By Martha Hoffman c 2009

Momzilla galloped like a charging bull, head down and happy in the cool morning. My brother and I took turns letting her tow us on our skateboards. A woman looked up from her yard and yelled, “You kids quit torturing that dog!” Google yelled back, “The vet said to exercise her like this, you can call him up!” She looked disgusted and went back to gardening. Luckily. The last time, a complainer had actually called Animal Control and we had to wait till Trish, the AC officer came. We’d been on a ride-along with her for a homeschool project once. Trish calmed the person down, and told us we’d better carry a letter from our vet if we were going to roadwork Momzilla. She laughed, and told us, “Really, people are so silly! Of all dogs except an Alaskan Husky, I think a Pittweiller would enjoy this the most!”

We were on our way to work and had to hurry, we hadn’t expected to be slowed down. The Rippling Waters development was almost empty, and we could ride down the middle of the streets without seeing many people. Most of the houses were foreclosed and abandoned. Dry yellow yards and piles of junk went on and on, with an occasional oasis of green where someone hadn’t moved out. Empty lots and half-finished houses filled the far end of the development.

We stopped at the first house on our list and unlocked the combination lock of the yard gate. Locking it behind us, we felt safe with Momzilla. She’d been the least adoptable dog at the shelter- a BBD- Big Black Dog, but the best for looking like a guard dog.

The swimming pool was green with algae, but much less ropy than the last time we’d been there. Google checked the filter and the heater. He put on thick rubber gloves before swishing the metal handled pool net around in the water, meanwhile looking at a dial on the heater cables.

“Whoa!!! A good one! They’re doing great!” he said as the dial suddenly swung up to the green zone. He adjusted the floating waterproof rubber-ducky shaped vibrator and its timer to a different level and smiled big. As the ducky vibrated, the dial swung up again and again.

“Glad you’re happy Google, what’s happening?”

“The ducky is making them think it’s alive, and the shocks are charging the battery for the heater, AND almost enough to run the filter! The system’s getting self-sustaining, and I can tell they’re growing.”

I dumped the pool’s quota of mosquitofish from my insulated backpack in carefully. The poor things instantly vibrated and flailed, and six large slimy mouths gobbled them up. The electric eels were thriving in their replicated Congo environment.

“When they’re a bit bigger and stronger, I’ll be able to sit here and charge up my laptop.”

We threw some larger dead fishes and a bucket of earthworms in, and the eels ate them up too; almost blind, but sensing anything around them with sonar-like tiny electrical pulses, then powering up a huge voltage to stun it and eat. They were all rescues gathered by our Craigslist network of ads; people who had electric eels knew they were illegal, and didn’t know what to do with them when they got too big and dangerous. We’d arrange anonymous drop-offs by the Steakback Outhouse, and then pick up the buckets later.

I went to the hot tub and some planters with standing water, and poured some more mosquitofish in. These would live until the water dried up, or if the rains came, they’d live on through the winter, eating mosquito larvae.

“Mom, I want to, but only Burgerbulge is hiring. You know I would get that Marshmallow Disease.”

“Huh?”

“It’s the soft soft white fat that people that work in fast food places get. They get to eat there for free, and the fat is different from normal fat.”

“It is not!”

“Yes, you go look at them. The fat creeps evenly all over every part of their body, and their chins, their fingers, everything is so soft like a marshmallow. Normal fat people have potbellies or fat in one place mostly. Imagine what I would look like, and if you kissed me it would dent.”

“June Fisher, you’ve always been very stubborn, I’m sure you wouldn’t eat too much of that stuff if you decided not to.”

“But you don’t have to eat it Mom, it just ABSORBS in! –”

“Ok, Ok, don’t get a job then. Go to the community service center, find something that will look good on your applications. A day a week at the animal shelter is fine but you need to do something else, that will help people. Your brother too, he only behaves when you are around. You’ve got to keep him from getting into any more trouble while I’m at work.”

That’s how I got a great job! Only, people started calling me and my brother the Mosquitofishers.

