The Tortoise and the Scare

  GUESS WHO?

  Nancy Drew stood in front of her science class with an index card in her hand. Her best friends, George Fayne and Bess Marvin, were sitting in the back row. She stared down at the card, wanting to give everyone a clue that was good, but not too good. She didn’t want them to guess the answer right away.

  “I’m tiny . . . ,” she said. “And I have spines and short legs.”

  “Hmmm . . . ,” Mrs. Pak, their teacher, murmured. She glanced around the classroom. “What could she be? Does anyone have any ideas?”

  Jamal Jones’s hand shot up in the air. He always got straight As and had guessed the last two correct answers. Nancy held her breath, wondering if he’d get it right.

  “Are you a porcupine?” he asked.

  “You’re so close!” Nancy gave another clue, and she was sure he’d get it right this time. “I can roll up into a ball if I’m scared. . . .”

  “Oh! You’re a hedgehog!” Jamal cried.

  “Very good!” Mrs. Pak said, taking the card from Nancy. It had HEDGEHOG written on it in block letters. “This class is going to be so prepared for our field trip tomorrow. I’m sure all the guides at the River Heights Wildlife Center will be impressed.”

  Nancy took her seat next to her friends. Bess’s long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail as she leaned over her book. The World’s Most Exotic Animals was open to the page about servals. The spotted cat looked like a cheetah with bunny ears. “Their ears are so cute,” Bess said, pointing to the pictures. “They’re so much bigger than their heads! I hope we get to see one tomorrow.”

  “I want to see a ball python,” George said.

  “Those are terrifying!” Bess whispered.

  George and Bess were cousins, but they couldn’t have been more different. George had short brown hair and brown eyes, was athletic, and was not easily scared. Bess always feared the worst would happen, and Nancy had only ever seen her play sports in gym class. Together the three of them made up the Clue Crew. They worked together solving mysteries around River Heights. They’d even recovered a telescope that had been stolen from a local museum.

  Harry and Liam McCormick went to the front of the class. They were identical twins, with orange hair and freckles, and they liked doing presentations together whenever Mrs. Pak would let them. They’d just moved to River Heights in September, and were obsessed with Antonio Elefano, the biggest prankster in Nancy’s grade. The twins were constantly doing things to try to impress him. Just the week before they’d climbed thirty feet up a tree trying to get his attention.

  “Ummm . . . we’re red,” Liam said, staring at his card. “I mean I’m red.”

  “And we have giant wings!” Harry added.

  Nancy thought they might be parrots . . . maybe sun conures, but that seemed too obvious. They’d been studying so many exotic animals that she sometimes got them mixed up. Was it possible they were scarlet macaws?

  “I don’t think we are red . . . ,” Harry said quietly to his brother. “Aren’t we blue?”

  Mrs. Pak leaned over their shoulders to get a better view of their cards. “I think you’re red and blue. And maybe a few other colors too.”

  “We’re very colorful,” Liam agreed.

  George raised her hand. “You’re a scarlet macaw.”

  “That’s right! She’s right,” Liam said. He seemed excited that someone had guessed the correct answer, even though they were a bit confused about which bird the macaw was.

  Mrs. Pak moved on to the next lesson, pulling up a video of a three-toed sloth on the screen in front of the class. The furry creature was swimming. As the rest of the class watched it paddle through the water, Nancy leaned over to her friends.

  “Tomorrow is going to be a perfect day,” she said. “There’s supposed to be this cool courtyard at the wildlife center with a crazy playground and a hedge maze. And there’s a gift shop where you can buy stuffed animals or these pens with floating parrots in them.”

  “Someone said they actually put the python around your neck,” George whispered. “You can hold them!”

  “George!” Nancy and Bess practically screamed. Then they broke into laughter, thinking of George with a giant snake hanging over her shoulders. Sometimes the things that totally creeped them out were the same things George loved.

  “I don’t think we’ve been somewhere this fun since . . . ,” Bess trailed off, her eyes wide.

  “Maybe ever,” George added.

