PART ONE: CAITLIN

The loud cracking of a fallen pine branch underneath Caitlin's feet may as well have come from a bullet, as she and her target began a frantic chase to see who could outrun the other first. Her white sneakers had lost their color rapidly due to her near-daily excursions out into nature, and the dirt and water that sullied them had traveled its way up her foot to her socks and the bottom of her long pants. The animal she was chasing was over a meter long and pure black save for a white chin, but the fact that it was legless didn't seem to be a hindrance at all.

Behind Caitlin and the snake, hurrying to catch up, were Jim and Serena, the former a tall, muscular man with his brown hair reduced to a buzz cut, who was primarily here to watch over the girls, the latter a slightly shorter, pudgier twelve-year-old than the one she was struggling to capture moving footage of with the video camera in her hand. Navigating their way through the forest, they were finally able to catch a breath when Caitlin raised one arm and shouted, "Over here!"

Caitlin had the snake cornered against a boulder, but at any moment it could make a dash to the side. With this in mind, she silently directed her father and her best friend to each barricade one of these escape routes. She glanced back at the camcorder in Serena's hand, and then used her eyes to remind her to put the focus on the snake. As the creature lifted its neck up and hissed, Caitlin slowly lowered her torso, waiting for the right moment to make a grab. After a narrowly missed snap at her forearm, the snake turned to make another run for it, and this was Caitlin's chance.

In one fluid motion, she placed her foot over the snake's tail, pinning it down as she wrapped her hands around the smooth black scales of the animal's midsection, keeping a firm but gentle grip as she lifted the snake up off the ground. She spread her hands further apart so that more of the snake was under control, though it continued to shake violently, lashing its tail like a whip against her jade green t-shirt. With a happy sigh she turned to face the camera.

The green eyes that looked to her future audience conveyed the sense that she was overjoyed just to be here, despite having done things like this all her life. Smiling, with Serena smiling back at her from the other side of the lens, Caitlin began her lesson by stating the obvious: "Wow, we got lucky, everybody." Holding up the snake to the camera, she explained:

"This is a racer, a southern black racer, to be exact, and I'm hoping you just got a sense of how well they live up to their name. Now, their scientific name is Coluber constrictor, but they don't actually constrict their prey, which is mostly rodents, birds, and even other snakes. Instead they pin it down with one of their coils." She paused to admire the reptile writhing in her hands, and continued to do so even as it defecated a foul-smelling white fluid onto her. She giggled involuntarily.

"When they feel threatened, some snakes, like this racer, garter snakes, and others, will release a musk, like the one you see on my clothes right now, to ward off enemies. This species can also make a rattling sound with its tail for the same reason, but they're not venomous," she assured them, shaking her head. She looked into the snake's bright red eyes, trying to imagine how it must feel at this moment. Terrified, no doubt. Caitlin considered herself proud to be among those not disgusted by snakes and other reptiles on principle.

"I think this guy's been through enough for today," she said, and with a nod to the camera, she cautiously lowered the racer onto the ground beside the boulder, and like lightning it disappeared out of sight, scarcely leaving a trail behind on the floor of pine needles. "Until next time, this is Caitlin Webster, signing off."

"And…" Serena said, as Caitlin watched the red light of the camera disappear, "you're off." She removed the camera strap from around her palm and tucked the device inside her pocket.

"Well, that was exciting, wasn't it?" Caitlin said with a grin, wiping some of the racer's musk off her shirt and pants, while Serena expressed her agreement with a nod. "What do you think, Dad?" she said, turning to Jim, who had a familiar mix of bewilderment and pride on his face.

"You know me," he replied in his Southern accent, though it had been hardened by years of military service. "I think you're crazy, but if doing this makes you happy, more power to you."

"Crazy is relative," Serena remarked.

"Yeah," Caitlin said, "it's not like we spend our days trying not to get killed by enemy fire, then coming home and trying not to get killed by regular fire," thus summing up Jim's two major careers quite well.

"But I think she was asking about this particular incident."

"I was."

"See?"

"In that case," Jim said, "I'm just glad it wasn't a poisonous snake you were dealing with."

"Venomous, Dad, venomous," Caitlin corrected him.

"Right, sorry," he said. "What's the difference again?"

"Bites and stings are venom," Caitlin said. "Everything else is poison."

"Bites and stings, right." He glanced back and forth between the two girls, then at his watch. "It's getting late. We should be heading home. Serena, are you staying for dinner, or—"

"Heading home," Serena said.

As the three of them wandered back to Jim's truck through the forest, Caitlin shifted her attention from the ground to the trees, listening to birds making their last calls of the day as the sunlight was fading away. Normally, she would be trying to find and identify them as she did the reptiles and amphibians she'd looked for earlier, but she didn't have her binoculars with her, and in any case was exhausted from a busy weekend that had only been made busier by homework the day before.

Two weeks into the seventh grade, her first taste of middle school, and she needed these outdoor escapes more than ever. No longer did she have only one teacher handing out assignments; now she had six, each running their own show, and they didn't care how much work the others had already given her. At least Mr. Biddle, her science teacher, understood the passion she and Serena had for reptiles. He had the anoles in his room to prove it. When they'd told him they were working on their own nature documentary, he'd even offered them extra credit if they presented it to the class. They were going to need it, that's for sure.

Caitlin turned to look at her father. A lifetime of following orders, first under commanding officers in Iraq and Somalia, and then under more senior firefighters since he'd returned home to Gainesville had left him stoic but strong. He'd seen some horrific things, but nothing had prepared him for the news that broke just the past Tuesday. While driving Caitlin to school that morning, he'd nearly gotten into an accident, so shocked had he been to hear the reporter on the radio describe the scene in New York, the twin towers falling, another plane crashing in Pennsylvania. For all the things he'd done, Caitlin had never seen him look genuinely scared. And that was before they even saw the video footage of the attacks.

Seeing her parents, Jim, the former Marine and now firefighter, and Mary-Ann, a police officer for seventeen years, displaying such an uncharacteristic emotion as fear over the past week was humbling for Caitlin. It put things in perspective. Their motivation to help people was stronger than she had ever seen it, and although Caitlin liked to proclaim herself a badass just like them, for daring to handle wild animals, the truth was, she was not the stuff real heroes were made of. Unless you were gathering antivenin from a venomous snake to help save a bite victim, or you somehow managed to rescue someone from the iron jaws of a crocodilian (more than likely getting yourself killed in the process), herpetologists rarely got to save the day.