Not only was it independent with NO BOSS, my little brother could come along for his tons of hours of mandated community service, and I GOT PAID! For the most ridiculous thing: putting mosquitofish in the stagnant green swimming pools of foreclosed abandoned houses. Like our house was going to be, soon. West Nile Virus is spread by mosquitoes. Global Warming people like my brother Barnes Fisher say that Dengue fever and malaria will be coming too. So we’re saving people, we're being good college material, AND we’ll be the Mother Teresas of Malaria. Mom is very happy. Although she thought at first we made it up.

“Nonsense, you just want to roam around on your skateboards. There is no such job!”

Then she called the supervisor for the community resource center. Not much better.

“Yes, you’ll be wandering into through people’s yards, and some Neighborhood Watch person will call the cops. You’re Hard of Hearing, June, you won’t hear the police yelling at you, and you’ll get shot. And what if there’s homeless people sneaking around? You could get attacked.”

“No, Mom, I’ll wear my hearing aids I promise, and all these houses are foreclosed, so there’s hardly any neighbors anyway! And the town went bankrupt so there’s not many police anymore, you said so! The homeless are all downtown begging, not in the suburbs.”

“Your arguments are ridiculous, you’d never make it as a lawyer. No.”

But finally she thought it would be ok if we took our Pittweiller along to protect us, and she was impressed when we showed her our official dayglo green and blue vests with MOSQUITO ABATEMENT PATROL in reflective writing on the backs.

“Don’t let Momzilla swim in those pools, she’ll get an ear infection, we can’t afford the vet now. But slosh water on her if she gets hot. You have to do this job in the mornings and early in the evening so she stays cool. And your cell phones, DON’T DROP THEM IN THE POOLS. Text me every hour.”

So Momzilla towed us on our skateboards to the center, we picked up our baggies of mosquitofish in insulated backpacks to keep them at the right temperature. We had a zone to cover, a list of addresses, like an old fashioned paper route. About a third of the houses here are foreclosed, so we didn’t have to go miles or anything. Pools, hot tubs, planters, anything with water, those are the tough environments the tiny brownish mosquitofish can live in.

Momzilla loved pulling us, she is so ripped naturally. She’s over having her pups and she’s spayed now. There were her 15 newborn pups with her at the shelter, ten lived, and our family fostered them till “Pity The Pits” found them homes. It was easy to get them adopted, because they had some kind of fuzzy dad and so PTP put them on the web site as Labradoodles instead of Pittadoodles. PTP got $200- each and saved a bunch of real Pits with the money. The way they see it, if it saves an animal’s life, it’s ok to lie as much as you want.

But Momzilla, she was not really saveable, her time ran out and even PTP couldn’t find her a home. Big black dogs are the least adoptable because they look scary and people can’t see their expressions. Momzilla’s saggy breasts shrank up, but she has huge black nips like giant peanuts, permanently, and someone had cropped her ears in a raggedy way. She barked at people she didn’t know, so she failed the temperament tests. We kept her, we love her, and the secret is, she stops barking and is sweet if you say the person is “FRIENDLLLLY FRIENDS” in a silly voice to her.

It was spooky, going into those back yards. Some were trashed and things broken- the owners had been so mad at the bank taking their house, they wrecked it. Someone even chopped down a tree into the pool. Others looked like the people planned to come back, there were barbeques and lawnmowers and bikes and toys.

One yard looked green and perfect; the old man next door yelled at us to get out. We told him we were with mosquito control, and then he was ok. He had been mowing the foreclosed lawn and watering some of the fruit trees. But he said he couldn’t use his water anymore, it was drought rationing and now he only had enough for his own yard. The pool was almost full, mostly of sheets and strings of algae.

“Why can’t you take the pool water to water stuff with?”

“Good idea, but empty pools crack and then the house is worth even less.”

“Why can’t the bank keep the pools nice then?”

“Costs too much. They won’t even pay for someone to keep the bushes and grass cut, so the house ends up looking unsaleable anyway. Then MY house looks unsaleable too, being next door. What’s the difference, that house was built crappy, it’s starting to fall apart anyhow. These crummy developments, I got ripped off BIGTIME and I’m staying on account of I have nowhere to move to anyhow.”