  Nancy smiled, knowing it was true. The River Heights Wildlife Center was going to be their biggest adventure yet.

  THE GREAT ESCAPE

  “You must be Mrs. Pak, and I’m guessing these are your exceptional science students!” A woman with curly black hair bounded down the front steps of the wildlife center. She was wearing khaki from head to toe—khaki shorts, a khaki shirt, and even khaki-colored socks. Her name tag read BELINDA.

  “They are,” Mrs. Pak said cheerfully. “We’ve been so excited to visit.”

  “Well, come on in.” The woman waved each of them inside one by one. “I’m Belinda, and I’m the founder of the River Heights Wildlife Center. I’ll be taking care of you today. Before we get started, I wanted to tell you a little bit about the place, and you can meet the wonderful staff that makes magic happen around here.”

  Nancy followed Bess and George inside the center, which was a single-story building with a beautiful courtyard garden in the middle of it. There were already two other school groups there. The huge playground was crowded with kids and a group of moms with strollers. Nancy could hear animal noises echoing down the corridor. To the side of the playground was the hedge maze that Nancy had read about online. Two men in khaki uniforms were standing by the café and picnic tables.

  “Come, sit down!” Belinda said, waving for the class to find spots at the picnic tables. “I want to tell you a little bit about what brought me here to the River Heights Wildlife Center.”

  Nancy and her friends sat on the bench closest to Belinda. She seemed like she was much younger than Nancy’s parents. She had funny pins all over the front of her shirt. One said TOUCAN PLAY THAT GAME and had a cartoon drawing of a toucan. Another said TOADALLY and had an annoyed-looking toad on it.

  “I’m so happy you all could come visit today, because helping animals has become my life’s passion,” Belinda said. “I started rescuing abandoned and injured animals when I was just a teenager. I worked in a bird sanctuary after college, and then I came here to create the River Heights Wildlife Center.”

  “Are all of your animals injured?” Lily Almond, a girl with long black pigtails, asked. She was the biggest animal lover in class. Nancy had been to her house once for a school project and met her two hamsters, one bunny, three dogs, and her twenty-pound cat, Otis.

  “Most of them were when they came in here,” Belinda answered. “All of them needed our help. Sometimes people buy animals and they don’t know what to do with them. Like our flying squirrel, Bean. Someone bought him online and didn’t like how much time and effort it took to take care of him. Or our wolf, Moonrise. People actually thought he was a dog, so they brought him home, and he was trouble . . . big trouble. He tore apart two couches and ate a hole in their door.”

  “We learned a lot about wolves,” Jamal said excitedly.

  “Yes, Mrs. Pak told me all about the lessons you’ve been doing lately.” Belinda looked genuinely interested. “Do you know the difference between a wolf and a dog?”

  “Wolves have fur on their bellies, and amber-colored eyes,” Jamal said.

  “And their ears stick straight up!” Lily chimed in.

  “That’s right,” Belinda said. “We’ll talk more above wolves and snakes and birds, but firs
t I want to introduce you all to the wonderful staff here. Because we use so much of our donations to rescue and take care of our wildlife, many people who work here are volunteers. Bob has been volunteering the longest, for five years now.”

  A man with frizzy white hair stepped forward. He looked like he could have been someone’s grandpa. “After I retired I thought it might be a fun thing to do. And I was right! I work with all the wildlife here, but I really love the capuchin monkeys. The kinkajou, too.”

  “The kinkajou . . . ?” Bess whispered to Nancy. Her brows furrowed.

  Nancy remembered them from one of their textbooks, even though they didn’t spend a lot of time talking about them. “It’s like a tiny raccoon, but it’s honey-colored instead of gray. And it lives in trees.”

  The other man stepped forward after Belinda was done talking about Bob. He had long blond hair that came down to his shoulders. He wore rings on three of his fingers, and had a goatee.

  “And this is Ocean,” Belinda said, introducing him. “And yes—before you ask, that is his real name.”

