Free Bird Brained by Jessica Speart Page A

PLEASE BRING THE FLAG? It was a popular sentiment with most of the area’s crackers, or “lizard eaters,” as some of the locals are called, who worried that an influx of Cubans was insidiously working its way toward them from out of Miami.
    I opened my car door to a surge of heat so humid it was almost liquid. Ninety-five degrees of sticky hot air rolled over my body like the swell of a wave to turn my skin into an irresistibly moist calling card for every tiny deer fly around. They banded together in miniature squadrons, attacking my body with the expertise of a panzer unit programmed to kill. My efforts at swatting them away only provided the insects with a much welcome breeze as they munched at my flesh in uninterrupted bliss.
    A hand-painted sign was nailed onto one of the trees. It announced that I was about to enter THE ENDANGERED CREATURES OF GOD FOUNDATION , for which all donations were gladly accepted. That was a scam Willy had come up with a few months ago, when he’d decided to try and pass off his place as a sanctuary. In reality, Weed’s hovel was a dump living in hope of conniving its way into a tax write-off.
    I kicked through the cans and debris that littered the ground to a cage holding a dejected cougar. The animal paced back and forth across the floor of its small pen with neurotic precision, its deadened eyes scarcely acknowledging my presence, its six-foot-long tawny body a scraggly mass of bones and fur. Next door, a 450-pound Siberian tiger could barely stretch out in its pigeonhole of a cage. Other enclosures held bobcats and leopards and servals; all thin and neglected, and all for sale. In Florida it was deemed a right to own whatever animal one desired, be it a lion, an elephant, or a zebra—any or all of which could be purchased right here in the exotic wildlife capital of the world.
    A vulture landed nearby to pick at a rotting chicken carcass that one of the mangy cougars had refused to eat. I turned away from the pathetic menagerie and checked out the squalid mobile homes that lay spread out before me. The music of Guns N’ Roses was cranked up and pumping through the thin, metal walls of the first trailer, making it a sure bet to contain Willy. I climbed the cinder-block steps and wrenched open the aluminum door.
    The stench nearly rocked me off my feet: a reeking brew of heat, body odor, rotten food, and mildew. Empty beer bottles littered the floor next to a cardboard box that contained remnants of fossilized pizza. A pile of laundry, midway through the process of fermenting, sat in a corner with a discolored jockstrap perched on top. Heaps of garbage overflowed from overturned paper bags, smoldering in an experimental indoor compost heap. Just one quick glance made the cages outside look pretty good.
    Willy Weed stood dead center in among the debris, his greasy strands of hair half in and half out of a half-assed ponytail, a joint hanging from his lips. The tattoo on his bare chest swam in a pool of sweat as he went through the motions of completing a bicep curl, a twenty-five-pound weight barely gripped in his hand. His jeans hung well below a pair of bony hips, making it obvious he didn’t bother with the usual formality of underwear.
    Willy mumbled something that I couldn’t understand, his eyes glazed over in a stoned-out state of nirvana. I didn’t bother trying to yell above the deafening wail of music. I just beelined to the nearest electrical socket, where I euthanized Guns N’ Roses.
    “Now, what was it that you said?” I asked, enjoying the sweet sound of silence.
    Willy guffawed, nearly swallowing his joint. “I said, hey, Porter. Wanna join me in a toke?”
    Down-home hospitality, crackerjack style.
    “No, thanks, Willy. I think I’ll pass.”
    Weed gazed at me through half-closed lids, his bicep twitching as the twenty-five-pound weight struggled to make liftoff. “That’s the trouble with you uptight Northern girls. You don’t know how to have yourselves a