The thermometer in Sammy’s Split-Second Lube was registering one hundred degrees when Professor Albert dropped off his car for an oil change the next day. It was too steamy to stay in the garage, so he walked across the street to the dollar discount store.
He browsed among the kitchen gadgets and the potted plants and the bathroom towels. Then he walked down the pet aisle.
And that is when he saw it.
It was a fabulous glass bowl with a beautiful palm tree and a little blue pool just the right size for a hermit crab. Gwendolyn would love it!
Professor Albert bought the bowl and a new chew bone for Kona, and he picked up his lubricated car and drove home.
Kona was very happy to get a new bone, and while he worked on that, Professor Albert helped Gwendolyn arrange herself in her new home.
Gwendolyn had always enjoyed the tropics, so she was delighted with the palm tree. And a pool! Gwendolyn dipped a delicate claw in the cool, clear water. Wonderful.
It made Professor Albert very happy to be good to his pets. And he did not even know that he was also good to a bat and four squirrels. But he was. And they tried to be good to him, too.
Stumpy polished Professor Albert’s mirrors with a paper towel while she was visiting his house. And she took away the dust bunnies from beneath his couch. When her children came along, she instructed them to weed Professor Albert’s flower beds, which they were good at and often tried to do upside down.
And although Murray ate a lot of Professor Albert’s snacks, Murray also brought him snacks. A fortune cookie from Norm’s Chinese Diner. A packet of hot sauce from Taco Craze. The little cups of creamer that people left on the tables outside Java Love. And at Easter, Murray had even tried to bring Professor Albert a whole bag of jelly beans, but Murray couldn’t help himself and he had eaten them all before he landed.
So there was great goodwill all around, and it was this feeling that every creature mattered that inspired Kona and Gwendolyn to make a brilliant plan to help the thirsty animals in Gooseberry Park.
First, they decided, they would need a crow.
Kona and Gwendolyn had been staying up late, trying to work out a master plan, and it did not take them long to realize they needed a crow. And not just any crow. They needed Herman.
All crows are smart, but Herman was a genius. This was common knowledge in Gooseberry Park. The annual crow chess match actually had to be canceled because Herman had won seven years in a row and everyone was too humiliated to try to beat him after that. Crows have their pride.
Kona and Gwendolyn needed a genius. The problem of getting water to all the newborns and the elderly in Gooseberry Park was a mathematical problem, said Gwendolyn. It involved volume and capacity and distribution and a flowchart.
“What’s a flowchart?” asked Kona.
“It is a mathematical map,” said Gwendolyn.
Kona was terrible at math. Especially fractions. When he and Professor Albert went to Bay Hay and Feed and Professor Albert ordered a quarter pound of oat biscuits, it just did not make sense to Kona. He watched the clerk put the biscuits on the scale, and all the numbers made his head spin. Kona could not understand why oat biscuits had to be so complicated. Couldn’t they just ask for five? It was easy to count to five. But no, the clerk had to put biscuits on the scale, then take biscuits off the scale, then put biscuits back on the scale. Just so Kona could have a snack. A one-quarter-pound snack. Whatever that was.
Kona couldn’t wait to find Herman.
Herman lived with his mother and four sisters in a Douglas fir on the east side of the park. They had always been a close family, and Herman would probably never leave home. Herman was something of a misfit out in the world. When all the other crows got raucous and felt like dive-bombing a boy on Rollerblades to make him drop his french fries, Herman held back. He was not raucous. He was quiet. He liked to read and to think. Reading and thinking bores most crows, so they found Herman boring.
But his family didn’t. They were all readers and thinkers. At suppertime every member of Herman’s family ate with a book in one foot. They hardly said a word at all during supper. Yet they felt quite warm toward one another. And they all felt loved for who they were.
So Kona knew that he would probably find Herman at home.
“Herman!” Kona called up the tree. “Herman! Are you home?”
Kona waited. He waited and waited. He waited and waited and waited.
“Herman?” Kona called again. “Are you there?”
Kona felt that Herman was there. But Herman would not answer him.
“It’s just that I have this mathematical problem to solve,” called Kona, “and I’m terrible at math and especially fractions, and I was just thinking maybe you—”
Suddenly a shiny black head appeared from between the tall upper branches.
“What kind of problem?” called Herman.
Kona smiled.
“Mathematical,” he said. “And moral. It’s a moral problem, too.”
“Mathematical and moral sounds nuclear,” said Herman.
“Oh, no,” said Kona. “Nothing like that. Heavens no. This concerns babies and the elderly.”
“Precisely,” said Herman.
“And the drought,” said Kona, finally getting to his point.
“Oh,” said Herman. “That. What a mess. It’s all the fossil fuels, you know.”
Kona was starting to feel very dumb. Much like all the crows who used to lose the chess matches.
“I didn’t know,” said Kona. “But Gwendolyn and I were wondering—”
“Who is Gwendolyn?” asked Herman, hopping to a lower branch. Above him, four crows’ heads had popped out and were watching.
“Are those your sisters?” Kona asked.
“Yes. Who is Gwendolyn?” asked Herman, hopping down a few more branches.
“She’s my friend, a hermit crab,” said Kona. “We live together.”
Herman cocked his head to one side.
“Hermit crabs fascinate me,” he said.
“Me, too,” said Kona.
Herman hopped onto a branch that was even with Kona’s big chocolate-brown head.
“I am good at solving problems,” said Herman.
“I know,” said Kona.
And that was the beginning of an amazing adventure.