  “She tells the truth!” Ocean laughed. “My parents were hippies. I grew up on a farm in California and I’ve always loved wildlife, especially reptiles. I have a California king snake named Steven and a tortoise named Bette. They’re two of my best friends.”

  “A California king,” George said to no one in particular. “Very cool.”

  “You’ll meet Lisa in the gift shop, and Miles is coming in later,” Belinda said. “Now let’s start our tour, shall we? There are so many wonderful creatures here and so little time.”

  “Do you have pets?” Bess asked Belinda.

  “I have two chinchillas at home,” Belinda said as she led the group back into the building. “I’d love to have more pets, but I take care of so many animals here, it feels like I already do. Now, where should we start . . . ?” She looked down the right hallway, then down the left. “Are you ready to meet Rainbow?”

  The class cheered in response. Belinda led them to a huge enclosure with sand and shrubs in it, and fresh produce scattered everywhere. A short wood fence surrounded the perimeter.

  “It looks like a cabbage exploded,” Nancy whispered to Bess. “What’s in there?”

  “Okay everybody, find a space along the outside of the fence to look for Rainbow. She might be hard to spot at first, but look closely,” Belinda directed. She waited, watching the class’s faces.

  Everyone lined up along the fence and peered into the enclosure.

  “I see her,” Lily said. Then a few more kids agreed.

  Nancy narrowed her eyes and finally saw a large tortoise behind a shrub. She was all the way in the back of the habitat. Her shell was brown and dark green, so she blended in with the sand and leaves around her.

  “Rainbow will always have a very special place in my heart,” Belinda said, staring at the tortoise. “She was my very first rescue here at the wildlife center. An older woman had her as a pet, but when she moved she just left Rainbow in her yard with a rotting pile of vegetables. The new owners found her and, well, they called me.”

  Nancy stared down at the tortoise. She felt really sad for the animal. She had to admit, it was awful that someone had just left Rainbow there all alone. What would have happened if no one found her?

  “On the day I went and got her,” Belinda went on, “there was the most spectacular rainbow in the sky.”

  “And that’s how she got her name,” Mrs. Pak said. She smiled, even though that part was a little obvious. It was clear Mrs. Pak loved each one of Belinda’s stories.

  “Desert tortoises can be between a half pound and eleven pounds, and our Rainbow is right smack in the middle,” Belinda said. “She weighs just six pounds. But what she lacks in size she makes up for in personality!”

  Belinda talked about how the tortoise was the longest-living animal in the world. Desert tortoises could live between fifty and eighty years, but other species could live up to one hundred and fifty years. There was even one tortoise who’d lived to two hundred and fifty years old. His name was Adwaita and he spent most of his life in a zoo in India.

  Then Belinda described the tortoise shell and how it is really two connected parts. Everyone in Nancy’s class loved that, because then they got to tell her everything they’d learned about tortoises over the past few weeks. Lily and Bess were shouting out answers to different questions. Bess told the whole class how desert tortoises regulate their body temperature by staying in burrows and under rocks when it’s really hot outside.

  “What do you think we’ll see next?” George whispered, when they finally left Rainbow’s enclosure and turned the corner down the great hall. Another school group was in the theater watching a short film about servals, and Nancy could tell Bess was a little jealous.

  “I heard they have an alligator here,” George told them.

  “No way . . .” Bess suddenly looked a little scared.

  The next habitat they went to wasn’t open like Rainbow’s. Instead, it was an enclosure with wire mesh covering all sides. It had sand and some big rocks in the back. In the corner there was a small cave that looked like it was made out of plastic.

  “This is where Mo lives,” Belinda said. “Mo . . . where are you? Come out, come out!” She pulled a treat from her pocket and stepped inside, closing the gate behind her. Within a few seconds a tiny red fox came out from the rocks and snatched the treat from her hand. Then it ran away.

  “Did you see him? He was adorable!” Mrs. Pak laughed. Nancy had noticed how much of an animal lover Mrs. Pak was. She was always in such a good mood when she was teaching them their wildlife unit. She seemed to especially love monkeys and sloths.

