Salamander Rescue Read online

  Salamander

  Rescue

  Pamela McDowell

  illustrated by Kasia Charko

  O R C A B O O K P U B L I S H E R S

  Text copyright © 2016 Pamela McDowell

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 Kasia Charko

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McDowell, Pamela, author

  Salamander rescue / Pamela McDowell ; illustrated by Kasia Charko.

  (Orca echoes)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1123-2 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1124-9 (pdf).—

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1125-6 (epub)

  1. Salamanders—Juvenile fiction. I. Charko, Kasia, 1949-, illustrator

  II. Title. III. Series: Orca echoes

  PS8625.D785S25 2016 jc813'.6 C2015-904534-7

  C2015-904535-5

  First published in the United States, 2016

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015944562

  Summary: In this early chapter book set in Waterton Lakes National Park, Cricket and her friends help a herd of long-toed salamanders safely migrate across the road to Crandell Mountain.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover artwork and interior illustrations by Kasia Charko

  Author photo by Ellen Gasser

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  19 18 17 16 • 4 3 2 1

  For Catherine and James—stay wild.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “Warden McKay?” The radio on the truck’s dashboard crackled. “There’s a bear jam on Crandell Mountain Road. Can you help? Over.”

  “Ten-four. How far down the road is the bear?”

  “It’s in the berry patch, two miles from the campground.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Warden McKay out.” He turned to his daughter, Cricket, sitting in the passenger seat. “I bet old Samson is posing for the tourists again. Are you ready for a little adventure, Cricket?”

  A bear jam could be a big problem. Tourists loved spotting all the wildlife in the national park. Deer and goats wandered through the village every day. Moose crashed through the campground. And a single bear beside the road could stop traffic for miles.

  Warden McKay slowed down when they turned onto Crandell Mountain Road. It was a skinny, rough road that twisted and turned through the hills. There were places for drivers to pull over to take pictures of the scenery. But in a bear jam, people parked anywhere—in the ditches, on the grass and even in the middle of the road!

  Sure enough, the road ahead was jammed with vehicles. Tourists leaned out of car windows and stood to look through sunroofs. Everyone had a camera in hand. Everyone was looking up the hill.

  Warden McKay turned on the truck’s big orange strobe lights and pulled far off the road to park. He hopped out before Cricket could undo her seat belt. He shook his head. “Promise me you’ll stay in the truck,” he said.

  “I can help, Dad. C’mon, I’ll be in fourth grade in a few weeks.”

  “Not this time. I can’t be worried about you while I try to get these people back into their cars.”

  Cricket sighed. As she sat in the truck, a little black bear cub tumbled out of the bushes beside the road. He stood up and looked at the crowd of people.

  “Everyone, please get back into your cars,” Warden McKay ordered, trying to get the traffic unsnarled. But the tourists kept snapping pictures.

  On the other side of the road, Cricket saw a large bush move. A long black nose poked out. Then a furry head with round ears. It was the mother bear!

  No one noticed as the large black bear walked across the ditch toward the cars. The bear spotted a boy leaning out of a car window. He had something in his hand and was calling to her. “Hey, bear, want some lunch?”

  “Don’t feed her!” Cricket yelled out of the truck window. “Roll up your window, quick!”

  The boy looked at Cricket in surprise. The bear stood up on her back legs. She sniffed the air and opened her mouth wide.

  The boy closed his window just in time. The mother bear leaned on the car with her front paws and peered in at him. She shook her head. Then she dropped back to the ground and walked around the car to her cub. Together they disappeared into the bushes.

  Cricket took a deep breath.

  “Good job, Cricket,” her dad called, giving her a thumbs-up. “Now, everyone get moving. Come on.”

  Chapter Two

  After dinner that night, Cricket told her best friend, Shilo, about the bear jam.

  “And he just stuck his hand out the window to feed the bear?” Shilo asked, shaking her head. “That’s crazy.” She walked along the top of Cricket’s backyard fence until she reached the big poplar tree. She grabbed a branch and swung up into the tree.

  “I bet I could jump onto Mr. Tanaka’s roof from here,” Shilo called down.

  “You’re crazy! That roof is so old, you’d end up in his living room!”

  Shilo laughed. The tree shook as she jumped from branch to branch on her way down to the ground.

  “Dad says the cat at the stable had her kittens. Do you want to go see?” Cricket asked.

  “Sure!”

  The girls jumped on their bikes and pedaled up the long hill on the only road out of the village. As they rounded a corner, they both stopped, surprised to see a woman crouching in the middle of the road. She had a bucket beside her. She lifted something from the road and placed it in the bucket.

  Shilo frowned at Cricket.

  “Not another wacky tourist,” Cricket whispered.

  “Remember the woman who picked dandelions for her tea?” Shilo asked, giggling.

  Cricket tried not to laugh. “Or the man who scooped elk poop and sold it as organic fertilizer?”

  The woman looked up and smiled at them. She wore a vest with lots of bulging pockets, and a ruler poked out of one of them.

  “Hello, girls,” she said. “It’s a nice night for a ride.”

