Free Trickster by Laurie Halse Anderson Page A

Mac.
    “Everything you asked for and a few things you didn’t,” Dr. Gabe says, grinning as usual. He hustles a cooler of intravenous fluid and medicine into the barn.
    With two vets, the examinations go quickly. They check the vital signs—temperature, respiratory rate, and heart rate—of each horse. Dr.Gabe presses his stethoscope against Trickster’s chest. “Seventy-two beats a minute,” he says.
    That’s way too high. A normal pulse rate for a horse is thirty-five to forty beats a minute.
    “It’s got to be more than colic,” Mr. Quinn says.
    “The stomach pain looks like colic,” Dr. Mac says, “but they all have diarrhea, so everything is flowing through their intestines well. Too well.”
    “They’re dehydrated,” Dr. Gabe observes.
    “They’ve been drinking, but it’s all coming out the other end,” Dr. Mac explains. “It’s got to be intestinal. A toxicosis of some sort. Let’s get I.V.s started on everyone.”
    She strokes Trickster’s neck, then smoothly inserts a needle into a vein. She connects the needle to a long tube that leads to the bag of clear I.V. fluid. The bags are hung from a hook on the wall of the stall.
    “We have to keep his fluid level and electrolytes up. We don’t want his blood pressure to drop or him to lose consciousness,” Dr. Mac says. She moves down to Gertie and prepares to start her I.V.
    “Wait a minute,” I say suddenly. “Dr. Mac,stop. Go back to Trickster. Look in his mouth, on the edge of his lips. He has bumps.”
    “Bumps?”
    “I saw them earlier. He was drinking weird, too. He would stick his whole nose in the water bucket. He’d lift it to breathe, then stick it back in the water.”
    “What else did you notice?” She lifts Trickster’s lips to look at his gums. “Think carefully.”
    “His stall. Jared said he had cleaned it, but when I got there, manure was everywhere. I cleaned it, but it’s a mess again already. He’s been having really bad diarrhea.”
    Dr. Mac peers in Trickster’s mouth, then releases it and scratches his jaw. She looks over at Dr. Gabe. “Cantharidin.”
    “Couldn’t be,” Dr. Gabe replies, shaking his head.
    “Has to be,” Dr. Mac argues. “Look at these blisters.”
    Dr. Gabe hands Elsa’s I.V. bag to Jared and looks into Trickster’s mouth. He pulls a penlight out of the pocket of his coat and flashes it along Trickster’s tongue.
    “What is it?” I ask.
    “Blister beetles,” Dr. Mac says. “These horsesmay have been poisoned by blister beetles in their hay. What a nightmare.”
    “Blister beetles? You’re kidding me,” Mr. Quinn says. “We’ve never had blister beetles before. How can you be sure?”
    Dr. Mac gently holds Starfire’s head and pries open his jaw. Sure enough, way back in the throat I can see the same kind of blisters I saw in Trickster’s mouth, smaller but still ugly.
    “That’s one way to be sure,” she says, releasing the horse. Starfire shakes his head and coughs. He has started to drool a bit. “We’ll run some urine tests to confirm.”
    “What’s a blister beetle?” I ask.
    Dr. Mac goes back down the line and starts Gertie’s I.V.
    “Blister beetles live on plants like alfalfa, which is harvested for hay,” she explains. “They have a chemical in their body called cantharidin. Cantharidin is not nice. It burns body tissues. And it explains all these symptoms. Trickster was keeping his whole mouth in the water bucket because it cooled the blisters on his lips. The cantharidin has irritated their stomachs, kidneys, and intestines, blistering their insides, too. That’s why they are acting colicky. Their insidesreally, really hurt. The irritation has caused the diarrhea.”
    “And Gertie’s seizures? Starfire’s fever?” Mr. Quinn asks.
    “Everything,” Dr. Mac says.
    Linda enters the foaling barn. She must have just come back from town. “What’s going on? Why are the horses still in the pasture? Jared, you have students arriving in a few