s where they are! They're
coming!"

Suddenly a bunch of motorcycle cops zoom past, and then a cop backing up a
police car at about thirty miles an hour, which is a very
surprising-looking thing. Before I've hardly got my eyes off that, the
open cars come by. This guy Sparks is sitting up on the back of the car,
waving with both hands. By the time I see him, he's almost past.
Nice-looking, though. Everyone yells like crazy and throws any kind of
paper they've got. Two little nuts beside us have a box of Wheaties, so
they're busy throwing Breakfast of Champions. As soon as the motorcade is
past, people push through the barriers and run in the street.

Ben hunches over to protect his precious animals and yells, "Come on!
Let's get out of this!"

We go into my house first because I'm pretty sure we've got a wooden box.
We find it and take it down to my room, and Ben gets extra leaves and
grass and turns the lizards into it. He's sure they need lots of fresh air
and exercise. Redskin scoots out of sight into a corner right away. Big
Brownie sits by a leaf and looks around.

"Let's go look up what they are," I say.

The smallest lizard they show in the encyclopedia is about six inches
long, and it says lizards are reptiles and have scales and claws and
should not be confused with salamanders, which are amphibians and have
thin moist skin and no claws. So we look up salamanders.

This is it, all right. The first picture on the page looks just like
Redskin, and it says he's a Red Eft. The Latin name for his species is
_Triturus viridescens_, or in English just a common newt.

"Hey, talk about life cycles, listen to this," says Ben, reading. "'It
hatches from an egg in the water and stays there during its first summer
as a dull-green larva. Then its skin becomes a bright orange, it absorbs
its gills, develops lungs and legs, and crawls out to live for about three
years in the woods. When fully mature, its back turns dull again, and it
returns to the water to breed.'"

Ben drops the book. "Brownie must be getting ready to breed! What'd I tell
you? We got to put him near water!" He rushes down to my room.

We come to the door and stop short. There's Cat, poised on the edge of the
box.

I grab, but no kid is as fast as a cat. Hearing me coming, he makes his
grab for the salamander. Then he's out of the box and away, with Big
Brownie's tail hanging out of his mouth. He goes under the bed.

Ben screams, "Get him! Kill hi