Gator on the Loose! Read Free Page A

After a few kicks, he was able to dive down and swim underwater all the way to the deep end.
    Daddy looked back over at Keisha.
    “FTC,” they said at the very same time.
    “FTC” stood for “Failure to Communicate.” When you worked with scared or injured wildlife, you needed to stay calm and have a good plan. Failure to communicatewas one of the Carter family’s biggest problems,
especially
when Grandma was in on the rescue operation.
    Mr. Ramsey had rushed out to Grandma. He helped her back to the pool office by holding on to her arm—very OL—and was looking over his shoulder as if some monster had just jumped into the pool and not a poor scared alligator that was barely the size of the rescue tube.
    “Looks like it will be Plan B,” Daddy said as he leaned back against the fence and crossed his arms, which made his waders squeak impressively. “Remind me again about Plan B?”
    “The problem with catching him is that alligators can see all the way around their head … and they can feel when anything enters or leaves the water.”
    Daddy crossed his arms the other way. “Goodness, this sounds like something the United States Army would be interested in.”
    “Hmmm.” What Keisha wanted was to jump over the fence and get into the action herself. She was small enough to lie on the diving board and not let a shadow fall onto the pool. But she took one look at Daddy all covered up and decided not to even ask.
    “They don’t have big lungs, so they can’t move fast for long. You could chase him around the pool until he gets ti—”
    Keisha stopped. “What was that?” An alligator’s eyes were peering at her from the deep end of the pool. He was swishing his tail back and forth in the water!
    She took Razi’s hand and pointed.
    “He’s trying to get warm,” Keisha told Razi. She looked at the dark tarp absorbing sun on the pool deck, where Daddy had let it fall in a pile.
    “I think he knows he has to get out of the water, Daddy. If you go throw the tarp over that play alligator, he might want to hide underneath it.”
    Grandma was back on the pool deck waving the pole with the net attached, the one they used to skim off the leaves and bugs from the surface of the water.
    That gave Keisha another idea. “Maybe we should get a bigger alligator to scare the little one!”
    Daddy looked at Keisha over his shoulder. “Say
what?
Don’t you think one alligator in the city pool is enough?”
    “It doesn’t have to be a real alligator. The little one just has to think so.”
    It took Daddy a minute to warm up to Keisha’s idea, but then it must have clicked because he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled in the direction of Grandma: “Mom! CFC.”
    “CFC” stood for “Carter Family Conference.” Most times when the Carters had a Failure to Communicate,they needed to follow it up with a Carter Family Conference.
    Daddy grabbed the tarp and took it over by the fiberglass alligator. He tossed the tarp over it and tucked all the loose ends under. Keisha wondered if such a place would look warm and safe—like a hole on the riverbank—to a little alligator.
    Grandma let her net drop to her side and put her hand on her hip. Keeping close to the fence, Daddy walked around and whispered a few things into her ear. Grandma whispered back and disappeared into Mr. Ramsey’s office.
    The next thing Keisha knew, Justin was taking the spine board off the wall and he and Mr. Ramsey were carrying it through the pool office.
    Razi tugged on Keisha’s arm. In all the excitement, she’d forgotten about her little brother.
    “What are they doing now, Key?”
    “I’m not sure. Let’s watch.”
    Razi grabbed hold of the fence and started reciting one of their hand-clapping rhymes: “In came the doctor, in came the nurse, in came the lady with the alligator purse.”
    “Razi, not so loud. We want the alligator to come back by us. Shhh … look.”
    Justin and Mr. Ramsey trotted past them, just insidethe