Going Dark(2)
Baby crocs needed six months to adjust to salt water. In the meantime they either found a freshwater source or died. Without that pond their only hope for survival would be to skim the shallow lens of rainwater riding atop the briny canals.
In half a year’s time, the young crocs can abandon their rain-filled pond and begin to roam. Nature’s orderly timetable: the six-month rainy season exactly matched the half year required for their salt-tolerant glands to develop.
Even though their freshwater source is ready, other challenges lie ahead. These two baby crocs have to learn some brutal survival skills: how to hunt and keep themselves cool in the relentless Florida summer, how to conceal themselves from predators, including adult crocs, who have no qualms about eating their young. And these young crocs will have to do it without coaching or protection, because after this one gesture of maternal instinct, the mother croc will abandon her babies to fend for themselves.
Leslie certainly identifies with that.
Hanging a few yards back, she tracks the croc to the bank. She’s squinting in the harsh light, trying to make out the markings on this big croc’s tail, the two or three missing scutes, those knobs of gristle she herself trimmed away years ago when this croc was a youngster, a code that will tell her where she first encountered this specimen. Most likely it’s one of many Leslie has microchipped, but tonight at such a moment it’s way too tricky to attempt to lasso the big girl and scan her chip for an update on her travels. At this point the normally shy croc is at her most protective and volatile.
Leslie is ten feet back, staying close because she wants to eyeball the coded cuts on the tail, which will tell her if the croc is one of the hundreds from this region of neatly organized canals, or from a smaller population in northern Key Largo, or perhaps it’s one of the Everglades crocs that journey to this coastal, protected habitat to lay their eggs. Charting the croc’s travels is a crucial part of the research project she’s completing this year.
Leslie picks her way forward with particular care because earlier that afternoon, as they headed out to the nesting sites, a squall from tropical storm Ivan blew through, leaving the canal bank a gloppy mess. Even in her cleated hiking shoes the footing is treacherous.
She’s wearing her usual uniform, dark jeans, long-sleeve T-shirt sprayed with mosquito repellent, and a small backpack. She’s a lean, athletic woman, thirty-two, with short auburn hair. Despite her natural agility, the steep bank is giving her trouble. Twice she slips and barely catches herself.
She motions for Cameron to keep the camera’s light on the trail before her. Maybe Cameron’s finger slips on the spotlight trigger, or maybe it’s some electronic glitch—whatever it is, at that critical moment the camcorder’s three-watt video light flickers and goes dark.
Later a Miami-Dade police detective will question him about this detail, but Cameron will be unable to say exactly what happened. He won’t remember his finger slipping. And he’s sure there were no previous problems with the equipment. Since Cameron’s recollection of the night is so foggy, the video record is crucial in establishing the timeline.
The last clear image is Leslie’s urgent wave at Cameron to keep the light focused on the path. It’s possible that move throws her off-balance, or maybe the toe of her hiking shoe snags a root, or perhaps she’s simply disoriented by the utter dark beyond the cone of light.
From the camera’s angle, there’s no way to tell what tripped her. In the murkiness, Leslie appears to throw one arm upward, then the other, as if she’s grabbing for the straps on a lurching subway. That’s the final image of her before the camera pitches skyward.
After this moment, the video image joggles so wildly it’s impossible to determine exactly what’s what. The camera swings left, then tilts up, showing the black sky, some scattered stars, a slice of moon. Cameron reported he is at this point scrambling to unhook himself from the camera straps and fumbles the equipment, sending the camera crashing onto the deck. It bounces twice, then comes to rest.
The audio recorder continues to run, capturing a splash and a grunt.
Cameron calls Leslie’s name. He sounds alarmed, but not panicked. He’s worked alongside Leslie for years and has absolute faith in her skills.
But everything changes fast. With the mother croc in full-protection mode, Leslie’s lurch is apparently read as aggression toward the hatchlings. The croc doesn’t retreat across the canal as she normally would. From the heaves and grumbles, it appears that the big croc turns on the intruder.
Leslie remains silent, no sign of alarm. This puzzles the investigators who review the footage later, but Cameron assures them her familiarity with the landscape and with crocs in general was so thorough, it’s doubtful that she was even concerned.