  Cricket nodded, trying to look into the bucket. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m researching these little guys,” the woman said. Three tiny salamanders scurried at the bottom of the bucket. They were the size of Cricket’s pointer finger.

  “Those are long-toed salamanders!” Cricket exclaimed. “We read about them in Science last year.” The salamanders were dark green with yellow splotches and stripes on their backs. On each back foot, the fourth toe stuck out, extra long.

  “That’s right. I’m studying their migration from the lake to Crandell Mountain. My name is Dr. Pantillo, but you can call me Kate.”

  “Hi, Dr. Kate. I’m Cricket, and this is Shilo.”

  “Cricket? That’s an interesting name.”

  Shilo laughed. “Her real name is Jenna. Cricket’s just a nickname.”
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  “My grandpa called me Cricket a long time ago, when I collected crickets for a cricket zoo.”

  Dr. Kate smiled.

  “Salamanders are cool,” Shilo said. She liked slippery things, like toads and snakes.

  “Look, there’s another one over there,” Cricket said, pointing farther down the road.

  “Uh-oh, a seagull has spotted him,” Shilo said.

  “Hey!” Cricket shouted as the seagull hovered over the salamander.

  “He’s not your dinner!” Shilo yelled, waving her arms until the seagull took off.

  Dr. Kate hurried over, picked up the salamander and gently placed it in her bucket. The girls followed her across the road to the long grass at the foot of Crandell Mountain. A car with a canoe strapped on top went whizzing past them.

  “This road is really dangerous for an animal that small,” Cricket said.

  “Yeah, at least people slow down for a deer or a bear,” Shilo said. “But they can’t see salamanders on the road.”

  “That’s part of the problem for sure,” Dr. Kate said, digging a notebook and pen from one of her pockets.

  “Problem? What’s wrong with the salamanders?” Cricket asked.

  “There are only two species of salamander here in Alberta,” Dr. Kate said as she wrote something down. “They aren’t endangered or threatened, but Waterton’s population of long-toed salamanders is getting smaller every year.”

  “So that’s why you’re here,” Shilo said.

  Dr. Kate nodded. “I’m looking for reasons why the salamanders are dying.” She tipped the bucket, and the salamanders slid into the grass.

  “Can we help you with your research?” Cricket looked at Shilo. “Maybe tomorrow? We’re going to the stable to see the new kittens right now.”

  “Sure. I’ll be here,” Dr. Kate said.

  “Let’s go before it gets dark.” Shilo hopped onto her bike. As the girls raced off for the stable, Cricket worried about the salamanders.

  “Hey, Peaches, did you go out for a ride today?” Cricket asked, laying her bike on the grass near the corral. A little palomino horse nickered and walked over to have her ears rubbed. Peaches was Cricket’s favorite.

  Moses, a big gray horse, stretched his head over the fence. He blew hot breath on Shilo’s neck and bumped her helmet.

  “Careful, silly—you’ll get horse drool on me.” Shilo plucked a dandelion and offered it to him. He took it carefully between his bristled lips and chewed noisily.

  “Cricket, look,” Shilo said, pointing across the road. “That must be her.”

  Cricket turned in time to see a black-and-white cat with a tiny kitten in her mouth disappear through the barn door. “That’s one way to get an animal across the road.”

  “Too bad it won’t work for salamanders.”

  The girls peeked inside the quiet, dark barn. Cricket squeezed through the door. She saw a flash of white near the hay bales.

  “Do you see her?” Shilo whispered.

  “She’s back here. Are you coming?”

  “Um, no. I’ll just wait here.” Shilo stayed at the door. As tough as Shilo was, she didn’t like the dark at all.

  Cricket found the mother cat with four black-and-white kittens curled up between two hay bales. The mother purred. The kittens mewed and wiggled. Their eyes were still closed.

  “They are so little!” Cricket exclaimed when she joined Shilo at the door. “Next time we’ll bring a flashlight so you can see them.”

  The two friends slid the heavy barn door closed and said goodnight to Peaches and Moses. They hopped on their bikes and sped down the hill into the village.

  Chapter Three

  “I had a dream about salamanders last night,” Shilo said. She was hanging upside down from the monkey bars at the playground on the edge of Waterton Lake. “Killer seagulls kept swooping down on them, and all I had was a water gun.”

  “Sounds more like a nightmare,” Cricket said.

  “Yeah. Mom says I have crazy dreams because I eat pepperoni before bed.”

  Cricket watched the crowd across the street. Pat’s Garage was on the busiest corner in the village. You could buy or rent just about anything at Pat’s Garage. Tourists were already lined up to rent mopeds and four-wheeled pedal bikes. Each bike had a bench seat, a canopy for shade and a steering wheel with a horn. Sometimes Pat let Cricket and Shilo drive them for free if business was slow, but today Waterton was full of tourists.

  “Hey, there’s Tyler.” Cricket’s older brother disappeared into the garage. “I bet he’s getting ice cream. Come on.”

