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Grandma’s dish.
    “Excellent work, Aaliyah. As the folks at Carters’ Urban Rescue tell us, education is the key to preventing many wildlife mishaps. Well, I think that’s it for old business. The first item of new business would be …” Big Bob squinted at his palm, where he’d written the agenda. “Ah, yes. The squirrel shenanigans over at Mt. Mercy College. I was
hoping
 … um … that club member Keisha Carter would give us a report.”
    Mmmmm. From across the room, Grandma got an eye scolding from Keisha. She had told her granddaughter that
she
would fill in the Wild 4-Evers. Grandma just shrugged.
    Savannah gave her a gentle push on the shoulder. “That’s you,” she whispered.
    Keisha hadn’t been nervous during “old business” because she didn’t know she’d have to give a report. As much as Aaliyah liked all the attention on her, whenever Keisha had to make a report, she had the same fluttery feeling she got before she performed her freestyle program. She took a big breath.
    “Alice thought you’d like to make the report, sweetie.” Big Bob looked sorry. Grandma was avoiding Keisha’s eyes.
    “Some people need more practice performing,” Grandma whispered loudly to the boys surrounding her.
    “Keisha has good nerves,” Razi told Zack and Zeke. “She practices them a lot.”
    Keisha felt her knees go weak. The breath still hadn’t come out.
    All of a sudden Keisha felt Savannah standing next to her. She was pressing her shoulder into Keisha’s. Keisha
knew
how she was going to introduce Savannah because she’d practiced what she’d say with Mama. “Savannah is from Montgomery Springs, Alabama, and her favorite 4-H activity was working with horses. She did dressage.”
    Keisha and Mama had never heard the word “dressage” before, so they looked it up on the Internet. It was a special kind of horseback riding, and it was pronounced
druh-SAHZH.
    Savannah took Keisha’s hand and looked into her eyes as if asking her:
Do you need help?
    Did Southern girls understand eye language?
    Her mouth was completely dry, though she did manage to breathe out and back in again. She gave Savannah an eyes-wide look that meant—
Yes … help!
    “Can I say something about squirrels at the University of Alabama?” Savannah asked Big Bob. Savannah’s Southern accent took all the attention off Keisha. Some of the kids giggled.
    “Sure,” Big Bob answered, looking just as relieved as Keisha that she was off the hook.
    “My big brother, Beau, goes to the U of A. Once, during Family Week, we were sitting on the lawn of the quad having a picnic, and a squirrel hopped up on the table and drank out of my cousin’s juice box.”
    All the kids laughed about this.
    “Did he use the straw?” Marcus asked.
    “Well, how else do you drink out of a juice box?”
    Keisha wasn’t sure if it was the image of a bushy squirrel slurping juice or the way everyone was cracking up that got her tongue unstuck from the bottom of her mouth.
    “At Mt. Mercy, they’re running at the students and begging for food. They’re trying to get into the college administration building. They dangle on the window ledges and leap from the trees onto the side of the building. Mr. Fox, the man we talked to, said it’s hard to do business.”
    “He could pull down the shades,” Zeke suggested. “That’s what we do when the Pipers use their leaf blower and get dirt on the side of our house.”
    “My dad threw his shoe at a squirrel that was sitting on our grill,” Marcus added. “The bad part was his shoe went over the fence and the Thomases weren’t awake. When he tried to climb their fence, their dog Trixie tore his pants.”
    Even Wen had a squirrel story. “I watch the squirrels drop black walnuts on the driveway. I think they mean to bury them, but a lot get left on the driveway and then there’s a big mess.”
    While the kids were talking, Big Bob was taking pieces of wood out of the box and playing with how