1
We moved to Florida during Christmas vacation. A week later, I heard the frightening howls in the swamp for the first time.
Night after night, the howls made me sit up in bed. I would hold my breath and wrap my arms around myself to keep from shivering.
I would stare out my bedroom window at the chalk-colored full moon. And I would listen.
What kind of creature makes such a cry? I would ask myself.
And how close is it? Why does it sound as if it’s right outside my window?
The wails rose and fell like police car sirens. They weren’t sad or mournful. They were menacing.
Angry.
They sounded to me like a warning. Stay out of the swamp. You do not belong here.
When my family first moved to Florida, to our new house at the edge of the swamp, I couldn’t wait to explore. I stood in the back yard with the binoculars my dad had given me for my twelfth birthday and gazed toward the swamp.
Trees with slender, white trunks tilted over each other. Their flat, broad leaves appeared to form a roof, covering the swamp floor in blue shadow.
Behind me, the deer paced uneasily in their wire-mesh pen. I could hear them pawing the soft, sandy ground, rubbing their antlers against the walls of their pen.
Lowering my binoculars, I turned to look at them. The deer were the reason we had moved to Florida.
You see, my dad, Michael F. Tucker, is a scientist. He works for the University of Vermont in Burlington, which, believe me, is a long way from the Florida swamps!
Dad got these six deer from some country in South America. They’re called swamp deer. They’re not like regular deer. I mean, they don’t look like Bambi. For one thing, their fur is very red, not brown. And their hooves are really big and kind of webbed. For walking on wet, swampy ground, I guess.
Dad wants to see if these South American swamp deer can survive in Florida. He plans to put little radio transmitters on them, and set them free in the swamp. Then he’ll study how they get along.
When he told us back in Burlington that we were moving to Florida because of the deer, we all totally freaked. We didn’t want to move.
My sister, Emily, cried for days. She’s sixteen, and she didn’t want to miss her senior year in high school. I didn’t want to leave my friends, either.
But Dad quickly got Mom on his side. Mom is a scientist, too. She and Dad work together on a lot of projects. So, of course, she agreed with him.
And the two of them tried to persuade Emily and me that this was the chance of a lifetime, that it was going to be really exciting. An adventure we’d never forget.
So here we were, living in a little white house in a neighborhood of four or five other little white houses. We had six weird-looking red deer penned up behind the house. The hot Florida sun was beaming down. And an endless swamp stretched beyond our flat, grassy back yard.
I turned away from the deer and raised the binoculars to my face. “Oh,” I cried out as two dark eyes seemed to be staring back at me.
I pulled the binoculars away and squinted toward the swamp. In the near distance I saw a large white bird on two long, spindly legs.
“It’s a crane,” Emily said. I hadn’t realized Emily had stepped up beside me. She was wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt and short red denim shorts. My sister is tall and thin and very blonde. She looks a lot like a crane.
The bird turned and began high-stepping toward the swamp.
“Let’s follow it,” I said.
Emily made her pouting face, an expression we’d all seen a lot of since moving down here. “No way. It’s too hot.”
“Aw, come on.” I tugged her skinny arm. “Let’s do some exploring, check out the swamp.”
She shook her head, her white-blonde ponytail swinging behind her. “I really don’t want to, Grady.” She adjusted her sunglasses on her nose. “I’m kind of waiting for the mail.”
Since we’re so far from the nearest post office, we only get mail two times a week. Emily had been
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