Free Night of the Black Bear by Gloria Skurzynski Page A

table, squeezed almost knee to knee because there were three Firekillers, four Landons, and Merle. Steven commented, “You’re awfully quiet, Jack. What’s up?”
    Everyone turned to look at Jack, so he had to scramble for an answer. “Turkeys,” he blurted. “I was thinking about the wild turkeys we’ve seen all over the park. Is this one of them?” He pointed to the platter on the table that held a beautifully browned turkey, now sliced into separate pieces. “I mean, was this one of them?”
    â€œOh, no,” Blue answered quickly, holding the carving knife in his hand. “Hunting is not allowed in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In fact, there are very few national parks where it is allowed. You can’t hunt or trap wildlife at all. Not even those animals that are not native to the park, like the wild hogs that keep wandering inside our boundaries. Those hogs are dirty and hairy. They’re about the same overall body size as you, Jack, and they cause a lot of damage to the park’s fragile ecosystem. Sometimes we try to trap the hogs and move them onto Forest Service land, where hunting is allowed.”
    Yonah broke in, “But you kill a lot of them.”
    Blue nodded. “True. You gotta realize, if we find one way out in the back country, it’s too hard to trap it and haul it all the way out, so we euthanize it.”
    â€œThat’s a polite way of saying you shoot it,” Yonah commented pointedly.
    â€œEuthanize it,” Blue repeated. “Rangers go out at night in the high elevations of the park with night-vision goggles and silencer rifles. They’ll stalk a wild hog that’s been seen along the trail.”
    â€œAnd shoot it,” Yonah said again.
    â€œRecycle it back into the park,” Blue said. “Because other animals eat the hog carcass—bears, coyotes, vultures, crows…. When a hungry bear comes out of its den in the spring and finds a nice big wild hog carcass, the bear figures it’s a gift from heaven.”
    Ashley interrupted, “You said a wild hog is about the same body size as Jack. Well, Jack is 120 pounds. So a bear who ate Jack all the way down to his toes— ha ha! —would look pretty big for this time of year, right? Like the bear in Heather’s photos.”
    â€œThanks a lot,” Jack said, “for turning me into bear scat,” and everyone laughed. Everyone except Merle. “But what I think my sister is trying to say,” Jack continued, “is that maybe Heather’s attack bear ate a hog and got fat.”
    â€œI don’t think that’s likely. But here’s another thought,” Steven offered. “What if the hog died from disease and a bear ate it? Could that affect the bear?
    â€œMmmm ….” Blue seemed to be considering that. “Well, wild hogs do get diseases like pseudo-rabies and swine brucellosis, but we’ve never been aware of those or other hog diseases inside this park. Maybe a lot farther south, but not here. Anyway, I’ll check with headquarters to find out whether any wild hogs have been put down recently.”
    The dinner-time chatter turned to other things, with everyone talking until Lily announced, “Time for dessert. Even though it’s not Christmas, I baked us a Cherokee Christmas cake. My mother used to make these with hazelnuts, dates, and goat’s milk, but I’ve modernized the recipe a bit since I can’t find any goat’s milk at the supermarket.”
    â€œI like it better the way you make it,” Blue told her, starting to slice the cake Lily had set in front of him.
    Pushing back his chair, Jack said, “Uh, could you excuse me for a minute? I need to….” He pointed in the direction of the bathroom.
    â€œBetter hurry,” Merle told him, “or I might eat your piece of cake.”
    â€œBetter not!” Jack wanted to get out of there while Merle