Free The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt

straightened his red bow tie and admired his thin, elegant socks. For all of two seconds he considered following her. But that would mean ruining yet another pair of socks. He decided to wait in the car. If Jaeger wanted to tramp around in the swamp and wrestle an alligator, far be it from him to stop her. He had no real affection for the lady wrestler. She was a business partner, nothing else. He and the driver . . . What was his name? Larry? Lonny? James? Whatever. He and the driver would wait.
    He knew that Jaeger would find an alligator toot sweet, and from there it would just be a matter of minutes before she had it belly up and snoring. (Fact: When alligators are flipped onto their backs, they fall asleep. Jaeger was a pro at flipping them.)
    In the meantime, Sonny Boy could use the quiet timewithout Jaeger to dream about the boatloads of cash that the Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park were going to deliver to him. If he thought at all about “ the wrath of the Sugar Man ,” those words that were written in his great-great-greater-greatest-grandfather’s own blood, it was only fleetingly. In fact, he was so absorbed by his visions of all that moolah, he didn’t notice the rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble s that came up through the floorboards and shook the big car.
    He didn’t notice. But Leroy did. They made him chew on his fingernails.

35
    B ACK IN THE CANEBRAKE, THE rattlesnakes were abuzz. They had also noticed the rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble s, and it made them edgy.
    Snip-snap-zip-zap. Snip-snap-zip-zap. Snip-snap-zip-zap.

36
    W HILE S ONNY B OY SAT IN the backseat of the Hummer, and Leroy chewed on his fingernails, Jaeger Stitch stepped quietly onto the soft wet floor of the swamp. The sun rose through the tree branches just enough to light the path in front of her. She was only feet away from an unusually deep bend in the Bayou Tourterelle when she smelled the gators.
    At this early hour they’d be calm, thanks to the cool air that still lingered from the night. Nevertheless, her senses were heightened. A calm alligator is still an alligator, and she knew that.
    Sure enough, there, right along the bank, was her prey, a six-footer. Not the biggest gator she had ever wrestled, but not the smallest, either. It was just right for a fight.
    Before the gator could even flip on its go switch, Jaeger Stitch landed on its back. Ooomph! She pulled its jaw up into a ninety-degree angle and kissed the tip of its nose. As if that weren’t humiliating enough to the poor gator, shegrabbed its toothy snout and pulled it over onto its back and started rubbing its belly. In fewer than five minutes, the alligator was in dream city.
    And Jaeger Stitch was back in the superstretch Hummer. She ran her fingers through Sonny Boy’s yellow-gray hair. He covered his nose with his silk hanky to circumvent her reptilian smell. She took a deep breath. Nothing like the odor of alligator at sunrise, she thought. Then she closed her eyes, leaned against the seat back of the enormous car, and hummed to herself as they rolled through the morning mist.

The Next Night

37
    T EXAS IS HOME TO THOUSANDS of alligators. It’s impossible to put a definite figure on their population. Let’s just say that every waterway between the Sabine River to the east and the Pecos to the west has its share of the toothy beasts. And once in a while one is found in a lake or stream west of that.
    The same could basically be said about the porkers, although their range is definitely bigger and wider than that of the gators. Biologists estimate that the number of feral hogs in the USA range from between two and four million animals in thirty-nine states. More than a million of them can be found in Texas alone, giving Texas a big, fat porcine problem.
    Hogs like to hide out along creek beds, where they lay low in the underbrush so that no one can see their sneaky selves. Like our raccoons, they’re also