Page 2 of Hiss and Make Up
Sierra tilted her head for a better view of the distant, blurry, overexposed photo of a smashed snake. The banding indicated a typical water snake. But without a close-up of the head or tail, she couldn’t rule out a young moccasin.
“I was thinking you could go out there,” he said. “No sense in both of us hanging around here. Might as well ease this guy’s mind or tell him to keep an eye out for more.”
They didn’t do house calls, and the snake in the photo was obviously dead, but Dale had a point. One young venomous snake could mean more. If this was a family with kids, they should be alert if this was a moccasin.
“Fine.” She pulled out her phone to type in the guy’s phone number. “But you’re paying for my gas.”
Dale grabbed the plastic container of birdseed behind her and smiled. “I’ll even buy you lunch.”
“Deal!”
Dale left to fill the feeders around the building, while Sierra hit the call button. The guy answered on the first ring.
“Hi, is this Marc? This is Sierra. I’m a naturalist at the Nature Station.”
There was a long pause. Long enough that Sierra thought the call dropped.
“Sierra? Uh, yeah, thanks for calling,” he stammered. “Did, um, can you guys tell what it is?”
She held her breath for a second, resisting the urge to ask why on earth he couldn’t bring the thing to them. Or why he couldn’t at least take a decent photo of it. “Not from that photo. But I can go over this morning to look at it. Will someone be there?”
“That would be great.”'
“Text me the address,” she said. “I’ll head over there right now.”
“Thanks so much.”
She swore she could hear him exhaling as he hung up. Like she’d agreed to save his favorite puppy.It was just a snake, dude.
When his text came in a few seconds later, she bobbled the phone.
“Problem?” Dale asked, walking past her to put the birdseed bucket back on its shelf.
Sierra stared at the address on her phone. It was in a little town in a parish neighboring Lafayette where the Nature Station was located and where Sierra now lived.
Marc. She didn’t recognize the name, but the address was only one number off from the location of a thousand memories currently flooding her brain.
“No,” she said. “It’s fine.”
“Do you need to look up the address?”
She laughed. She’d grown up on that street. She ought to know how to get there.
“I know where it is.” She put the phone in her back pocket and grabbed her bag from under the desk. “I’m taking my time getting back here, just so you know.”
He waved. “Have fun.”
She zipped down the stairs and walked across the gravel to her beat-up, old Forerunner. A clacking sound approached from the Iris Circle path. Sierra turned to find a scrawny, brown mutt with dark eyes and a sloppy smile trotting toward her. His long, ratty tail perked up when he made eye contact, then his head and tail both drooped as he slowed his approach. Sierra looked around for an owner before she bent to let him sniff her hand and check for a collar. The park allowed leashed dogs, but they occasionally broke free from campsites.
No collar. Sierra scratched his ear and examined him.
A little scraggly, but relatively healthy. Friendly, with no obvious signs of neglect or abuse. Could be from the neighborhood across the street.
A squirrel jumped from a nearby tree to the top of the hand railing, and the dog startled and trotted a few feet away.
“It’s just a squirrel, no big deal.”
She held out her hand again. The dog looked back and forth between her hand and the squirrel, now chattering at both of them. The dog decided Sierra wasn’t worth the squirrel’s wrath, and he headed off toward the campground.
