The Good, the Bad, and the Emus(23)
“Well, we were already planning an expedition,” she said. “Not quite such a big one, of course. Just a follow-up on the Toad Wars.”
“The what?”
“The Toad Wars. That’s what the brigade calls that expedition to southwest Virginia two years ago, where we managed to stop a strip mine and save that new species of toads.”
“The poisonous ones that they’re going to name after Grandfather?” I asked.
“Turns out they’re not poisonous after all,” she said. “Only foul-tasting, so he’s not interested. He’s going to arrange to have them named after me. Anaxyrus willneri instead of Anaxyrus blakei.”
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Thanks,” She beamed—clearly she had no prejudice against the nonlethal toads. “So we were planning to go down and shoot the final segment: your grandfather standing and gloating over having saved all those verdant hills, and some more footage of the toads. We were gearing up for that when you came along with the emu rescue, which sounded much more interesting to him, so the camera crew just headed here instead of Abingdon.”
“That explains you and the camera crew,” I said. “But where is he going to get provisions for this crowd?”
“One of our stalwart volunteers runs a catering company.” She pointed toward the mess tent, where a twenty-five-foot truck was carefully maneuvering into position, with another truck just beyond, waiting its turn. “He doesn’t do it for free, of course, but he’s willing to drop everything and get a crew out to wherever we’re filming.”
“In return for a few well-placed shots of his trucks on the show, I assume.”
“Exactly. Well, I’d better go keep the boys from tearing my caravan apart.”
She began climbing up into the caravan. I was turning to leave when a blond Valkyrie in a white shirt and khaki shorts bustled up to me, wielding a clipboard.
“Have you signed your releases yet?” she asked.
“Releases? Oh, right—”
“Dr. Blake plans to develop a documentary about the emu roundup,” she said, and she began to recite a spiel warning me that anyone who refused to sign their photo release would be escorted to the gate and—
“I get it, I get it,” I said, as soon as I could interrupt her. “Give me four of the forms and I’ll turn them in later today. Dr. Blake’s my grandfather and I know the drill.” In fact, I’d done her job a time or two, and hoped I’d managed to be less annoying.
“I see.” She was studying me with a slight frown, as if not quite sure I measured up to the exalted position of Dr. Blake’s granddaughter. I got the feeling that she was trying to look down her nose at me. She was nearly six feet tall, with an elegant if slightly aquiline nose, and I suspected she got a lot of practice looking down it at most women and quite a few men. But since I was five foot ten in bare feet and had chosen to wear thick-soled clogs today, she had to look me eye to eye. It seemed to throw her off her game.
I noticed she was wearing a name tag with a big smiley face on it that read HI! MY NAME IS SHERRY S. SMITH! If she tried to enforce the wearing of cute name tags with superfluous exclamation points, she was going to have a rebellion on her hands.
“You can turn your forms in at the information desk,” she said. “Center of the camp, right in front of Dr. Blake’s trailer.”
After saying that, she strode off. I noticed, enviously, that her hair was arranged in a perfect French braid, something I had never in my life achieved without professional help. I resolved to make an effort not to hold that against her. I stowed the forms on the passenger seat of the Twinmobile for safekeeping and began to pick my way through the camp toward the gate that led into Annabel’s backyard.
The camp wasn’t really as huge as I’d first thought. Not yet, anyway—only fifteen or twenty tents, trailers, or RVs apart from Grandfather’s little headquarters cluster. But every time I looked, someone else was arriving.
Luckily, the campers were settling in precisely where I would have tried to put them—mostly in the part of the field that backed up to Theo Weaver’s house. The part immediately in back of Annabel’s yard was vacant, and several volunteers were setting up fence posts in a line that would divide it off from the other half of the field.
“Setting up a holding pen for the birds,” one explained, when I stopped to watch for a few moments.
“Good idea,” I said, and moved on.
A rather substantial holding pen. I found myself suddenly wondering if anyone had recently confirmed the continued existence of the emus and ostriches. What if the emu Stanley had seen was the last of his kind, the rest having succumbed to the rigors of the recent unusually harsh winter?