In less than two hours they were back from the trip into town but their worst fears had been realized as the sqwap was nowhere to be found. They split up and were frantically searching when Gen Bootzer, who had begun to think the creature might have been taken by an owl or something, heard squeaking noises and saw her oldest, Brody, jumping up and down.
The sqwap had given birth to eight baby blue kitten/ducks against the wall of the Bootzers' yurt, over by the mat where Brody slept. It was a beautiful sight as the tiny sqwaps were all nursing on their mother. The adults warned all of the children not to touch them for at least a few days. But the Bootzer tent was the gathering spot during that time, and it wasn't long before the little things were venturing out on their own.
Brody
Brody Bootzer played by himself a lot. Of course there were other children there but they were mostly playing by him, rather than with him. He loved vehicles of any kind and most of his play centered around getting his cars and trains and airplanes through imaginary trials: flinging them through loops, parachuting them from trees, forging them through the creek. He was loud when he played, louder than the others. If an adult asked him a question he would seldom answer, unless it was his mom, and then he would talk up a storm, never looking her directly in the face, though.
When he asked her for a plastic bowl it took him three tries to get her attention. After the second try he physically turned her face in his direction. Gen had no idea why he wanted the bowl-- she had thought he was asking for a boat. Whatever. She and the Gonkers' mother were deep in a discussion about a new brownie recipe made with black beans.
Brody took the bowl which he intended to use as a boat for his sqwap. He figured the sqwap must be bored of car and wagon and dump truck rides. At first he tried to float the thing in the moat by the yurts, but the water there was barely a trickle. Then he remembered that when his dad had taken just him for a walk around the acre last night there was much deeper water on the other side of the property. The 4 year old set off following the river-- by himself.
Weeks had passed since the birth of the sqwaps and it had been determined that there were six females and two males. Names had been proposed, of course, but since each of the children had their own ideas and all of the sqwaps looked similar, nothing so far had stuck. The big change was how wrapped up in the sqwaps the children had become-- so much so that no one had gotten around to going on a bookish adventure since the trip to see St. Francis.
And so it was that on a certain autumn day the children were busy, as usual, chasing after sqwaps, the mothers, wearing baby Hugo and Fred-Therese in back wraps, had been hanging freshly washed clothes on the lines they had strung, and the fathers had gone off to work in town. That was when Gen Bootzer noticed that her oldest was nowhere to be seen. “I'd better go find him.”
The Gonker's mother, Nicole, was humming to herself while continuing to pin cloth diapers to the line when she heard the most horrible scream she had heard in her life. The scream had come from the back area of the acre. It was followed by words she would never forget: “My baby is dead! My baby is dead!” Before anything else Nicole Gonker called 911. Then she she prayed a disjointed rosary as she ran to the area where she had heard Gen Bootzer's scream. She came upon the most horrifying sight.