Your Backyard Is Wild (4 page)

“Gabe, come here!” he called, ready to give a tour of his own. “Look!”

Benjamin dropped the centipede into Gabe’s open hand and he didn’t look that thrilled about holding it. “What’s that?” Gabe asked, a bit suspiciously. “A baby snake?”

“Nope,” Benjamin replied. “A centipede! It’s about the length of a worm. But see how it’s flat, more like a salamander? And look how its body is divided into about ten segments, each with its own pair of legs.”

Gabe studied it for a second. “It has antennae, too—see? And are those claws?” Nice observation, Benjamin thought.

“They are,” he said. “Centipedes live in woodsy, moist places, but they’re not vegetarians. They use those claws to catch and kill tiny creatures, mostly insects. In his world, he’s a hard-core predator!” Which made him remember something else. “I think you’d better put that guy down, actually. They can pinch people, too.”

His cousin dropped the centipede like a hot potato. “I’ve never seen one here before . . . ,” Gabe said, his sentence trailing off.

Benjamin could tell his cousin found it a little creepy, but he couldn’t resist tossing in one more fact. “There are hundreds of kinds of centipedes,” he said, “all over the world. On some Pacific islands, they can grow to be almost two feet long!”

“Okay,” said Gabe. “Enough about bugs! Watch this!”

Lucy was still going back and forth on the monkey bars, so Gabe shinnied up a pole and hung upside down on a high bar. He did a flip and leaped to the ground. But when he landed, he lost his balance! Gabe fell back and hit his head against another bar, and his body crumpled on the ground.

B
enjamin crouched down next to his cousin. “Are you okay?” he asked anxiously. He didn’t know what to do!

Luckily, Lucy and the grown-ups were beside him in seconds, and Aunt Lily smoothed Gabe’s hair back off his forehead until he could speak. He was a little dizzy, which worried his mom. But after a while, he stood up and seemed to be fine.

Aunt Lily and Uncle Peter weren’t taking any chances, though. They hailed a taxi, while Benjamin’s family walked back to the apartment. Benjamin couldn’t help but wonder what this would mean for their trip. Would Gabe still be able to do all the things they’d planned?

Back at the apartment, Gabe was already on the couch, resting. A woman was sitting beside him, and Uncle Peter told Benjamin it was one of their neighbors, a doctor at a nearby hospital.

“You must have taken quite a fall!” she said to Gabe, keeping the tone light. “You might want to think twice before you try that trick again!”

She got more serious as she explained that head injuries had to be treated with care. “It doesn’t seem like you have a concussion, which is good,” she said. “All I can see is a bump at the back of your head, which we can keep down with ice. But you’re going to need to take it easy for a couple of days.”

Gabe groaned. “But I have things to do!” he said. “I can’t just lie on the couch while my cousins are here!”

“We’ll stay with you,” Benjamin promised. It wasn’t what he’d expected from the trip, but spending time with Gabe was more important than anything else.

And this would be a perfect time to show Gabe his rock collection! He was able to distract Gabe for a while by showing him many different kinds of rocks and telling him where they’d come from.

Gabe also laughed when Lucy brought out the alligator skull, moved its jaws, and made it say, “Get well soon, Gabe!”

“That thing is amazing!” Gabe said, looking it over. “I need to get one of those!”

Eventually, though, Gabe got back to talking about their visit. “It’s not fair,” he complained. “What are we supposed to do now? Watch movies about New York instead of explore the real thing?”

That’s when Benjamin was inspired. “What if we do a different kind of sightseeing? The kind we Baxters always do on trips?” When Gabe stared at him blankly, he explained a little more. “Usually we watch animals and explore where they live. Usually we’re part of our parents’ research trips, so we end up doing research ourselves.”

“Okay . . . but how are we supposed to do that here?” Gabe asked doubtfully. “I think we’ve seen all the animals there are to see.”

“No way,” Lucy said. “I’ll bet there’s a whole lot more for us to find.”

“Wildlife isn’t exactly what makes New York famous,” Gabe pointed out. “But I guess it would be okay to try. Where do we start?”

Benjamin smiled. “Well . . . can you get that key to the backyard?”

 

It took until the next afternoon for them to find out that the key was hanging in another neighbor’s kitchen. And Aunt Lily thought it would be great for Gabe to get some fresh air, as long as he wasn’t roughhousing outside. As soon as they got the key, Benjamin grabbed his backpack and the three cousins tromped down to the basement again. The grown-ups could watch them from the upstairs window.