  Belinda told them all about the tiny kit fox and how it lived in the desert. It hid from its predators in bushes and shrubs, and ate rodents for food. When they were done, they went to the next habitat and saw two ferrets. Nancy thought they looked a little like rats, but George seemed to really like them.

  “They’re kind of funny,” George whispered.

  “Now I have a special surprise for you,” Belinda said, turning a corner to another habitat. It was open and had a giant tree in the middle, with branches that touched the ceiling. She disappeared into a back room and came out with a furry baby clinging to her arm. “I want you to meet Peanut!”

  “Is that a sloth?” Bess asked. “A baby sloth?”

  Nancy hadn’t seen Mrs. Pak so happy since their class had won first place in the River Heights Science Olympics. Both her hands were covering her mouth.

  “Come on in,” Belinda said, waving the class inside. “This is one of our interactive habitats. Who would like to hold Peanut first? Just be very gentle with her, she scares easily.”

  Jamal’s hand shot into the air. Belinda laid the tiny sloth down across his chest, and he held on to Peanut with both hands.

  Nancy and her friends crowded around the furry sloth. Its eyes were half closed, like it might fall asleep at any moment. It had a long snout, and each of its paws had three long claws on them.

  “Peanut was born here in our wildlife center,” Belinda said. “Her mom, Luna, came in when she was just about to give birth. We like to think of her as the baby of our quirky family, because we have so few of those around here. Most of our animals are much older.”

  “Doesn’t algae grow on sloth’s fur?” Jamal asked, remembering the fact from one of Mrs. Pak’s lessons. He never took his eyes off the tiny creature in his arms.

  “It does! What a great bit of knowledge,” Belinda said. “Most sloths are from Costa Rica, and algae can grow on their fur because of the humidity there. They hang upside down in trees, and because of that green algae, they look more like a bundle of leaves than an animal. It’s the perfect camouflage.”

  Nancy turned around to say something to Bess, and that’s when she noticed the other wildlife volunteer standing in the hall. It was Bob, the older man with white hair. He looked like he was trying to get Belinda’s attention, but
now she was moving the sloth into Lily’s arms. She started talking to Lily about how sloths were great swimmers.

  After a few minutes, Belinda finally noticed him and handed Peanut to Mrs. Pak. “Would you mind watching the little guys while I’m gone?”

  Mrs. Pak laughed. “Mind? I’d be delighted!” She took Peanut into her arms.

  Belinda walked outside the habitat to meet Bob, and the two of them walked down the hall. Nancy stepped away from the group but she still couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  “He looks really worried,” Bess whispered. “What do you think it’s about?”

  Nancy watched them from the edge of the sloth habitat. Bob kept wringing his hands together. The rest of the class was chatting about sloths and Costa Rica, but after a few minutes they seemed to realize something was wrong too. A few of the kids stepped out of the habitat to see where Belinda went.

  “What’s wrong?” Mrs. Pak asked, when Belinda finally came back. Belinda was rubbing her forehead with her fingers, like she had a bad headache. Peanut, the baby sloth, was still curled around Mrs. Pak’s hand.

  “It’s Rainbow,” Belinda said, her voice uneven. “She’s missing!”

  AN UNLIKELY SUSPECT

  Belinda put Peanut back and ushered the class out of the sloth exhibit.

  “Okay, guys, quick detour,” she said. “We’re going back to Rainbow’s enclosure to see if we can find where’s she hiding.” Belinda smiled and put them all at ease. Rainbow wasn’t lost, they just had to find her!

  Everyone lined up single file and followed Belinda and Bob back to the tortoise exhibit in the Reptile Hall. Tortoises are so slow, Nancy thought, so there’s no way Rainbow could have escaped.

  “Okay, guys. Everyone line up around the enclosure just like last time,” Belinda told them. “Look around and see if you can find her again!”

  “She was right there!” Bob said, once they had all found a place around the fence. He pointed to a spot on the ground. “She was eating a carrot when I last saw her. That couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty minutes ago.” Bob was a lot less calm than Belinda.