Chomp

FIVE

Although she would never say it aloud, Raven Stark believed she was grossly underpaid. Her job title was “senior production assistant,” but in reality she was also a babysitter, nurse, chauffeur, bartender, courier, valet, personal groomer and amateur psychologist.

Derek Badger was a handful.

“We’re late,” she said, knocking once more on the door of his hotel suite.

There was still no response, so she used the plastic key card. Derek wasn’t inside the room; he was standing on the balcony, overlooking a golf course.

Raven said, “For heaven’s sake, put on some clothes.”

The star of Expedition Survival! was clad only in tartan boxer shorts and a pair of black knee-high socks. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

“I refuse to work with that ignorant redneck,” he said, meaning Mickey Cray.

“People are staring, Derek. Let’s go inside.”

“Are you telling me that’s the only humongous alligator available in South Florida, which is the humongous alligator capital of the world?”

Raven was quite familiar with Derek’s tantrums. “This particular specimen happens to be perfect for what we need.”

“Perfect how?” he whined.

“Time to put on your pants. Let’s go.”

The script for Derek’s Everglades adventure called for him to swim beside a huge gator, which required renting one that would tolerate Derek’s nonsense and resist the urge to bite off his fool head. Mickey Cray’s son had assured Raven that Alice had never purposely hurt anybody (he’d again blamed himself for the thumb removal), and that the reptile was accustomed to the noisy presence of camera crews.

“But we can’t stage our biggest scene in some nitwit’s backyard,” Derek complained in the car, traveling to the Crays’ house.

Raven assured him that the family’s Everglades set didn’t look like a backyard. “It looks like a real-life swamp. You’ll be impressed.”

Derek sniffed. “No, they’ll be impressed when they see me jump that monster gator.”

“Not happening. The insurance company says no way.”

“They said the same thing about the cobra dance, but I did it anyway.”

Thanks for reminding me, thought Raven.

They had been shooting an Expedition Survival! in Cambodia when Derek decided to play snake charmer with a spitting cobra that had been rented from a local handler named Mr. Na. When Mr. Na saw what Derek was doing, he leaped between Derek and the dangerous reptile just as it released a jet of deadly poison. A few drops landed in Mr. Na’s hair, and as a precaution he rushed off to take a shower. Upon returning to the set of Expedition Survival! Mr. Na was dismayed to learn that Derek had chopped up his pet snake with a rusty machete and eaten it for supper in the program’s final scene.

“The Crays won’t let you lay a finger on Alice,” Raven said.

Derek chuckled to himself. “We shall see about that. What sort of people would name a dumb old alligator Alice?”

“The sort of people who treat it like one of the family.”

“Hillbillies,” Derek said. “Did you bring extra cash?”

The crew of the television program arrived early to set up. With amazement the cameramen and lighting technicians watched Mickey Cray lead Alice from her enclosure to the swamp-like Everglades set at the other end of the property. Swishing her thick armored tail for balance, the huge gator trailed Mickey like a puppy. He was carrying a plump thawed chicken under each arm, so Alice would have followed him anywhere.

Wahoo was busy tending the crippled bobcat, trying to coax it to eat. The poor thing was limping in circles around the new pen, still frazzled by the long truck ride from Highlands County. Every now and then the cat would scrabble up and down an old telephone pole that Mickey had planted for that very purpose. Still, it took Wahoo almost an hour to get the animal calm enough to nibble from a dish.

He arrived on the Everglades set just as Derek Badger was emerging from the air-conditioned motor coach that served as a dressing room. The vehicle was jet-black and as big as a Greyhound bus. Derek wore crisply pressed khaki shorts, a matching safari shirt and hiking boots splattered with wet oatmeal to look like mud.

“What a poser,” Mickey said.

“Chill out, Pop.”

“Don’t we have some fire ants?”

“That’s enough.”

A rumpled assistant in orange sneakers and a corduroy vest began spraying something on Derek Badger’s arms and legs. Wahoo assumed it was insect repellent until the man in the vest told Derek to shut his eyes and then misted his face.

“What is that stuff?” Wahoo asked Raven Stark.

“Spray-on tan,” she said matter-of-factly.

Wahoo thought that even a showbiz survivalist should have a real tan, but evidently nothing about Derek Badger was real. The star went back to the motor coach to await his bronze glow while the TV crew snacked on donuts and bagels. Wahoo helped his father trim a patch of saw grass to clear space for one of the three cameras that would be filming the water scenes.

“How’s Alice?” Wahoo asked.

“Pigged out and happy,” said his dad.