“We’re moving. But we have 9 months legally to stay and save for a rental. The bank sends mean letters but we won’t pay the mortgage anymore so it’s like free.”

“Good luck with the fish. Hey, can you eat them, how big do they grow?”

“Ha, they only grow an inch long, they’re a kind of little guppy that breeds really fast, Mister.”

“Yumm, I might come over and scoop up a couple hundred for a pan fry sometime.”

“Nooo, not our pet fishes, we already named them and everything!!!”

We were just joking around, but we already felt protective of them, and we were now the Johnny Appleseeds of Mosquitofishization. In one day we had converted ten pools, seven hot tubs, and everything else with water standing in it, into fish habitats.

At the end of the day, we took in our checked-off lists to the Center.

“You do ok?”

“We love it! The fish swam off right away and they loved it too!”

“Don’t you go stealing anything, even if nobody wants it, you have to leave everything like you found it.”

“Right, like a National Park.”

“Well…oh yeah, ha ha… see you tomorrow.”

I never knew that other people could hear in the dark. I could not see in the dark, and so it made sense that it was hard to hear in the dark, too. I didn’t know I could lip read until a doctor told me I had learned to unconsciously, and he proved it by saying the same thing in front of me and with my back turned.

But in elementary school, I didn’t have hearing aids. Mom was a big proponent of “LABELED IS DISABLED” and felt like I was already teased badly enough without having hearing aids. Plus she and my dad did not believe I was very deaf, just a little hard of hearing. I agreed with them on that, and I would not wear my aids to school even when the teachers insisted my parents get them for me. My parents did not believe a lot of things. They also did not believe that I should have been a boy and should be allowed to be one. How could I wear a dress, or girl’s things? The idea was so awful. Later, getting breasts was a terrible deformity that attacked my body, and I wore a Guatemalan poncho cape for three years to school until I accepted my giant breasts. Gradually I gave up my reality of being a boy. Like in that old show “What happens to a dream deferred…(something something…) it dries up Like a Raisin In The Sun.” But my breasts remained round and unwrinkled and would not go away.

I got crushes on boys and girls and teachers, none of them had crushes back on me. Some kids got crushes on me but I felt repulsed by them. I found a misfit poet boyfriend and got rid of my humiliating virginity, but I was definitely a failure at being either male or female.

I had a reputation for not listening to my parents or other people, either. I was both shy and stubborn. Mostly I sat in the back of the classroom and was so bored. Waiting for recess, when I could read a book. Before hearing aids, I had no idea the teacher was teaching so much with her voice. I almost never heard the other kids’ answers, unless they were trying to annoy me with loud whispers or fake sign language or lipsynching “Fuck You”. I looked at the board, tried to lipread, and I would get tired from trying to listen and looking, I would cover my eyes and press on my eyeballs until endless warping checkerboards of gray and gold appeared. The teacher would come over and ask was I okay. I was. The checkerboards were fascinating.

So eventually- homeschooling, hearing aids, Deaf summer camp where I learned some sign language and that there were other people like me. Now I’m seventeen.

Google- raising a fuss all the time ever since he was born, and my parents busy with his therapy and tutors and finally deciding to homeschool him too. For Google, computers saved him. Whatever was wrong with him, at least he would always have some kind of way to make money. "Labeled is Disabled", and Mom refused to have him properly tested and classified “like a genetic mistake”, even though then he would have gotten some free therapy and help in school.

I hated Google when he was born, and when he was growing up, he was the biggest pain. I had to pretend to love him because my parents did, and they would say how they were so happy he had a sister who would help him out when they got too old to take care of him. Ugh, that was a terrifying thought, and made me hate him even more as he hogged all the attention that he didn’t want, that I did. But luckily his strength of mind made him determined to figure out computers and animals, especially fish.

