Free The Secret of the Swamp King by Jonathan Rogers

head feelers at them and kind of growled.
    â€œFor awhile there,” Floyd continued, “the sweat bees worked out a partnership with the lightning bugs. After the bumbles went to bed, the lightning bugs would light the way for the sweat bees to do their nectaring at night. They went halves on the honey.
    â€œBut that didn’t last very long after the lightning bugs realized they didn’t even like honey. Meantime, the sweat bees had got so grouchy from lack of sleep that they couldn’t get along with their own selves, much less with the lightning bugs.
    â€œWell, sir, the Lord looked down and had pity on the poor sweat bees. He caused a new bush to grow in the swamp. It had tiny little yellow flowers. Next morning when the bumbles went zooming off, they saw the new yellow flowers, and they thought they looked mighty toothsome. But the big bumblebees were too fat and broad to get at the nectar. They bumped and wiggled and growled and buzzed, but they couldn’t get no more than their head feelers inside the little yellow flowers.
    â€œBut the little sweat bees, it was like they was made for the new flower and the flower for them. They’d march right into the front parlor and suck out the sweetest drop of nectar they ever tasted. The sweat bees were so happy to have a bush of their own, they made up a little song:
    Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah,
    Here’s the bush for me.
    Bumble grumble,
    Roll and tumble,
    You won’t get a drop or crumble.
    Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah,
    Here’s the bush for me.
    â€œAnd ever since,” concluded Floyd, “that yellow-flowered bush has been called the hoorah bush.”
    Aidan snapped off a sprig of hoorah bush and stuck it in Floyd’s hair. “Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah!” he sang.
    They were walking up a low sand hill now, and when they reached the top they could see a little more of the surrounding terrain. As Massey scanned the treetops, his face softened with relief and recognition; he was obviously getting his bearings. He pointed at a stand of tall cypresses that rose above the surrounding scrubby oaks. “There’s Bullbat Bay,” he announced. “We can’t be more than a half league from the trail.”
    â€œThat’s Bullbat, all right,” Floyd agreed. “Look at them big nests.”
    There were dozens of great stick nests in the treetops. Aidan could see it was a rookery for big birds of some sort. A buzzard came sailing into one of the treetops, then another. “Is it a buzzard rookery?” asked Aidan.
    â€œNo, not a buzzard rookery,” answered Massey. He shot a narrow-eyed look of concern at Floyd. “It’s an egret rookery.”
    When a trio of raucous crows came flapping and croaking from one of the nests, Massey and Floyd took off toward the bay. Aidan had to step quick to keep up with the hunters, who walked with long strides andswinging arms as if drawn to the big cypress stand, even though they dreaded what they expected to find there.
    Well before they reached Bullbat Bay, they were hit with a stench that lay over the place like a fog. The high whine of swarming bluebottle flies announced this was a place of death and corruption. When they got to the bay, they found the floor littered with the white carcasses of egrets. Dozens of the dead birds hung tangled in the bushes, lay contorted on the spongy ground, or floated where the water pooled. Their heads, backs, and breasts had been stripped of the long showy plumes that had been their glory. There was nothing glorious about this rookery now, where the magnificent white birds returned to the black muck.
    Even more gruesome was the scene in the treetops. Squawking egret chicks sat helpless and unprotected in their stick nests. They stretched out their pink beaks, desperate for a meal that would never come. The crows and buzzards that lit on their nests came not to feed the chicks but to feed themselves. A single egret mother stood in a