Biology Reference
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hear the ribbon shatter ten feet below. I may have said something to David, because Nancy
told me to stop giving him directions.
“Is she always like this?” she asked him. They smiled at each other. I shut up and took
one of the paddles so I could save us. The motor sputtered to life and then settled down into
trolling-motor Zen. The boat, finally under David's control, crawled away from the overflow
and toward the center of the huge pond, dotted with floating islands of lily pads.
Water is not my element, though I like to look at it. My childhood swimming lessons were
spent in a quiet panic. Water came up over my nose even in the shallowest end of the pool. I
was short and skinny, with big bones that jutted out and no fat to help me float. I would sink,
gulping chlorinated water; my long pigtails were ropes pulling me under while the instructor
looked on, disappointed.
Water is Solo's element. He loves it and knows he has blanket permission—unless I spe-
cifically forbid it and sometimes even when I do—to dive into any available body of water or
mud hole. Now he was singing a throaty paean that carried across the pond.
I could see his point. A great blue heron rose up out of the loblollies in primordial slow
motion. Crappie, bullhead, bass, and catfish lurked beneath the lily pads and hunkered under
the scrubby swamp roots that reached out into the alluvial floodplain. I couldn't see them,
but a blue-gray-and-chestnut belted kingfisher knew they were there. She was perched on a
snag, her outsize head cocked slightly. At our approach, she dropped and flew along the edge
of the shore with a chittering rattle of irritation.
Though she was out of my league, I, too, knew how to fish. My grandfather, my father,
and my brothers had taught me everything from worm-and-bobber fishing to fly-fishing. I
knew how to creep up on a deep hole in a creek without casting a shadow or creating bank
tremors that the brook trout could feel. In high school, I had made my own spinning rods,
carefully layering thread to fix the guides onto the graphite poles. I stopped fishing thirty
years ago. I wasn't patient, and I ended up feeling sad for the fish. I still like to eat them.
It was past time for me to return to the water. This time, I could let Solo find the fish. He
was now seven years old. In the not-too-distant future, his increasing mental prowess would
no longer be able to compensate for his slowly decreasing physical prowess. But as long as
Solo had a good nose, water cadaver might extend his callout life.
That was why Nancy was pushing us out onto the water, toward certification. I'd turned
down a healthy handful of water searches, and I hated saying no. One investigator swore that
the victim had just walked straight out into the lake with his boots on, no way it was a crim-
inal case. Could I please bring Solo? I was so sorry to say no. Mike Baker pointed out to me
that all the investigators had to do was put on hip waders and walk straight out into the lake
a few yards to find the victim themselves. Sometimes it is that simple. Sometimes the body
floats. Mostly, it's more difficult. For people, that is. That's when dogs can help.
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