And I loved animals too. I only ever wanted to know one thing: how they thought, and if I could just be in their brain for a moment of my life, then I would be happy forever. I had to become a scientist, an animal behaviorist, because I would become part of the scientists' secret realm, and know the secrets of animals. “THEY” knew these things, more than God. Science and Martin Luther King were my parents’ gods, and the Ku Klux Klan was the horrifying Devil of their family theology; a confused and never explained atheist agnostic religion. I never understood it all, since Mom’s hippie days had added some psychedelic insights about infinite universes, which did not fit with the rest of it. But I knew with solid faith that scientists were to be believed in. “They Say” was the ultimate pronouncement. I wanted to be one of “Them”. An expert.

As teenagers, Google and I became better friends, and our animals were the most important things. Mom and Dad divorced after staying together with hatred “for the sake of the children” for many years, and finally we could have a normal relationship with each of them separately. They could talk now, and negotiate. But Dad was not making much money, he was trying to recover from being a real estate agent and losing everything. Dad had bought our house as an investment, and felt guilty for ruining all of our lives. Mom was stuck in a bad job that tired her out, and she had no time for us. When she got really down, she would utter her magic totem words, “Health Insurance,” and get the strength to go to work another day.

A school group of kids his age came into the lobby. They looked around, then all focused on Barnes. His pants were too big and had fallen partly down, but he didn't notice as they stared at his crack and giggled. His flip-flops made loud slaps as he ran wildly back and forth. The kids seemed to suddenly pack up, standing a bit closer together, as if he was a weird animal. All their focus narrowed on him, not even looking at the kittens and the dogs being walked through the lobby.

I saw him through their eyes. He wasn't my familiar brother, he was a wacky kid, deserving punishment for his obliviousness. He was no longer one of us humans.

Dad didn’t notice, he was smiling calmly at Barnes, and probably glad he would be worn out and sleepy on the way home.

I wanted to yell at the kids, “Just put him on a computer and he’ll KICK YOUR BUTTS!” I also pretended not to notice him as I finished my project.

I don't think the kids would have done anything to Barnes even if their teacher hadn't been waiting with them, maybe they would have pointed and laughed. But it only took those few seconds for me to see why Barnes couldn't be in school. They were pack predators and he didn’t have the right pack instinct to join them. He'd have to be prey instead, the only alternative. Fair game.

“GOOGLE MOSQUITOFISH!”

“REQUEST ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED SERGEANT SNORKEL SIR!!!”
He recited a whole web site about them to me. He can remember anything he reads, so people call him Google. I like to play drill sergeant and have him do my homework for me. The drawback is he calls me “Snork” but it’s worth it.

I thought, I could do a science fair project on the mosquitofishing, enter it into the high school fair. For well rounded socialization we join the after school clubs. Google is not allowed into them anymore because he gets upset when teased, but he could do this project with me.

Mom took us out to eat at the Steakback Outhouse, and Google said, “I’d like to order the TillaPEEya”

“Ti-LAP-ia! is how it’s pronounced,” Mom said.

“How would I know, I only ever read the word.”

And he pronounced it that way again, and confused the waitress till she got the joke but tried not to smile in case he was serious. Then he gave us a lecture:

“Order it, guys, it’s good for you, it’s a vegetarian fish that doesn’t accumulate chemicals like a carnivorous fish. Even though it’s raised in fish farms with antibiotics and stuff. People got the idea to farm them cause someone let them loose in Florida in the canals and they bred like crazy.”

The next day we were looking at a green pool after the mosquitofish had swum off, and Google said,
“All those pools yesterday. I think I feel like I finally have enough aquariums. At home I used up all the extra electrical outlets for only five tanks. Here’s hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, these fish are related to guppies, and guppies are called “millions fish” because they breed so fast. This pool could get to be swarming with them. Why can’t we put Tillappeeya in here too?”

“They wouldn’t eat the mosquitofish, they’d just eat this algae? OK, why not piranhas then?”

“Yes! Piranhas would eat the raccoons that are trying to eat the mosquitofish.” He looked up something on his phone. “Piranhas are illegal, but people have them anyway. Tilapia we can order as baby fry but the shipping costs a lot and the minimum order is three thousand of them.”

