DEDICATION For my old friend and former boss Tom Otten previous director of the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma Washington where we tried to help animals in situ and ex situ and even managed to set some of them free
1 CHAPTER Ring Wilde moved through the semi-dark house like a thief He didn’t want to wake anyone Dim morning light was beginning to filter through the large living room windows overlooking his parents two-thousand-acre wildlife conservation center the Wilds The early bird catches the worm he thought as he stepped into the spacious kitchen He opened the refrigerator and took out the small container he’d hidden on the bottom shelf the night before And the early worm catches the fish He smiled as he slipped the white cardboard container into his backpack On top of the container he stuffed in an assortment of food enough to last until evening Bologna a half loaf of bread sliced cheddar cheese mustard mayo a large chunk of Greta’s apple pie and three sodas The food stretched his small pack full to bursting but he wasn’t worried about it He’d eat his way through the bulk throughout the day If someone doesn’t catch me first
2 As he swung the heavy pack on he was surprised by a ghostly white fluttering to his left Hamburger Boo screeched loud enough to wake the dead then landed on the pack The early bird catches me Quiet Ring hissed Shh He hurried to the sliding glass door leading to the deck with Boo clutching his backpack He slid open the door and stepped outside Boo jumped off the pack and fluttered to the rail glared at him then started preening his white feathers as if nothing had happened Hamburger Ring said Really The bird continued to preen Boo was a sulfur-crested cockatoo Ring’s mother Dr Jane Wilde had found the abandoned nearly dead featherless hatchling on the ground while she was studying koalas in the Australian outback long before Ring and his sister Asia were born She had hand-raised it The name Boo was short for boomerang because when set free the bird always returned Boo had accompanied Dr Jane all over the world on every field project like a good luck charm or strange pet Ring hadn’t seen Boo since they had been in the Amazon rainforest several weeks earlier One of his mother’s research assistants must have flown up with the cockatoo the night before You never knew what word or words Boo would latch on to He had picked up hamburger from Ring when they were in the Amazon CAPTIVITY
