Free Your Backyard Is Wild by Jeff Corwin

Chapter one

    T e sun was rising and Daisy, a chocolate Lab, was pulling at the end of her leash.
    “Please, Mom? Can’t we bring her?” nine-year-old Benjamin Baxter begged as Daisy stopped to sniff a patch of grass. “Dogs go on planes all the time.”
    Elizabeth Baxter, Benjamin’s mom, shook her head. “The city’s not a good place for Daisy,” she said. “She’s used to being here in Florida, where she has lots of space to run. In New York, she’d have to spend most of her time indoors. And besides, it’s only for a week.”
    Benjamin had heard this before. “But there’d be so much for her to see in New York! I know she’d love it as much as we will! And she won’t get to meet Gabe.” How could it be a family reunion if one member of the family was missing?
    Mrs. Baxter put an arm around her son. “We’ll all miss Daisy,” she said. “But we’ll be back before you know it, and Julie will take good care of her. She always does.”
    Julie was their neighbor. She had three dogs of her own. Daisy would have plenty of space to run, thought Benjamin, but nobody to give her extra-special attention. He stroked Daisy’s head gently. Leaving Daisy behind was the only bad part about their trip.
    In just two hours, the Baxters would be heading off on their first-ever real family vacation. They’d taken plenty of trips before. But Benjamin’s mom was a biologist, his dad was an ecologist, and most of the family’s travel had to do with their jobs. They were always exploring new animal habitats or collecting samples for their labs.
    This trip, though, was going to be different. They were going to New York City! They would be staying with Benjamin’s cousin, Gabe, who was nine, just like Benjamin. And they would be visiting the famous sights that Benjamin had seen only in movies or in other people’s photo albums.
    Benjamin was excited to think that this time he’d be the kid who brought back souvenirs for his classroom. This time he’d be the one with the inside scoop on a famous museum. For him, this would be a whole new kind of adventure.
    Suddenly Benjamin’s mother started running down the street! Every morning they took the dog for a walk together—and every morning his mom found a different creature to watch. “Look, Benjamin!” she cried. “It’s a great blue heron!” Benjamin and Daisy followed, but she had disappeared into a swamp to get a better look at the long-legged, long-necked bird.
    The Baxters lived at the edge of the Florida Everglades, a wilderness full of plants and animals you couldn’t see anywhere else in the country. Benjamin’s parents seemed to know everything about the different species of the Everglades, and most of the time Benjamin loved to tag along when they went exploring.
    Today, though, he was totally distracted. There was a whole other world in New York just waiting for him, and he was counting the minutes until he got there.
     
    When they got home, Benjamin’s eight-year-old sister, Lucy, was just getting out of bed. “Time to get dressed,” Benjamin’s dad, Sam Baxter, told her when she shuffled into the kitchen. “We’re almost ready to go.”
    Lucy was never cheerful in the morning. But she had to be excited about the trip, Benjamin figured, because today she didn’t argue with their dad. She disappeared into her room and came back in a clean T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and with her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. Lucy put her suitcase by the door and returned to the kitchen to pour herself a bowl of cereal.
    “Better get your bag, too,” Benjamin’s dad told him. “Then we can load up the car.”
    Benjamin went upstairs to collect his things from his room. He’d packed a lot more than Lucy. There was the stuff he knew he had to bring: clothes and shoes, toothpaste and underwear. And then there was the stuff he really wanted to bring, such as his camera and binoculars, his collecting jars, his notebook and pencils, and his magnifying