The well-fed gator was resting at the bottom of the brackish lagoon. Every now and then a pair of bubbles would float to the surface, betraying the location of the animal’s nose.

“Where’s the gun?” Raven asked Mickey Cray.

“Oh, relax.” He lifted his T-shirt to reveal the butt of a pistol that he was carrying on his waist. The contract with Expedition Survival! required Mickey to keep a firearm with him, in case something went wrong and one of the critters attacked.

“It’s a. 45,” Mickey said. “Feel better?”

Raven went to retrieve Derek while Wahoo fetched the snapping turtle that would be featured in the first segment. Even though the turtle was bulky, Wahoo carried it at arm’s length from his body. The snapper had a long, flexible neck and was lightning quick on the strike.

“Doesn’t this one have a name?” Derek asked snidely. “How about Timmy the Terrible Turtle?”

Wahoo ignored him. He set the craggy reptile down beside the pool and backed out of the scene. The director, a shaggy-bearded guy, yelled, “We’re rolling!”

Immediately Derek knelt down and positioned his glossy face beside the turtle’s, although he wasn’t nearly as close as the camera made it appear. Breathlessly he began reciting the lines he had memorized from his script:

“These snapping turtles are one of the most ferocious predators in the Everglades! They’re camouflaged to look exactly like a mossy rock, and their sharp, powerful jaws unlock to reveal a juicy, worm-like tongue, which they deviously wiggle as bait-”

Derek abruptly halted and said, “Cut!” He motioned impatiently to Mickey Cray. “We definitely need to see Timmy’s tongue.”

“His name’s not Timmy,” said Wahoo’s father, “and I can’t make him open his yap if he doesn’t want to.”

“Then what are we paying you for?”

“Mainly to keep you out of the emergency room.”

“Excuse me?”

Wahoo quickly stepped forward. “Mr. Badger, the turtle only wiggles his tongue underwater, when he’s hungry.”

“That’s just great.” Derek looked over at Raven. “I had a bad feeling about this whole operation-didn’t I tell you?”

Wahoo’s dad said, “You wanna see the inside of his mouth?” He broke a thin branch off a pine tree, stripped away the sprigs and handed it to the TV star. “Try this.”

Raven grew concerned. “Derek, you be careful.”

“Yes, Mum!” He laughed and got down on his knees again, this time a bit closer to the turtle. As soon as the cameras started rolling, he used the sharp end of the branch to poke at the pointy snout of the reptile, which shut its eyes and drew itself into its shell.

“C’mon, Terrible Timmy,” Derek cooed, “say aaahhhh.”

Wahoo knew he had to do something fast. Quietly he moved behind the cameraman nearest to Derek and made a pushing motion with both hands, a signal to back off. Either Derek didn’t see him, or pretended not to.

The bite was a hissing blur. Everyone flinched at the crack of the branch being chomped in half, a few short inches from Derek’s wide eyes. He gasped in surprise and tumbled sideways into the lagoon. The turtle wasn’t far behind, paddling furiously toward the cool, quiet bottom, where Alice the alligator had been-until that moment-peacefully snoozing.

The director hollered, “Cut! Cut!”

Mickey Cray was applauding. “Hey, that’s good stuff.”

Two crew members hurried forward to drag Derek, cursing, from the water. The beak of the snapping turtle had peeled a sliver of flesh from the tip of his artificially tanned nose, now punctuated with a bright red dot of blood.

Raven Stark angrily cornered Wahoo and his father. “You two think this is funny? Derek could have been maimed!”

Mickey shrugged. “That’s why they’re called snappers, not yawners.”

“You’re the one who gave him that stick!”

“Well, it’s better than using a finger,” said Mickey. “Right, son?”

Wahoo nodded ruefully, displaying the fleshy bump where his right thumb once had been. Behind him Derek was bellowing at the director, ordering him to erase all the video footage of the turtle encounter.

“If I see one minute of that on YouTube, everybody on this crew is fired!” Derek warned as he toweled off. “And I mean everybody!”

Next they tried the python, Beulah.

Wahoo and his father uncoiled the beautiful, multi-hued constrictor and laid her out at full length. The script called for Derek to creep up and seize Beulah behind her head, instigating a fake life-or-death struggle. Mickey Cray didn’t mention that Beulah had tried to eat his foot a few days earlier; the swelling had gone down and his limp was barely noticeable.

Over Derek’s objections, Mickey insisted on conducting a rehearsal so he could demonstrate the safest way to handle the big snake.

Derek barely paid attention. “Piece o’ cake, mate,” he kept saying.

“Sometimes she bites,” Wahoo reminded him.

“Ha! Never show you’re afraid, because animals can sense it,” said Derek. “Do you even know what true primal fear smells like?”

