Free Gator on the Loose! by Sue Stauffacher Page A

that never goes away. They’re like scalykittens, just twelve inches long. Pretty hard
not
to want one.”
    Keisha tried to imagine Aaliyah begging her mama and daddy for a baby alligator. She wasn’t sure Mr. Malone was right in thinking everyone wanted one.
    “Did you ask for an alligator when you were little?” she asked him.
    “You bet I did.”
    Keisha didn’t ask her next questions—
Did you get one? How much did it cost? Where did you keep it? What happened when it got big?
—because she didn’t want Daddy to think that she had any interest at all in baby alligators.
    “Okay, everybody, on the count of three we’re all going to stand up and back off…. One, two, three …” Keisha was the quickest to jump up. Daddy took her hand and pulled her away. She was sure the alligator would try to get out of the tub again. It had been successful once. But poor Pumpkin seemed exhausted.
    “Let’s make our getaway while we can,” Daddy said. When they were on the other side of the bathroom door, Daddy tilted a chair from Grandma’s bedroom up against the door to make sure it stayed shut.
    “Maybe she could come live with you at the zoo,” Keisha said as they were going down the stairs.
    “I’m afraid not, Keisha. This alligator may have a virus, one we can’t see, and we can’t take the chance of her infecting others. Also, a zoo isn’t set up to take in orphaned animals, like your dad does,” Mr. Malone said. “We don’t even have the proper licenses….”
    They walked into the kitchen, where Grandma was sitting at the table cutting pictures out of her Elderhostel catalog.
    Mr. Malone went to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. “There’s another reason we can’t take Pumpkin,” he told Keisha over his shoulder. “The zoo doesn’t have enough room. In the three years I have worked there, we’ve seen eight alligators—two just this month. The last one was caught with a fishing rod. It had made a wallow on the Rogue River and was eating the free-range chickens at the Herbruck family farm.”
    “But where do they come from? Michigan isn’t an alligator’s natural habitat,” Keisha said.
    “They aren’t coming by themselves. People bring them. Or they buy them here. My parents knew what happened to baby alligators—that’s why I never got one. But people who go to reptile swaps—they have one every month here in Grand River—don’t know the first thing about it. They see the alligator while it’s ahatchling, and they don’t think ahead to the fact that alligators grow big and dangerous.
    “Another thing I learned in my online zoo forum is that people are starting to use them the way they might use guard dogs. So instead of a pit bull, some property owners buy alligators.”
    “Does this mean there will be more and more alligators in Michigan?”
    “Not in the end because they can’t survive our Michigan winters.”
    “So what will happen to Pum
—this
alligator?”
    “I’m sorry, Keisha.” Daddy patted her back. “It’s not looking too good for our scaly friend.”
    “Well, just think if you hadn’t found her,” Mr. Malone said. “How sick and frightened she’d be. Nature, as you know, Keisha, can be very cruel. I include human beings when I say that. No one should have released Pumpkin like that. Here in Michigan, she’s like a … well, a fish out of water!”

Chapter Ten
    The good news was that Pumpkin wasn’t going back to Mama’s favorite bathtub. The bad news was that Mama had to lose a flower bed. Daddy had warned her not to plant the petunias in that spot because they would need a large-animal enclosure soon. Mama said she’d rather give up the petunias than have an alligator back in the house. Daddy cut the flowers and put them in a vase. Then he dug out a whole section of earth, including the roots of the petunias so they could be planted elsewhere.
    All the while, Keisha misted Pumpkin in the dog crate that had been placed in the shade outside the