Pink Boots and a Machete Read Free Page A

strangled the doctor with my giant basketball hands.
    Fact is, it’s not uncommon to find me surrounded by a wild troop of chimpanzees, or waist deep in a swamp with thousands of hovering sweat bees buzzing inside my ears, or with worms living in my feet, or carrying a parasite load so heavy a doctor was once prompted to ask if I lick the insides of toilets. That is how the media labels “the female IndianaJones” and “the real-life Lara Croft” were born. But while it might be an easy thing to give me a catchy label, “simple” would not describe my journey here.
    As the sheltered daughter of Cuban immigrants, I was expected to become a nurse or a schoolteacher, something respectable and conducive to marriage and children, like my “normal” cousins. For years, on school career day, I flaunted a little white nurse’s uniform that my grandmother made until one year I rebelled and announced that I wanted to be a ninja. This, you need to understand, was a very bold move on my part. All the women in my family were nurses or homemakers, and I was already showing signs of becoming a black sheep.
    A tight-knit family with little means, we never ventured very far. Miami was my universe, and New Jersey, where most of my cousins lived, was as foreign and exotic as it got. A trip to New Jersey might as well have required a passport, as far as I was concerned. The world, to me, seemed small and uniform except for some differences in weather conditions. Summer vacations consisted of a four-hour car ride to Disney World, with landfills along the way the only mountains I’d see for many years to come. Truth be told, the only time I visited a foreign country as a nonadult was at Epcot. To this day, I have to remind myself that China isn’t really next to Norway.
    In my mom’s efforts to show me the world beyond my driveway, we took frequent trips to the zoo, where I was mesmerized by the variety of creatures and the re-creations of their jungle environments. I pictured myself living in mocked-up rain forests, and that, I truly believe, is where my loveaffair with nature began.
    At four years old, I frequently rearranged my dining room into a “jungle,” lining up the chairs into a makeshift canoe and warning my mother to watch out for the swarming crocodiles. I was also freakishly good at climbing trees and may have even then felt a strong affinity with monkeys. My backyard—particularly the enormous mango tree, which provided excellent climbing and the opportunity to see some wildlife—became a place of refuge. Birds loved it, insects were bountiful, and the occasional Cuban anole lizard made for hours-long entertainment.
    Little Havana was that homogenous—even the reptiles were Cuban. The long, slender tail of the tiny anole (which makes up about half its length) breaks off at the slightest pressure and continues to wiggle on the ground, distracting would-be predators. At six, that predator was me. I spent countless hours observing and collecting lizards. Mostly, I observed them from afar, but if I needed a closer look, I took a long stem and tied the end into a loop, creating a noose, a skill I would have perfected, I’m sure, if I had been allowed to join the Girl Scouts. I would sneak up behind an unsuspecting lizard and slip the noose around its neck, pulling ever so gently, so that I wouldn’t choke it, but I did accidentally break the tail off one of my hostage lizards. I became entranced by that left-behind tail, unattached but still moving. After that, you would have been hard pressed to find a lizard with a tail within a five-block radius of my house.
    Don’t get me wrong: I never killed a lizard. But I admitto mutilating the tails of five or six. Not to worry, however; the lizard’s tail grows back over several weeks to once again serve as a quick getaway aid.
    Another striking feature of the anole is its dewlap, or throat fan. It is