“What’s filly —”
“Being nice to your parents. Work hard, keep family strong! And she’s impressed that we’ve got Grumps living with us — that’s filial piety big-time.”
“Is your driving getting any better?” Sumac remembers to ask, when her brother’s halfway out the door.
“Buzhidao,” says Sic, his hand doing a so-so gesture. “Hard to tell, when she calls me an idiot all the time.”
Out in the Wild, the others are waiting for Sumac to lead the Monarch Tag.
A butterfly nerd couple — not two nerdy butterflies, but a human husband and wife who were nerds about butterflies — started the project here in Toronto back in the 1940s. Sunset’s the best, when the monarchs are roosting. You creep up from behind and sweep the net over the butterfly, then flip the end of the net over the handle so it can’t escape. Hold the edge of the wings through the mesh, reach in with the other hand and grasp it gently by its back. Only the boy ones have a black spot on the hind wing.
“Gotcha,” howls Aspen.
Sumac goes over to check. “No, that’s a viceroy — see the black line across the hind wings?”
Aspen makes her evilest orc face at Sumac and turns her net inside out to release the viceroy.
Brian spends most of the time chasing them, waving her net and shouting, “Butterfly, stop!” They fly about twenty kilometers an hour, so she has no chance, especially in her fire truck, but nobody wants to discourage her. Brian’s legs are bloody from bramble scratches, but she doesn’t even seem to notice.
Kid fingers are actually better at sticking on the tiny tags than adult ones. You note down the tag code, date, location, name, and address on the data sheet, peel the backing off the tag, press it over the mitten-shaped cell on the wing … then release the monarch on the nose of whichever kid caught it. That last bit isn’t science, just tradition. It feels tickly but amazing: like you’re a launchpad for a tiny rocket.
“It’s so that somebody might find this butterfly after she’s been to Mexico and back and died,” Sumac explains to Brian, “and they’ll email to say where she ended up.”
“I don’t want her died!”
“Just of being old,” says Sumac, regretting that she mentioned that detail. “She’ll be really tired by then.”
“Us too?”
“No,” Sumac tells her, “next spring we’ll still be young.”
Aspen says, “Grumps!”
“You mean that he’s old?”
“No, I mean, we could tag him in case we lose him again. Maybe an electronic one like the thing on CardaMom’s suitcase that beeps if she walks too far away from it.”
Sumac frowns. “I don’t think Grumps would put up with that. It might feel like he’s a dog, or under house arrest.”
“It wouldn’t give him an electric shock or anything,” says Aspen.
“No, but imagine if he’s going for a walk and suddenly starts beeping…. Awkward!”
They can’t find any more monarchs so they head back toward the house. Topaz is splayed in a patch of sun like a furry orange starfish, so Aspen kneels to stroke her belly. In the vegetable patch, PapaDum and Grumps are transplanting shallot seedlings. Watching the two men bent over, working without a word, it occurs to Sumac that PapaDum might suit Grumps as a son better than PopCorn.
Brian wants a snail race, so she and Sumac and Aspen each find one in the bushes and put them down on a shady slab. In chalk they draw one start line and one finish line.
Sumac remembers a joke from the book, exactly the right one for this moment. She takes a breath and remembers not to announce that she’s telling a joke. “What does a snail say when it’s riding on a turtle’s back?”
Aspen looks at her warily.
To deliver the punch line, Sumac makes her best attempt at the facial expression of a joyriding snail. “Wheeeeeeeee!”
Aspen, Brian, PapaDum, and even Grumps burst out laughing.
“You did it,” cries Aspen.
Sumac sticks out her tongue and smiles.
“Wheeeee!” repeats Grumps, chuckling.
“Your grandfather’s good with a trowel,” says PapaDum, straightening up and arching his back till it clicks.
“Dig, dig, dig,” Grumps sings under his breath,
And your muscles will grow big.
Don’t mind the worms,
Just ignore their squirms …
The kids all laugh at that.
“Had a pig club,” he adds.
“What did it do?” asks Aspen.
“The pig?”
“No, your club.”
Grumps shrugs. “Went round collecting scraps, fed our pig everything we could find. Rabbits too.”
“You fed it rabbits?” asks Sumac in horror.
“No, you numpty! We kept a few rabbits too, on the side, like.”
“You teached them tricks?” Brian wants to know.
He stares at her. “Kids today, no sense of reality. The rabbits were for the pot!” He mimes munching. “But Sausage Day, when the pig got butchered” — he slits his throat with a finger — “that was champion.”