Jurassic Park / Парк Юрского периода. Майкл Крайтон
Читать онлайн.| Название | Jurassic Park / Парк Юрского периода |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Майкл Крайтон |
| Жанр | |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 978-5-9909211-8-4 |
The lizard paused, cocked his head, and chirped. And then, without warning, the lizard jumped up onto her outstretched hand. Tina could feel its little toes pinching the skin of her palm, and she felt the surprising weight of the animal’s body pressing her arm down.
And then the lizard scrambled up her arm, toward her face.
“I just wish I could see her,” Ellen Bowman said. “That’s all. Just see her.”
“I’m sure she’s fine.”
“I just wish I could see her, is all,” Ellen repeated.
Then, from down the beach they heard their daughter’s voice. She was screaming.
Puntarenas
“I think she is quite comfortable now,” Dr. Cruz said, and lowered the plastic flap of the oxygen tent around Tina as she slept. Mike Bowman sat beside the bed, close to his daughter. Chnica Santa Maria, the modern hospital in Puntarenas, was spotless and efficient.
But, even so, Mike Bowman felt nervous. His only daughter was ill, and they were far from home.
When Mike had first reached Tina, she was screaming hysterically. Her whole left arm was bloody, covered with small bites, each the size of a thumbprint. And there were flecks of sticky foam on her arm, like a foamy saliva.
He carried her back down the beach to the car. Almost immediately her arm began to redden and swell. Mike couldn’t forget the drive back to civilization while his daughter screamed in fear and pain, and her arm grew more bloated and red. By the time they reached the hospital, the swelling had spread to her neck, and then Tina began to have trouble breathing.
“She’ll be all right now?” Ellen said, staring through the plastic oxygen tent.
“I believe so,” Dr. Cruz said. “I have given her another dose of steroids, and her breathing is much easier.”
Mike Bowman said, “About those bites…”
“We have no identification yet,” the doctor said. “I myself haven’t seen bites like that before. But you’ll notice they are disappearing. It’s already quite difficult to make them out. Fortunately I have taken photographs for reference. And I have washed her arm to collect some samples of the sticky saliva – one for analysis here, a second to send to the labs in San Jose, and the third we will keep frozen in case it is needed. Do you have the picture she made?”
“Yes,” Mike Bowman said. He handed the doctor the sketch that Tina had drawn, in response to questions from the admitting officials.
“This is the animal that bit her?” Dr. Cruz said, looking at the picture.
“Yes,” Mike Bowman said. “She said it was a green lizard, the size of a chicken or a crow.”
“I don’t know of such a lizard,” the doctor said. “She has drawn it standing on its hind legs…”
“That’s right,” Mike Bowman said. “She said it walked on its hind legs.”
Dr. Cruz frowned. He stared at the picture a while longer.
“I am not an expert. I’ve asked for Dr. Guitierrez to visit us here. He is a senior researcher at the Reserva Bioldgica de Carara, which is across the bay. Perhaps he can identify the animal for us.”
Dr. Guitierrez was a bearded man wearing khaki shorts and shirt. He explained that he was a field biologist from Yale who had worked in Costa Rica for the last five years. Marty Guitierrez examined Tina thoroughly, then measured the bites with a small pocket ruler and asked several questions about the saliva. Finally he turned to Mike Bowman and his wife. “I think Tina’s going to be fine. I just want to be clear about a few details,” he said, making notes. “Your daughter says she was bitten by a green lizard, approximately one foot high, which walked upright onto the beach from the mangrove swamp?”
“That’s right, yes.”
“And the lizard made some kind of a vocalization?”
“Tina said it chirped, or squeaked.”
“Like a mouse, would you say?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then,” Dr. Guitierrez said, “I know this lizard.” He explained that, of the six thousand species of lizards in the world, no more than a dozen species walked upright. Of those species, only four were found in Latin America. And judging by the coloration, the lizard could be only one of the four. “I am sure this lizard was a striped basilisk lizard[2], found here in Costa Rica and also in Honduras. Standing on their hind legs, they are sometimes as tall as a foot.”
“Are they poisonous?”
“No, Mrs. Bowman. Not at all.” Guitierrez explained that the swelling in Tina’s arm was an allergic reaction. “According to the literature, fourteen percent of people are strongly allergic to reptiles,” he said, “and your daughter must be one of them.”
“She was screaming, she said it was so painful.”
“Probably it was,” Guitierrez said. “Reptile saliva contains serotonin, which causes tremendous pain.” He turned to Cruz. “Her blood pressure came down with antihistamines?”
“Yes,” