Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Steve sent the green handlers and their dogs away from the scene to wait to be called. I
offered a hand, and Steve and I went about staging an illusion for the handlers that would
teach them to trust their dogs' noses.
The grasses and weeds on the side of the hill next to the plant were thigh-high. The sandy
hill was steep, nearly a forty-five-degree angle. As I crawled up in the dark with Steve, almost
on my hands and knees, I thought about Florida's coral snakes. I'd never seen one in the wild,
but their identifying stripes—“red touches yellow, kill a fellow”—wouldn't be visible in this
darkness.
It took us a mere forty-five minutes to set the scene, although it felt longer. We were both
sweating in the mild night air. I hauled three big waste containers from the other side of the
public works and tugged them up onto the hill, scattering them so they looked like they had
been dropped willy-nilly by aliens out of UFOs. Steve found the old hole dug for a training
two years before. He cleared it of the roots and weeds that had taken over, and we used our
feet to stomp the garbage can down into the hole until its lid was even with the ground. With
his penknife, Steve made a small hole in the lid. Casting about the waning beam of a flash-
light, I finally found a tough golden graduation tassel on the floor of one of the buildings
that would do the trick; we knotted it and ran it through the small hole, so the handler who
hid in the can could hold down the lid if a dog found him and decided to dig him out. We
tested it and retested it, tugging hard on the tassel, amending it with an extra knot. We pulled
brush over the can and stood back and admired our handiwork. The buried garbage can was
invisible even a few feet away.
We stashed a decoy handler, helping him into his garbage-can prison. Steve handed him
a latex arm. Steve had constructed it from liquid rubber, using his son's arm as a mold. It
was a work of art—ductile and creepy—a toothsome reward, just in case a dog and handler
managed to work out the elaborate problem. We stood at the bottom of the hill, looking up,
bemoaning age and complaining joints.
Steve got on the radio. The first handler, Dave Lopez, arrived in his patrol car, pulling up
hard just inside the gate. Steve briefed Dave on what was happening—maybe one, maybe
two guys ran this way after a robbery. He warned Dave that feral cats and raccoons were
everywhere. That the guys were dangerous. Just over the hill, people were having a late-night
barbecue. “Be careful,” Steve warned him.
Dave didn't start the search where he should have, given the wind direction out of the
northwest. It was a beginner's error, one that gave him a huge advantage. Lughar dragged
him around the near side of the mushroom-shaped treatment plant, where Steve and I had
retraced our steps, tracking us backward along the bottom of the hill. Then Lughar flipped
his whole body. He had hit the decoy's scent coming down the side of the hill in less than a
minute.
