Free Skink--No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen Page A

recordings of distinct calls and bark drumming known to be made by the elusive woodpecker. However, after several years of trying, no scientist or civilian has been able to produce clear photographic evidence of a living specimen along that river—or anywhere else in the United States.
    A famous video that supposedly shows an ivorybill flying in an Arkansas swamp was rejected by top ornithologists, who said the bird was most likely a pileated woodpecker. I included a YouTube clip of that video in my science fair project, which was interactive. People could touch a button and hear a recording that compared the different hammering patterns of the pileated and the ivory-billed. I re-created the sounds myself by tapping a hollow bamboo reed against a dead palm tree.
    It would be awesome if someone actually discovereda live ivorybill, but that hasn’t happened. The bird is officially classified as extinct, and that’s what I concluded in my project. They’re all gone.
    “Don’t be so sure,” the governor said.
    “Now you sound like my stepfather. He totally believes in Sasquatches.”
    “I saw one of those woodpeckers with my own eye.”
    “Right,” I said.
    “April 17, 2009. Tomorrow I’ll show you where.”
    Choctawhatchee Bay, where the river empties, is only a short drive from Panama City, but Skink decided to wait until morning to begin our search for Malley. He said snooping around after dark was too risky. In the daylight hours we could pose as grandfather and grandson on a lazy summer road trip.
    “Don’t you have, like, a regular hat?” I asked.
    He smoothed the wrinkles from his shower cap and sourly jabbed a stick into the embers of the fire. We were camping in piney scrub near a place called Ebro. The governor was frying two dozen oysters he’d bought at a fish house and shucked with a combat knife. I’d never been brave enough to eat an oyster, but I agreed to try one because my other option was boiled roadkill. Skink had scavenged a dead raccoon on Highway 98. It had been struck by a vehicle with extremely large tires, and the furry ringed tail was the only way you could tell what kind of mammal it was.
    The oysters actually were tasty, and I ended up eatingmore than the governor did. After we finished, he gathered up the empty shells and went off to bury them. That’s when my mother called.
    “Where are you?” she asked. “I’ve got a road map of Florida in front of me.”
    “I can’t tell you, but we’re definitely getting close to Malley.”
    “Hold on. Did you really just say you can’t tell me?”
    “I promised him I wouldn’t give out too much information.”
    “By ‘him,’ you mean Mr. Tyree. Has he legally adopted you now? Because, if not, I’m still the one responsible for your health and well-being!”
    “Okay, Mom. Okay.” I told her we were camping in the Panhandle. She asked for the name of the nearest city, and I said we were somewhere west of Tallahassee.
    “Oh, that’s a tremendous help, Richard. You might as well have said east of Mobile.”
    “Mom, everything’s fine. We had fresh oysters for dinner, okay? It’s not like I’m suffering. He’s got bug spray, blankets, soap, even a snakebite kit.”
    Dumb mistake on my part, mentioning the snakebite kit.
    “Oh, great. So you’re in a wild swamp,” my mother sighed, “with moccasins and rattlers.”
    “We are not in a swamp. You gotta chill, please?”
    “Has he done anything crazy yet? Tell the truth.”
    “He cussed at some litterbug on the highway,” I said.“That’s not crazy—you do the same thing.” Except my mother has never poured beer into another driver’s gas tank, no matter what stupid thing he’s done.
    Trent got on the line to say how disappointed he was in me for lying about going camping with Blake. I apologized for getting him into trouble with Mom.
    He said, “Best thing you could do, bro, is beam yourself home ASAP.”
    “Not just yet.”
    “Let the cops find Malley. What are