”

“What’re ‘necropsies,’ Mom?” Ashley interrupted.

“A necropsy is an autopsy on an animal. Anyway, the necropsies didn’t show any high level of herbicides in the manatees’ tissues. So it’s something else,” she told them, frowning. “And the biggest part of the puzzle is why only about 20 percent of the manatees are getting sick. The rest seem just fine. That’s the reason they brought me here: to find out what's happening with these sick sea cows.”

“Cows?” Bridger asked, his pale brows knitting together.

“Not your kind of cows,” Steven answered, laughing. “Sea cow is just another name for manatee, and not a very accurate name. Manatees are distant relatives of—get this!—of elephants.” Olivia put the half-empty can of bug spray into Jack’s camera bag as she added, “They call them cows because they graze on plants all day, just like dairy cows.”

“OK, everybody,” Steven called out, “time to get into the car. Frankie will be waiting at the dock.”

As the three kids jammed side by side in the car’s backseat, Ashley explained to Bridger, “Frankie was my grandmother’s friend even before my mom was born.”

“Hmmm,” Bridger murmured, peering out the car window. Not too far from them, the waters of the bay sparkled in the sunlight. As Steven maneuvered the car along a palm-lined two-lane road, past houses that looked like boxes with legs, Bridger asked, “How come all these houses are built up on stilts like that?”

“Hurricanes?” Jack suggested, and his father agreed, “Uh-huh. When hurricanes cause big waves to surge up over the land, houses built high on pilings don’t get damaged as much.”

“Looks like they could just get up and walk away,” Bridger murmured.

“Yeah, they do look like that. That’s a good one, Bridger,” Steven told him, grinning as they pulled over in front of a general store near the water.

Ashley shouted, “There’s Frankie, waiting for us.”

Scanning the sidewalk in front of the store, Bridger started to say, “I don’t see—” But by then Ashley had darted out of the car and into the arms of a short, wiry, white-haired woman.

“You’ve grown so big!” the woman was telling Ashley, as Olivia, Jack, and Steven caught up with them. “And Jack—look at you! Twelve years old and you’re almost as tall as a man.”

“Frankie, it’s great to see you again!” all the Landons exclaimed as they hugged her.

Half in disbelief, then in alarm, Bridger exclaimed, “Frankie is a woman?”

Taking his hand, Olivia pulled him forward and said, “Bridger, I’d like you to meet Captain Frankie Gardell, the best fishing guide in all of the Everglades.”

With his eyes narrowed to a squint, Bridger touched the brim of his cowboy hat and mumbled, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” At first he looked anything but pleased, but then his face lightened a bit as he said, “Guess you just own the boat, right? Who runs it for you?”

“Me!” When Frankie smiled, the skin around her mouth crinkled into dozens of wrinkles that connected to other dozens of wrinkles in her sun-browned cheeks.

She was small, barely over five feet two, and dressed in a red-and-white-striped shirt that hung over cutoff jeans. It seemed odd, even to Jack, for a 70-year-old woman to wear cutoffs, but somehow on Frankie it looked all right.

“To answer your question, Bridger,” Frankie went on, “when my husband, Gene, was alive, we made the fishing trips together. But Gene’s been gone for eight years now, rest his soul, and in that time I’ve run this business by myself.”

Bridger looked even more confused. “Your husband’s name was Jean?”

Chuckling, Frankie answered, “Spelled G-E-N-E. Short for Eugene. And I’m Frankie, short for Francesca. And yonder’s the Pescadillo.”

Thoroughly flustered, Bridger burst out, “What the heck is a pescadillo?”

“It’s my boat! The name is kind of a combination of ‘pesce,’ which is Italian for ‘fish,’ and ‘peccadillo,’ which means—well, I’ll tell you later, Bridger. We need to get moving.”

“Good idea,” Olivia said, glancing at her watch. “I have a meeting in 20 minutes. Lots of people coming: park rangers, researchers—everyone with information on the manatees. I feel as if I’ve got a thousand pieces of a big puzzle, Frankie, and no picture on the box to guide me. So do you mind if Steven and I leave now and don’t see you off?”

“Go, go!” Frankie urged them, shooing Steven and Olivia with sun-browned hands. “My new shipmates and I will be just fine. Won’t we, Ashley?”

“You bet!”

Steven said, “Then we’ll see you tonight. Get busy out there, guys—if you make a good catch, the restaurant will cook it for us.”

From the end of the dock, the four of them waved, watching Steven and Olivia pull away in the car. Once they’d disappeared, Frankie placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the kids. Jack wondered if she could tell that Bridger was unhappy about her being a woman, but if she knew, she didn’t let on. Instead, she began to bark out orders like a real ship’s captain.

Pointing briskly, she went down the line. “Jack, you load up the rest of the gear that’s right by your feet. Bridger, you take that cooler on board and stow it between the captain’s chair and the gunwale. Ashley, you’re going to get the line off the piling, and when

I tell you, throw it onto the boat deck and then jump in after it. Don’t wait too long, or the boat’ll get away from you and you’ll end up with an Everglades bath.”