Are You Smarter Than A Flying Gator?

Are You Smarter
Than A
Flying Gator?

Gator Mikey Over Florida!

Other books by Kevin Kremer:

A Kremer Christmas Miracle

Spaceship Over North Dakota

Saved by Custer's Ghost

The Blizzard of the Millennium

When it Snows in Sarasota

Santa's Our Substitute Teacher

Gator Mikey Over Florida!

by Kevin Kremer

Illustrated by Dave Ely

Published by Snow in Sarasota Publishing
2007
P.O. Box 1360
Osprey, FL 34229-1360
www.snowinsarasota.com

 

 

Copyright © 2007 by Kevin Kremer

Snow in Sarasota Publishing
P.O. Box 1360
Osprey, FL 34229-1360

Visit us on the Web!
www.snowinsarasota.com

All rights reserved.

ISBN-10: 0-9663335-6-X      

ISBN-13: 978-0-9663335-6-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007908791
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

 

 

 

 

 

This book is dedicated to
Mom and Dad.
You're the best!

 

 

 

You've probably already heard about Prez and his eight friends who call themselves
Sarabiskota.
Those were the kids in the news last summer who found that big treasure chest at the bottom of the sea filled with gold coins, silver, sapphires, pearls, diamonds, and jewelry. It was all worth hundreds of millions of dollars!

If you've forgotten the story, let me refresh your memory a little. It involved those nine friends I referred to earlier. All of them had just finished the seventh grade. Their names were Jan Jones, Kari Wise, Katy Heidebrink, Jessie Angel, Chad Renner, Mike Schafer, Nick Hillman, Kevin Feeney, and Prez. With the exception of Katy, all of these close friends had grown up together in Bismarck, North Dakota.

This was definitely a bunch of precocious teens, but Prez brought new meaning to the word
precocious.
His brain was like an enormous sponge.
He loved learning, exploring, and inventing. At times Prez could be a little scatterbrained but that was quite understandable. His brain was usually working on so many things at the same time.

Prez was born in Bismarck with the name Mike Gold. After doing a report on Teddy Roosevelt in the second grade, Mike told his teacher he wanted to be President of the United States someday, just like Teddy. After that, some of Mike's friends started to call him
Prez
and the nickname stuck.

Last summer, Prez and his parents moved from Bismarck to Sarasota, Florida. At the time, Prez's dad's software company won a big military contract from Central Command in Tampa, and Prez's dad decided to relocate his company to the Tampa Bay area. Eventually, he chose to move it to Sarasota, which was a short distance to the south of Tampa Bay.

Although Prez had loved living in Bismarck his whole life, and he knew he'd miss his friends from Bismarck a lot, the move to Sarasota was made much easier because Chad Renner moved there with him. You see, Chad's parents both worked for Prez's dad. In fact, their two families had been good friends for a long time.

Making things even better, Prez's and Chad's families found new beach homes on the same block on the north end of one of the most beautiful islands in the world, Siesta Key. There was only one house between Prez's and Chad's.

The boys were pleasantly surprised when they found out who lived in that house. It turned out to be a cute, blonde girl the same age as the two boys. She had recently moved to Sarasota from Fergus Falls, Minnesota.

This was Katy Heidebrink, who the two boys soon nicknamed
KT.
KT's parents had bought a jet ski, bicycle, boat, kayak, and parasailing business on Siesta Key called Siesta Key Water Fun. Prez developed a big crush on KT the first time he saw her.

Not long after Chad and Prez met KT, the three teens wanted to find out if it had ever snowed in Sarasota on Christmas so they headed to the Selby Public Library in Sarasota to find out. While they were doing their research at the library, they stumbled upon a strange mystery involving a man known as Captain Sarasota who had mysteriously disappeared from his fishing boat out on Sarasota Bay a few years earlier. Captain Sarasota had left
just one clue behind, which nobody had ever been able to figure out. It was a number carved into the wooden steering wheel of his fishing boat—487699.

KT, Chad, and Prez immediately became obsessed with trying to solve this mystery. With the help of their six other friends back in Bismarck, they eventually solved the mystery and it led them to the treasure worth all that money.

Somewhere along the way, the nine teens started to call themselves
Sarabiskota.
The
Sara
part comes from Sarasota,
bis
comes from Bismarck, the
k
comes from North Dakota, and
ota
comes from Sarasota, Minnesota, and North Dakota.

Now, I'll bet you remember the whole story. Just in case you get the nine Sarabiskota teenagers mixed up, I'll tell you a little more about each of them, starting with the girls.

Jan Jones
— Jan's friends call her Doc because she wants to be a medical doctor someday. She even carries a medical book around with her a lot. Doc's super-smart and very funny. She has long brown hair and wears glasses. Doc plays the clarinet and her favorite sport is basketball.

Kari Wise
— Kari's the tallest of the girls. She has short brown hair. She's a soccer player and an ice skater. Kari's an amazing organizer. After college, she's thinking about being a researcher of some kind and possibly starting her own research business. Kari plays the flute.

Jessie Angel
— Jessie's last name applies, or at least she has a guardian angel. You see, Jessie and her mom were riding in a car over a bridge near their home south of Bismarck when the bridge collapsed. Their car fell down into the river below, but they got out without even a scratch. Everyone thought it was a miracle. Jessie has very light blonde hair. She's artistic and really funny. She's also an excellent competitive swimmer and likes to play the saxophone.

KT
— Besides what you already know about KT, I could add that her favorite sports are volleyball and track. KT's not sure what she wants to study when she goes to college, but she really likes working with young children.

Chad renner
— Chad's a natural all-around athlete.
He's probably most talented at freestyle wrestling. Chad's tall with short black hair. He likes to play the trumpet, but he doesn't seem to find much time to practice playing it.

Mike Schafer
— Mike looks a lot like a young Elvis Presley and loves to talk and sing like Elvis. That's right. He's an Elvis impersonator and he's really good at it. Besides that, Mike loves cross country running, the long jump, and playing his drums.

Nick Hillman
— Nick asks tons of questions when he doesn't understand something. He loves to play hockey and football, and he's really good at both sports. Nick's a NASCAR fanatic and a huge University of Minnesota hockey fan. Nick is almost Chad's height with short brown hair.

Kevin Feeney
— Kevin is the shortest of the group, but he's really strong. He has short, black, straight hair. Kevin is a talented quarterback for his age, and he wants to keep growing and become the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers' quarterback someday. He may be the biggest sports fanatic of the whole group.

Prez
— Prez is not ashamed to tell people that he had a weight problem when he was younger. Over the years his friends have helped encourage him to eat better and get involved in sports. It's made a huge difference. Prez has slimmed down a lot, and he's even become a pretty good athlete. This past year he played football at his middle school in Sarasota. Prez has short, dark, curly hair. He's about four inches shorter than Chad. Prez likes to play the violin.