Free Gator on the Loose! by Sue Stauffacher

Malone and Keisha and then he closed it carefully. As soon as the alligator heard them enter, it began scrabbling against the tub bottom, trying to gain its footing and escape. In an instant, Mr. Malone was kneeling at the side of the claw-foot tub with his hands clamped around the alligator’s mouth.
    “Help me out here, guys. I had my jaw dislocated by an alligator’s tail in graduate school.”
    Daddy kneeled down on one end, and Keisha took her place in the middle. Oooh, the alligator felt, well,like a bumpy old bicycle tire. He was softer than she thought he would be. As soon as their hands were in place, the poor little thing started twisting.
    “The death roll,” Mr. Malone said. “He’s trying to get away. We’ll sit him out. Just hold.” The alligator did try, but he didn’t seem to have much energy for it. After a few seconds, he lay still.
    “Don’t let go, but relax,” Mr. Malone told them. “We need to move him back so he’s flat on the bottom of the tub.”
    Keeping one hand clamped on the alligator’s mouth, Mr. Malone took a pen out of his shirt pocket and lifted the base of the alligator’s tail. “I should say we need to move
her
to the bottom of the tub.”
    Mr. Malone leaned in close and inspected every inch of alligator.
    “She has the typical scratches on her skin that an alligator would get when you chase her over the cement at the city pool. Let’s see those eyes…. Keisha, would you get the magnifying glass out of my instrument case?”
    Keisha snapped open Mr. Malone’s case and laid it flat on the floor. It held everything from adhesive bandages to syringes to thermometers. She found the magnifying glass and looked at Pumpkin’s eyes as she handedthe glass to Mr. Malone. They looked like some of the specimens in her cat’s-eye marble collection, deep brown with flecks of yellow.
    “Excellent,” Mr. Malone said. “No scratches there.”
    He set the magnifying glass down and used his free hand to pull back her lips so he could see her gums.
    “Oh, this is not good.”
    “Are Pumpkin’s teeth loose?” Keisha remembered something about alligator teeth in captivity, but she wasn’t sure what.
    “Pumpkin? That’s an odd name for an alligator. I thought Fay—”
    “Not her official name,” Daddy said. “We try not to get too attached, but Razi has a way of naming everything.”
    Keisha wanted to hear what Mr. Malone thought about naming. Did they name the animals at the zoo? Did he think of one of them as his special pet? She kept her grip tight with one hand, but with the other, she patted Pumpkin’s back.
    “Her teeth aren’t loose,” Mr. Malone said, absorbed again in alligator anatomy, “so much as … transparent. Like skim milk. She is missing some teeth, too. And see here …”
    He put one hand on top of Pumpkin’s jaw and onehand under it and moved the bottom from side to side. Ooooh, Pumpkin didn’t like that. Daddy jumped back as her tail got away from him and smacked against the side of the tub.
    Keisha squinted and ducked. Pumpkin struggled to get free, but Daddy got her tail again and they put pressure on her until she stopped fighting.
    Everyone was breathing hard—especially Pumpkin—when Mr. Malone said, “She’s a little sensitive here. It’s just as I thought. She doesn’t eat enough bones.”
    “Bones?” Daddy repeated.
    Mr. Malone nodded. “Alligators in captivity are almost always fed a diet of things like hamburger and tuna and chicken without the bones. They need the whole animal: rats, mice, chicks. Otherwise, they don’t get enough calcium.
    “Before she was found in the city pool, it’s likely that someone had her in their home—the garage or the basement—and fed her food that was easy to get at the grocery store. I’ve seen this before.”
    “So people do have alligators for pets?” Keisha asked.
    “Sure they do.” Mr. Malone straightened his back. “Think about this one as a baby—those glassy eyes, the smile