He looked up, yelled, “PACU! A fruitarian fish that people eat in the Amazon! They’re free!”

“Why free?”

“On Craigslist. Everyone buys them at Petzoo, they are an inch long and about two dollars. They look cool, like a piranha. People don’t realize they are fry, their adult size is big as a Samsonite suitcase and they outgrow the tanks even if you can afford to feed them fruit and veggies. I had to give mine away on Craigslist when I was nine. Most of the teeny fish there at Petzoo are really huge when grown, they have it all worked out so people have to keep coming back to buy bigger tanks. Now I know better, I just breed small species.”

“So, put an ad on Craigslist, see if we can get some”.

“REQUEST NOTED SIR!!!” He typed hard on the tiny keyboard.

“Pacu Rescue will take your outgrown Pacus! Large natural habitat for their lifetime. Remember, don’t buy baby Pacus at Petzoo!!!!!”

Google set up a big extra tank in the garage and all week long people emailed us and dropped off their Pacus. Some were almost a foot long. We set them free in the biggest pool in the neighborhood. A kid climbed the fence and looked over.

“Hey, you shits were just here last week, why’d you come back? Did your mosquitofish die?”

“No, we need to come back weekly to give them more food. That apple tree in your yard, are there extras on the ground? Can you throw them all the way into this pool?”

“Yeah, you gonna bob for them like Halloween?”

Both hard and squashy apples hit us and the pool.

“Quit it, don’t hit the dog, she’ll bite you. Bet you can’t get them into that inner tube floating there!” The brat took the bait. Soon, the inner tube was holding about 20 apples. They thrashed up and down like floating shipwreck victims as the pacu attacked from below.

“See, the mosquitofish are really hungry.”

“Wow!”

“So, feed them every day, ten apples, ok? That’s your job now. And make your parents give you some leftover vegetables too. Just throw them into the feeder ring, like in an aquarium.”

“OK!”

“Don’t climb over this fence, the mosquitofish will eat you too if you fall in.”

“They’re piranhas, aren’t they!”

“Sort of.”

That night, we were both so happy. We had a fish rescue farm, and felt like we had increased something. Google said, “And, free labor, free fish food. Real fish farms are crappy for the environment because the fish are overcrowded and get sick. The feed and antibiotics and meds are expensive and pollute the fish and the ponds, plus they need to produce lots of fish to make money to pay the workers. The pacus won’t be crowded, and if they breed too much to be healthy, we’ll move some to another pool.”

“Are we going to eat them?”

“I don’t want to kill them. But Petzoo would probably buy the babies…”

“It needs turtles”

“It needs frogs.”

Google typed a new Craigslist ad. “ENSUR: Endangered Native Species Unlimited Rescue. Legal amnesty if you surrender your aquatic native species to our breeding colonies. Now accepting Pinkletink Treefrogs, Brahma Bullfrogs, and Brown Mudback Turtles.”

So, we didn't put the mosquitofish in that one. Mosquitofish would eat the treefrog tadpoles, and eat all the microorganisms that eat algae, and then there would be a worse algae bloom than before. They eat other fish fry and newt larvae, and bite larger fish's fins. Their scientific name is Gambusia, but ecologists call them Damnbusia, because of the way they mess up ecosystems. We decided we’d only put mosquitofish in the pools and smaller hot tubs that we didn't want to make ecosystems in. The other animals we were putting in the pools ate mosquito larvae too, anyway. The mosquito abatement center had told us that the pools would eventually dry up and the mosquitofish would die, or a freeze in winter would kill them off.

Our Craiglist ad got so many people replying. Either they were wracked with guilt about their illegal pets, or were tired of taking care of them, and were happy to put them in a breeding colony. We met people in a neutral zone. We arranged anonymous drop-offs so they could leave the animals in containers under the trees by the parking lot and drive away quickly. They felt good about letting their pets go and were helping save the planet, and some of them left cash in envelopes, also out of guilt.

Not much to eat for the new critters in the pool, though. We had to throw in snails we found under some boards, and earthworms from our compost heap at home. But there was dirt and leaves in the bottom of the pool, a good substrate.

