Free Otter Under Fire by Dakota Rose Royce Page A

to keep all the wild animals away from the house…”
    “But I loved the squirrels. I thought they were so cute,” Carole said.
    “So we figured out a way to make peace with them,” Leonard said. “And it’s worked out pretty well so far. They do have natural predators, of course, we don’t interfere with that. They aren’t pets and it keeps us from being up to our necks in the critters. ”
    “We love watching them in the morning while we are having breakfast,” Carole said.
    Tempest looked at the sketch cover of the book: “Living and Thriving with Wildlife—How to Make Peace with Squirrels”
    It had a picture of their home surrounded by trees with the special squirrel toys in them.
    “But…” Tempest prompted.
    “Well every family has one or two idiots in every generation. No matter the opportunities, no matter how comfortable they are.” Leonard elaborated.
    “Sometimes it would skip a generation,” Carole added. “But inevitably there would be destruction of property and nothing we could do would stop it.”
    “You saw my car out there?” Leonard asked. Tempest nodded. “I love that car. I would go out and the rubber would be pulled off of it, or the paint would be scratched. Then I knew I had to take action because we had another one.”
    “It was getting quite frustrating,” Carol said.
    “I made special traps and trip wires to spook them,” Leonard said, “But you just can’t fight total stupidity.”
    “We gave them plenty of fair warning,” Carole said primly.
    “So now we get to the second part of the book,” Leonard said, “the alternatives.”
    Tempest was not sure she wanted to pursue this line of discussion. “What alternatives are you talking about?”
    “Mainly wild game,” Leonard said. “With all this green living, many people are turning to wild game or grass fed beef. It’s a lot drier than what most folks are used to. So even though the recipes are written with squirrel in mind, the meat can be substituted for organic beef or pork. I talk about it at length in the first part of that section.”
    “So your book about living with squirrels is also about eating them?” Tempest asked.
    “Only the stupid ones,” Leonard explained. “It’s a lot like culling the herd. Listen, I was raised in Alabama and we regularly hunted and ate squirrel and game. Many people do.”
    Tempest shuffled some more pages and pictures. It was then she saw the carefully drawn title page for the second section of the book with the title scripted over a picture of the two of them standing in front of the aforementioned Mercedes. It read:
    “The Recipes: When the Little Assholes Won’t Stay off Your Car”
    Greg, the IT guy brought a box into Otter’s office and set it on the floor.
    “What’s this?”
    “The boss said you were to get everything in Clark’s office that wasn’t personal.”
    “What am I supposed to do with it?”
    He shrugged. “You’re supposed to figure it out. I’m just the messenger. I hooked your system up with his last night and gave you his computer.” Greg reached past her and tapped a few keys on her keyboard. “If you want to access his files, you just click on this icon. It will take you to what he was working on.”
    “I have some of his e-mails?”
    “Only the last couple of days, in case there is something important in there. If you need to see a whole thread, let me know and I’ll get it for you.”
    “OK, thanks, I think.”
    “Just part of our four star service,” He grinned. “So what do you think of your new job?”
    “I think I’m going to be very busy.”
    “Yeah, like you were lounging around here before.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Did you know that four different people stormed into Michael’s office demanding this computer?”
    “I figured other people would want it. It’s the newest we have.”
    “One of them was Defray.”
    “Of course it was. He was livid when Clark got it in the first place. He thought