Lucy turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door to the yard. It squeaked on its hinges, like it hadn’t been used in a while. The cousins climbed up three steps and blinked in the afternoon light.

“Oh, man,” said Gabe. “Look at the grass!” It was at least knee-high and looked like it hadn’t been mowed in a couple of months. There was a brick path to the fence at the back of the property and a raised flower bed that needed weeding. There were old flow erpots scattered around the yard, too.

“It’s perfect!” Lucy exclaimed. “The wilder, the better.”

“So, what now?” Gabe asked.

“Our parents have one rule,” Benjamin said. “We’re supposed to keep quiet. It’s so we can hear any animals coming toward us—and not scare them away if they are.”

Gabe nodded. “I can do that,” he said.

Benjamin sat on the steps and listened. The city was so much noisier than the swamp back home. He could hear all the sounds that had surprised him before, plus even more. There was the blast of a ferry whistle out on the water, and the chopping of a helicopter. Benjamin wondered if that noise alone would scare away any animals. Then, suddenly, he heard something else. A rustling in the leaves above him. He looked up and saw a New York squirrel! He didn’t know exactly what kind it was, but it was medium size and gray, and it was watching him with its shiny black eyes.

The squirrel hopped down off a low tree branch and perched on the side of a large flowerpot. With its front feet, it dug in the dirt until it found what it wanted: some seeds.

Slowly, Benjamin handed Gabe the binoculars so he could watch the squirrel eating the seeds one by one in the grass. When the squirrel was through, it hopped a few feet away and dug another small hole in the ground. There was an acorn buried there! The boys observed as the squirrel gnawed on it, then bounded away.

“All right . . . I’ve never done that before,” Gabe practically whispered. He seemed in awe of what had just happened. “I’ve seen thousands of squirrels before, but I never really watched one.”

“Did you see how it knew where the acorn was?” Benjamin asked. “Squirrels have a very accurate memory for where they’ve hidden their food. They bury nuts and seeds in thousands of places every year, and they can always find them!”

“I guess I’ve never really thought about it before . . . ,” Gabe said, trailing off.

“When you’re a backyard explorer, you see things a little differently!” Benjamin announced. He dug through the flowerpot for the seeds the squirrel had left behind. Then he popped them into one of his plastic collecting jars. Later, he’d ask his parents what they were.

Benjamin wandered over to the flower bed next. If he was an explorer, that seemed like exciting new territory. He could see where daffodils had bloomed in the spring—their stalks were still there—and where someone had even tried to plant a few vegetables. Some tomato stalks were climbing up a pole, but there were just nubs where there should have been hard, green tomatoes ready to ripen. Benjamin was sure another animal had stolen them.

He stood by the flower bed for several minutes, waiting and watching. Just when he was ready to move to another part of the yard, a delicate snake crossed in front of him and went to bask on a low stone wall! “Look, a garter snake,” Benjamin hissed to his sister and his cousin.

He wanted to pick it up—he was pretty sure that the worst a garter snake could do was give off a bad smell—but he didn’t want to take any chances. Instead, he motioned Gabe and Lucy over to take a look. The garter snake had a striped pattern on its skin, and between the stripes were rows of dots.

“Garter snakes live all over the place,” Lucy told Gabe. “They’re one of the most common snakes around.”

As they watched, the snake slithered to the end of the wall. In a moist, shady spot, it found a couple of slugs. Then, with one gulp, the snake swallowed one of them!

“I can’t believe it,” Gabe said, shaking his head. “The food chain . . . right here in the yard.”

It was funny to see Gabe so surprised, Benjamin thought. The look on Gabe’s face was probably like the look
he’d
had when they were in the subway station. They watched the snake slide through a fence to the next yard.

Now Benjamin brought out a small shovel and handed it to Gabe. Benjamin was glad he’d managed to fit so many supplies in his backpack! “Let’s see what we can dig up next,” he joked. The boys took turns digging in a pile of old leaves. The ones on top were dry and crunchy, but the ones underneath were moist and decomposing.

Soon Benjamin found yet another creature. It was small, and had rolled into a ball when he picked it up. “Look, a pill bug,” he said, handing it to Lucy.

“Also known as a roly-poly,” she confirmed. “Look at this one, Gabe!”

She held it out for him to see. Gabe gasped as the ball unrolled in her palm, revealing an oval body with seven pairs of legs. Its back was a hard shell made of several different pieces.

“You’ll never guess who his cousins are!” said Benjamin.