“Not really. Asparagus?”

Derek’s eyes narrowed as he tried to figure out if he’d just been insulted.

As it turned out, Beulah showed no interest in biting anyone during the run-through. She was sleepy and sluggish, her belly still full from the microwaved chickens that Wahoo had fed her after she’d tried to make a meal of his father.

“Okay, this one’s for real!” said the director. “Action!”

Soon Derek was crawling through Mickey Cray’s manicured palmetto scrub, whispering dramatically into a bug-sized microphone clipped to his shirt collar:

“As if the Everglades weren’t dangerous enough, in recent years this tropical river of grass has been invaded by lethal predators from another continent-Burmese pythons! Imported by wildlife brokers for the exotic pet trade, hundreds and hundreds of baby pythons got scattered throughout the Glades when Hurricane Andrew destroyed breeding farms west of Miami. Now all those cute little buggers have grown into fierce levithanians, some of them twenty feet long!”

“Cut!” the director called.

“What’s wrong?” snapped Derek. “That bit was totally brilliant.”

“The word is ‘leviathan,’ not ‘levithanian.’ ”

They attempted the scene nine more times, but Derek couldn’t get the pronunciation right. Finally the director gave up. “Forget it, okay? Just say ‘monster’ instead.”

Derek nailed it on the first take:

“Now all those cute little snakes have grown into voracious monsters, some of them twenty feet long! They can swallow a whole deer, a panther and, yes, even a human being.

“Today I’m crawling through the most remote, untouched and dangerous stretch of the Everglades, following the trail of an enormous wild python-and look! There she is!”

With a cameraman on his heels, Derek wriggled forward and pounced with a triumphant cry upon Beulah. He locked both hands two feet below her head, which is just about the worst place to grab a snake. Wahoo was surprised that Beulah didn’t twist around and sink her chompers into Derek’s fat face.

“I’ve got her! I’ve caught the beast!” he crowed.

The python wasn’t particularly concerned. She hooked her tail around one of Derek’s ankles but didn’t even tighten up. Grunting and huffing, he rolled back and forth on the ground, shaking Beulah by the neck, trying to provoke her to fight back.

It was like wrestling a fourteen-foot noodle. All Beulah wanted to do was curl up and take a nap.

Wahoo glanced at his father and didn’t like what he saw. Mickey Cray was clenching and unclenching his fists.

Derek panted into the microphone:

“Whatever happens, I can’t let this jungle killer wrap her massive coils around my chest! She would literally crush the life out of me!”

Mickey turned to his son. “That’s what I’m fixin’ to do,” he whispered. “Literally.”

“No, Pop, wait-”

It was too late. Wahoo’s dad hurled himself furiously at Derek Badger, but the double vision caused him to miss.

Mickey got up, dusted off and tried again. This time he scored a direct hit, clinching both arms around Derek’s pudgy midsection. He dragged him away from the dizzy python and began to squeeze with all his might.

“Cut! Cut!” cried the director. “Are you nuts? Somebody stop this lunatic!”

The crew members seemed entertained by the scuffle. No one except Wahoo made a move to rescue Derek. By the time Wahoo was able to unfasten his dad, the famous survivalist’s face had turned the color of cranberries. He was down on all fours, coughing and whimpering with Raven Stark at his side, brushing the leaves and twigs from his hair.

“Now you’ve done it,” Wahoo said.

His father looked somber. “Let’s move Beulah back to her tank.”

Mickey took the front half while Wahoo hoisted the tail section.

“That’s the worst excuse for a python I ever saw!” It was Derek, lurching to his feet. “You call that a snake? Ha! I call it an overstuffed earthworm.”

Beulah opened her shovel-sized mouth and burped, displaying rows of hook-shaped teeth. Derek cringed and hopped backward.

“Take a hike,” advised Mickey Cray.

“What?”

“You heard me, Dork Man.”

Raven stood speechless. Wahoo noticed one of the cameramen chuckling.

Derek stiffened. “Listen, mate, we’ve got a contract.”

“Are you kidding?” said Mickey.

Wahoo and his dad began hauling the hefty python toward the snake tanks.

“Hey! What about the gator?” Derek Badger shouted after them.

“Over my dead body,” Mickey said.

“Three grand for a scene with Alice! Cash!”

“Pop, you hear that?” Wahoo whispered.

“Hear what?”

“Thirty-five hundred!” Derek called out.

“Pop, come on.”

“Keep walking.”

“Four grand!” cried Derek. “Four thousand dollars!”

Mickey Cray turned around, smiling. “ That I heard.”