Our next Craigslist ad was “ENSUR now accepting native species of fish and crayfish.” Meanwhile, we went to the pond at the local park and got buckets of sediment loaded with water insects and baby minnows to get the system started.

In the same yard, a pile of sand was left over from some building project. It would be so perfect for the turtles to lay eggs in.

The meetings always started with the slide show lecture from a discus breeding expert, or a koi show judge, or an ichthyologist who had vacationed at Cancun but spent the time netting in the swampy lagoons near the hotels. Then the fun part- the auction. Everyone had brought their extra fish and plants, and bid ferociously on each other’s stuff. Then they slipped back into their quieter selves and went home to nurture their tanks. Google took along his extra tropical fish in baggies, and came back with water lilies and cabomba and papyrus and anacharia. All were useful plants for the turtle pool.

After one meeting, Google brought home some long bald sticks in Dixie cups of mud.

“Twenty bucks each, but they were worth it. And I sold fifteen trios of Endlers Livebearers for ten bucks each. They said my Endlers were the most colorful, and I had the orange morphs nobody else had. The lecturer said Endlers are extinct in the wild now, they only evolved in one lagoon in Venezuela, and now it’s filled in for the town garbage dump. He was the one who saved them years ago and now only us fish people have them.”

He said everyone had wanted the sticks, but he had outbid them. I didn’t ask if they had let him win the auction on purpose, or if they were allowing him back anytime soon. If I got him mad he’d start screaming, so I asked him about the stupid-looking sticks.

“MANGROVE SAPLINGS! Everyone wanted them! They grow in salt or brackish water! They take root in your brackish water tank with puffer fish and scats, and they grow up outside it into a tree.”

“So, where’s the brackish water then?”
“That huge hot tub on Aguardia lane. The president of the Society told me he’d donate some bags of Instant Ocean.”

We stopped at the hot tub, mixed in the chemicals, then made a thick sloping mud flat coming out of the brackish water. Google stuck the mangroves in. I knew he was envisioning the the little trees on stilts in the Sundarbans tidal swamps on the Discovery channel show we’d seen.

“So, now where’s the maneating tigers that live in the Sundarbans, can you email Tiger Rescue?”

“Yes, Tippi Hedren has a good rescue. She was in the horror movie “The Birds”, and with her money she started a huge Big Cat Rescue compound. Like she wanted to make sure the cats would never let another bird near her again, I think.”

“She’s amazing, she said on TV that she had a tiger or something get loose in the town, they were going to shoot him. And you know how you should never run from a predator, even a tame one? She ran and ran, and the tiger chased her, she saved his life because she lured him all the way back into his pen just before he caught her. She’s brave. And you know how people give puppies shoes to chew on? Someone had a cute little lion cub that loved shoes to play with. When he grew up he still loved them, but he was playing with them while they were on people’s feet, he bit through some feet and he got donated to her ranch.”

“Well, to be practical, I always wanted a mudskipper. Mangrove mudflats are their habitat. They are trainable, they can sit on your finger like a parakeet for food. I’ll see if I can trade someone for some of them”.

We put some roadkill possum on the mud, to breed maggots and flies for the mudskippers to hunt when they went out on the mud flat. This substituted for the human corpses left by the floods there, I guess. That’s how the tigers learned to hunt people; they practiced by eating dead bodies of flood victims. Some fiddler crabs would complete the environment. That mudskipper doing tricks on YouTube? That’s ours!

But before we actually got the mudskippers, Google was trying to get a solar pump working to filter the water through a marshland of reeds sprouting at the top of the mudflat, and I was looking for useful junk at the other end of the yard, far away from the smell of the dead possum.

“Google! LOOK, it’s a LEOPARD! It just ran through that hole in the fence into that yard! But so small, it’s a cub!”

“Right, you mean a Sundarbans maneating tiger. Good one.”

“No, come on, I’m scared! What if it’s a mountain lion cub, they might have colonized the development, now it’s so empty.”