  Shilo flipped down from the monkey bars and they crossed the street. Pat sold only four flavors of ice cream, but he always served the biggest scoops.

  The girls snuck up behind Tyler. “Can we have some too? Please?”

  Tyler groaned. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Hey, Cricket! Hey, Shilo!” Tyler’s best friend, Will, popped up from behind the ice-cream counter. His dad owned Pat’s Garage. “What can I get you?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” Cricket said, pretending to make a tough decision. She always picked chocolate.

  Once they had their ice-cream cones, the girls crossed back to the playground and sat on the swings. Tyler and Will walked slowly while they licked their ice cream. They were looking for flat round stones to skip on the lake. Rocks filled their pockets.

  “How come we’ve never seen those salamanders before?” Cricket asked. “Do you think they’re more endangered than Dr. Kate knows?”

  “Maybe they only come out at dusk,” Shilo suggested. “Night’s a safer time for them to cross the road, that’s for sure.”

  “I guess, but there are still cars on the road late at night. And owls and cats would spot them easily. It’s still a pretty dangerous trip.”

  “What salamanders?”

  “What’s dangerous?”

  Tyler and Will stopped looking for rocks and climbed onto the teeter-totter beside the girls.

  “There’s a scientist studying the salamanders on the road between Linnet Lake and Crandell Mountain,” Cricket said.

  “Really? I’ve never seen salamanders there. Lots of frogs in the marsh, but no salamanders,” Will said. “Why are they on the road?”

  Shilo looked at Cricket. She shrugged.

  “They must be migrating.” Tyler was going up and down on the teeter-totter with his ice-cream cone in one hand and rocks in the other. “Salamanders have to lay their eggs in water. Now they’ve hatched, and they’re going to hibernate on Crandell Mountain.”

  Will looked doubtful. “Tiny salamanders climb Crandell Mountain? Really, Tyler?”

  Tyler laughed. “Not all the way to the top! They just need a drier spot for their burrows.”

  “Let’s go back tonight to help, Cricket.” Shilo looked at the boys. “Do you guys want to come too?”

  Tyler paused the teeter-totter, leaving Will sitting high above the ground. “Sure, I’ll help.”

  “Um, Tyler? Don’t put me down, okay?” Will was looking over at the trees on the edge of the playground. A mother deer stood a few feet away. Two fawns bounced out of the trees, playing.

  The kids froze and watched as the fawns passed underneath Will’s feet. The mother deer froze too. Her wet, black nose quivered. She stamped a front foot. Would she charge to protect her fawns? Cricket held her breath.

  She stamped again, and the fawns bounded away toward the lake. The mother deer flicked her tail and followed them.

  “Okay, Tyler, you can put me down now,” Will said, keeping his eyes on the deer family.

  “That was close, you guys,” Cricket said. “I thought you were going to drop your ice-cream cones.”

  “Not a chance.” Tyler opened his fist. “I didn’t even drop my skipping stones.”

  Shilo groaned. “You guys have rocks in your heads.”

  Chapter Four

  “I hoped you would come tonight,” Dr. Kate said as Cricket, Tyler and Sh
ilo rode up on their bikes. She was crouching in the middle of the road and held out extra buckets she had brought for them. Cricket introduced Tyler to Dr. Kate, and then they all got to work.

  “If you can collect the salamanders, I’ll measure and mark them for my research,” Dr. Kate said. “We’ll let them go in the grass on the other side of the road, like last night.”

  During the day the road had been busy with lots of tourists and traffic, but by evening things were quiet. Hikers were resting their tired feet. Fishermen were in their cabins, cleaning their catches. Campers were cooking their dinners over fires, and the visitors who had come to Waterton for the day had all left.

  “Don’t try to grab him by the tail,” Dr. Kate warned. “Squeeze him gently between his front and back legs and cup him in your hands. He won’t squirm in the dark. Go ahead and give it a try.”

  “He likes the dark?” Shilo asked in surprise.

  Dr. Kate nodded. “He feels safer in the dark, so he’s calmer.”

  “Lucky him.”

  Cricket crouched down. The salamander at her feet was as long as her pointer finger but thicker. A bright-yellow stripe raced down his back. She took a deep breath and grasped the salamander around his middle. He wasn’t slimy, like she’d expected, and he weighed almost nothing. He felt kind of smooshy—like wobbly Jell-O. The salamander’s feet felt like tiny twigs scratching the palm of her hand. It tickled.

  “Okay, I’ve got one!” Cricket walked to the side of the road where Dr. Kate had spread out her equipment.

  “Great work, Cricket.”

  While Cricket held the salamander still, Dr. Kate measured him with her ruler. She made notes on her clipboard. Then she prepared a needle.

  “What’s that? Are you giving him a shot?” Cricket asked.

  Tyler came over to watch.

  “Kind of,” said Dr. Kate. “It’s a little dot of blue dye that we put under his skin, where it can’t wash off. It helps us count the salamanders.”

  “Good idea,” Tyler said. “That way you’ll know if there are fifty salamanders crossing the road or just one little guy going back and forth fifty times.”