Carl Hiaasen by Nature Girl Page A

it’s just for a few days.”
    “Mom, chill, okay? It won’t be a problem.”
    When the local news came on, Honey sat down beside her son to watch. The lead story was about a red tide that had killed thousands of fish, the majority of which had inconsiderately washed up to rot on the public beach in Fort Myers. The tourists were apoplectic, while the Chamber of Commerce had been scrambled to Defcon Three crisis mode. A video clip showed acres of bloated fish carcasses on the sand, pallid beachcombers fleeing with towels pressed to their noses.
    “Look, it’s the seafood festival from hell!” Fry said.
    His mother frowned. “That’s not funny, young man. We’re poisoning the whole blessed planet, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
    Fry didn’t want to get her fired up, so he said nothing.
    The last story on the TV news was about a missing Wisconsin salesman named Jeter Wilson. After a night of partying at the Hard Rock Casino, he’d announced that he was driving alone to the Seminole reservation in the Big Cypress Swamp. Wilson’s family back in Milwaukee hadn’t heard from him in days, and it was feared that he’d dozed off and run his rental car into the canal somewhere along Alligator Alley. A search was under way, and in the meantime the Hard Rock had provided a photograph of the missing man, taken at the hotel bar. In the picture, Jeter Wilson’s ample lap was occupied by a full-lipped woman wearing a blue-sequined halter, whom the TV reporter identified as a “local part-time masseuse.”
    Fry said, “What kind of a touron would go straight from the casino to an Indian reservation?”
    “He’s a salesman,” Honey Santana said. “He probably wanted to sell them something—like we haven’t done enough harm to those poor Seminoles.”
    “Poor? They’re rakin’ it in big-time off the gambling.”
    Honey thumped her son on the head and ordered him to go Google the name Osceola and write a four-hundred-word essay about what he learned. Then she changed into some cutoff jeans and went outside to wait for the mosquitoes.
    She was conducting an experiment based on information supplied by the night cashier at the Circle K, an amiable older gentleman who’d grown up in Goodland. When Honey had told him of her upcoming ecotour, the man had advised her to pack plenty of bug repellent in case the wind died and the temperature got warm, which could happen even in the heart of winter. He’d also counseled her to stop shaving her legs, explaining that hair follicles served as a natural obstacle to the hungry insects.
    Honey had never heard this theory. Being somewhat vain about her legs, which often drew whistles when she jogged along the causeway, she was reluctant to relax her grooming habits. Moreover, it was possible that the guy at the Circle K was conning her, and that he was just some crusty old degenerate who had a thing for hairy women.
    Still, Honey couldn’t summarily discount his advice. She’d listened to enough lore about the ferocity of Everglades mosquitoes to desire every possible advantage when kayaking through the Ten Thousand Islands with Boyd Shreave.
    So as a scientific test she’d decided to let the hair on her right leg grow, and to observe the buggy response. She sat barefoot on the steps of the double-wide and wiggled her toes enticingly. On a yellow legal pad she noted that it was dusk and dead calm, and that the air temperature was a mild seventy-one degrees. The middle bars of a Tom Petty song, “Breakdown,” kept cycling through her head, although she didn’t write that in the bug journal.
    The first mosquito showed up at 6:06 p.m. and alighted on Honey’s left knee, where she swatted it dead. Soon a second one arrived, and then a full airborne battalion. By the time Fry emerged with his essay from the trailer, Honey’s tan legs were covered with black-and-red smudges.
    His face pinched with worry, Fry peered at his mother in the light from the open doorway. Eagerly she told