The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt Page B

peekedunderneath the seat. Sure enough, he saw the blockage too. “Why haven’t we ever noticed this before?” he asked.
    J’miah said, “Because we never swept out the garbage before!” Did we detect a note of testiness coming out of J’miah? Why yes, we believe we did. But Bingo decided to ignore it.
    Still, the blockage was a mystery. He was just about to crawl under there too when he heard a distinct pop! Bingo’s tuft stood straight up. “What was that?” he asked.
    J’miah had discovered a wire spring on the side of the box, and when he pulled it forward, for the first time in more than sixty years, it popped open with a rush of sixty-plus-year-old air. But because the hinges were a little rusted, our raccoon could only get the lid to open a tiny crack, only wide enough to stick his curious little paw deep inside it.
    At first, he couldn’t feel anything. Nothing. Just the cool, smooth interior of the metal box. So he reached a little farther.
    Nothing.
    Farther.
    Noth— Something!
    Sure enough, he felt something.
    A leaf? It felt like a leaf. Only not exactly a leaf. It was thicker than a leaf. Stiffer than a leaf.
    He gave it a tug. Out it came, a piece of square whitepaper, but it wasn’t like the paper that he had found wrapped around soup cans, or the rough paper that turned into mush when it got wet. This was a different kind of paper. It was slick and shiny. J’miah lifted it to his nose and sniffed. It had an odd smell, not like the grass or the flowers or even the bayou. Rather it was something pungent and a little sticky. Then he turned the papery object over and discovered that the other side wasn’t white at all. Instead, it was gray with a darker gray and black shape on it.
    An armadillo! J’miah brushed his discovery off on his fur, and the image grew shiny.
    â€œArt!” he exclaimed. The square papery thingie was art! He crept out from under the seat and held it in front of Bingo’s face. “Look!”
    â€œHmm . . . ,” Bingo said. He looked at it closely. The image was clearly an armadillo. He had never seen an actual rendering of an armadillo before, and frankly, he had never found armadillos to be all that attractive. They were in the possum category, so far as he was concerned, and they had very squinty eyes and rather ratlike tails.
    Nevertheless, there was an armadillo in two dimensions. Yes, he thought, it must be art. Then he watched J’miah gently place it right on the front dashboard so that both of them could admire it.
    J’miah sat back and studied it. Every home should havesome art, that’s what he had always believed, and just because he and Bingo lived in Information Headquarters did not mean that they couldn’t have some art. He squinted his eyes and focused on the armadillo. It was way better than the occasional bottle cap or gum wrapper that he had found on the banks of the bayou.
    He loved it even though it was just an ordinary armadillo. And the more he studied it, the more he thought that the armadillo looked a little surprised, as if the artist had caught it off guard.
    While the rain poured all around them, the raccoon brothers stood side by side and admired their new decoration. It was a happy moment in Scoutville.

41
    L ET ’ S RECALL ANOTHER EVENING OF driving rain, when someone else waited in the DeSoto. Yep, Audie Brayburn. Can you remember how he had just taken that photo of the Lord God bird? How he had stumbled, exhausted, into the swamp and finally found his way back to his car? How he fell, into the backseat, into a deep, deep sleep? How he felt a bump in the night?
    Can you recall all that? It was way back in 1949, more than sixty years ago. Well, while he slept, there were three things that Audie Brayburn, Honorary Swamp Critter, didn’t know.
    A.  There was so much rain that night that the water came out of the banks of the Bayou Tourterelle. It