He didn’t believe me, and Momzilla did not seem upset, only alert, so we crept to the fence and looked through. A large house cat was standing lashing its tail and glaring at us. But- it was reddish gold and had leopard spots and a dark pink nose.
“What is it? I never saw a cat like that.”
“At least it’s smallish. Maybe it’s an ocelot?”

“Here, kitty kitty.”

The cat turned and walked toward us to the hole in the fence and yowled, ran to a rusty shed, then ran back to us and rubbed against the fence.

“It’s tame and hungry, let’s go feed it”

The house seemed abandoned, it was locked, but there was a bag of cat food in the old shed. The cat ate quickly. We heard a yowling growl from above, and looked up into the tree. It was partly enclosed by a chain link cage ten by ten feet. Spotted fur flashed to a hidden branch, and I realized there was a zoo stink way worse than tomcats or rotten possums.

“This is too weird. At least it can’t get us. What else is in this yard?”

“No, the question is, what’s that moving in the house?”

“Cats. I see them now. But they have those spots.”

“We have to call Animal Control, it’s a hoarder. The cats might be dying in there. The house has been empty a long time. Maybe the hoarder left?”

“But they never leave, that’s what being a hoarder is all about. The loony bin takes them away and Animal Control always has to euthanize the poor cats, I’ve seen it a million times on Animal Planet.”

“I’m breaking the window. They need air and food and water.”

I smashed the window with the end of a giant palm frond fallen from the other tree in the yard. We ran away to the fence, and cats started shooting out and rocketing their way into the bushes and over the fence. They didn’t attack us.

We dumped the food around the yard, and filled some old buckets with water from the hose.

“The water’s still on, so someone’s still living there?”

“Oh! In these bushes- baby kittens! Baby spot-cats! Their eyes are gunky.”

When we got home we told Mom that the shelter had asked us to foster some kittens. We knew the shelter would euthanize kittens with eye infections, so we lied. She said set them up in the garage and do NOT pester her for money for the vet, use my pay. I knew the shelter vet would give us some medicine for free, because we used to volunteer for him. We still had a playpen in there from our last batch of foster kittens, and we covered it with a sheet to make them feel safe. Also, so Mom wouldn’t freak when she saw their jaguar spots. Momzilla lay next to the playpen, ready to lick them if they came close.

We called the police about the house, and watched the news that night. The house had been a foot deep in pee and poop, and a woman was dead inside.

“Mrs. Lovell is estimated to have been dead for at least a week. She may have died from ammonia fumes that built up during the recent heat wave. Animal Control has removed 20 dead cats and is setting traps for the remaining live ones outside. DO NOT attempt to touch the cats if you see them. Some are Asian Leopard Cats kept in large cages in trees, these are a wild animal. Others are Bengal cats, a hybrid of the Asian Leopard Cat, and all may bite. These cats cost thousands of dollars and people may foolishly try to catch them. Remember, they are not socialized or vaccinated and will cost you more in hospital bills and rabies shots if you are bitten. Bengal Breeder Junga Djanghael is now with us”:

“Folks, these cats are not wild. They’re domestic cats that were only accustomed to their owner. I have bred hundreds of Bengals and they have never bitten anyone, they make wonderful pets.”

Then, cut to an annoyed Animal Control officer denying the breeder’s statements and condemning cat breeders and animal hoarders. A psychologist explained that hoarding cats was caused by the same part of the brain that motivates us to store up food for the winter, but sometimes went haywire from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Well, everyone needs a good supply of cats to keep them warm in the winter, I guess. But the psychologist said you know you have hoarding syndrome when you save all the dead ones and can’t throw the corpses out.

Maybe it was the opposite. Maybe the cats had hoarded Mrs. Lovell and didn’t want to throw her out, I thought.

We looked at each other and cheered, “This is as good as Animal Planet! And our kittens are Bengal kittens!”

“We'll take these floating lawn chairs, and if we put a grass layer and dirt on them, it'll be like shallows. Those reeds by the irrigation ditch should grow well if we transplant them.”

“What about the hot tub?”

“Same deal, except the reeds will grow on the bottom, go heave some dirt in there. We'll see which habitat the newts like better.”

