The seat belt light went on and I woke up sweating like a hot-sauce-slurping pig in a sauna.

“Quit moving around so much,” Mom hissed, clutching my arm. “You’ll make the plane wobble.”

Did I mention she’s not a good flyer? Actually, she is possibly the Most Nervous Passenger in the History of Flying.

I glanced at her tray table. Spread out across it was a rabbit’s foot, a four-leaf clover, a Bible, a copy of the Koran, a sprig of heather, a string of prayer beads, a silver cross of Saint Christopher, two barf bags, a “lucky” pebble shaped like Minnesota that she had found in the yard, a booklet about the plane’s safety features, a bottle of motion-sickness pills, a book by Dr. Enrique Meloma titled Don’t Freak Out at 35,000 Feet Ever Again!, and a laminated picture of the Dalai Lama.

I looked out of the window and immediately forgot all about my dream. The plane was coming in low over a perfect blue sea. We were arriving in Australia and it was all I could do to stay in my seat.

As we touched down and coasted alongside a strip of trees that lined the edge of the bay, I pressed my nose against the window and caught a glimpse of something furry moving in the upper branches. I looked closer and saw a flash of light as the sun winked off the creature’s eyes. I swear it was staring at me.

“Did you see that?” I said to Mom, but she had her eyes screwed shut and her hands clamped so tightly on the armrests that it was a miracle they weren’t broken yet. “Mom! I saw something in the trees!”

A deep voice came from behind my left shoulder and I jumped about six feet. It was the man in the row behind me, leaning forward.

“You saw something, son?” he said with a strong Australian accent. His face was leathery brown, and his blond hair was graying at the sides. He had the air of a man who wrestled crocodiles for fun.

I nodded. “In the trees.”

“Drop bears,” the man said gravely.

I saw the woman next to him glance at him quickly. “Terry…,” she said.

“The boy’s got to know, Shirl,” the man said in a voice that came all the way from down in his boots. “He’s a visitor to our country.”

Shirl shook her head and turned back to her magazine.

The man leaned forward as the plane taxied toward the terminal. His voice dropped to a whisper. “That was a drop bear you saw, son.”

“A drop bear?” I said. “I’ve never heard of them.”

“Exactly. That’s what they want,” the man replied. “Drop bears are the most dangerous animals in Australia. They call ’em koalas to throw you off the trail. I used to hunt them on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Every night they’d climb up there and cling to the steel—they like the warmth, you see—and every now and again one would drop down to hunt. They kill hundreds every year. Just drop down and rip out their brains while they’re still alive. Horrible, it is, just horrible.”

“Hundreds of what?” I gasped. “What do they kill?” The Discovery Channel had obviously missed something in its research.

There was a pause before he spoke, like he was weighing whether or not to give me some very bad news. “Tourists,” the man growled. “They feed on tourists, son.”

Oh, no.

I was a tourist.

“That’s enough, Terry,” Shirl said.

The plane came to a halt and the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign pinged off.

Terry unbuckled his seat belt, his face grim. “You take care, sonny,” he said. “Watch the skies and remember to take precautions.”

“What sort of precautions?” I asked, but he was already gone.