“I know, hook that solar pump to run water back and forth from the pool to the hot tub. These drainpipes are big, won't get clogged. The tub with reeds will be a giant filter for the pool. The newts could even go back and forth if they wanted.”

“I've had about twenty California newts donated, they're in that old hot tub over on Chimminey lane for now, but I have to keep feeding them. This new place will keep them going till I find someone with a car to take them to a good wild habitat.”

At the Chimminey Lane house was a scungy guy lying in the bushes. He smelled of alcohol and old urine. He yelled at us.

“Hey, asshole, beer’s not ready yet!”

“Huh?”

“Oh, I thought it was Warren. Well, get out anyway. Come back Friday
night, party is ten bucks.”

“Ok, ok.”

We left.

Google said angrily, “So he's having a party there in the yard? He's on guard, looks like someone gave him booze to hang out in the bushes. Now we can't get the newts out.”

“Well we can go to the party, pay the money, and net the newts when
nobody is looking.” This was brave of me, it made me sick to my stomach to think of going there. Even a party of people I know would have been too awful. I hate people looking at me, especially the bullies that remember me from when I used to go to school.

We came back prepared for a bunch of sleazy people partying. Not much noise though, it was more like a speakeasy. The gate was shut and the homeless guy was looking through the latch hole.

“Warren said we could come.”

“Ok.”

Inside were various types of people, from homeless alkies to teenagers. One kid, we knew from a tutoring class.

“Hey let's get together sometime, thought you guys were the nerdly type. Moonshine?”

Googles’ contraptions were nothing to this. A propane BBQ was powering a still, with copper tubing stolen from the house and clear alcohol
dripping down.

"Hi, I'm Warren. We dug potatoes out of the garden for the still, smart, huh? Tastes better than Pruno!" He was a tall scrawny guy with a homeless tan. He loomed over us and smirked at me, looking down my shirt.

“Oh, I prefer the sunshine not the moonshine”, I said, clutching my plastic cup of hose water.

“Ar har har, we'll call it sunshine then, "Warrens’ California Sunshine!” His pirate leer was toothy.

I giggled goofily like I'd had some moonshine already. “But what about the beer?”

“In this hot tub kiddo, finest malt and hops from the do-it-yourself
beer kit!”

Our jaws dropped, the newt tub was bubbly and nasty looking. Warren
ladled a glass and sipped.

“Aaahhh, cmon kids, it’s the best I’ve made so far!”

He left. Google was looking murderous and stirring the beer around.

“They're gone, brewed up, those stupid fucker ASSHOLES killed them!”

I could imagine that this situation might turn into a police action.

“We can’t deal with this now, let's go.”

For some reason Google did not explode at the partygoers, instead he smiled at me, “Sure.”

Why he was being reasonable I could not figure, but there were enough mean-ass people there that he must have seen he was going to get beat up. Maybe he had finally started growing up, like his therapist had said he would when his brain matured. She put it in terms my family could understand: Like a fine vintage wine, my sour brother just needed time, if only everyone could put up with his perpetual teenagerhood.

An angry 13 year old is rotten to have around, but now Google was almost 16. Vintage Chateau San Quentin, if he didn’t start maturing soon.

Next day, he smiled wickedly at me. “I knew it! Look at the paper: “Fifteen Revelers In Hospital After Poisoned Moonshine Party: Foreclosed house became a speakeasy””

“So, I knew better than to drink that stuff. What do you mean, “I knew it”? Isn’t homemade moonshine always dangerous?”

“No, they said the symptoms were really atypical, like some drug was added. They have no idea why or what, but I think it’s the newt beer.”

“What????”

“California newts are deadly. It’s their skin toxin, a few years ago some stupid dude swallowed one for a joke, he died very fast.”

“Will they die?”

“They deserve to for killing my newts, but I guess the beer was diluted enough.”

“So newts really do make witches brew. And I thought they were so pretty with their orange stomachs and slow elegant ambling around, but it was warning coloration all along.”

“If I'd been rescuing cane toads, they'd've had hallucinations too.”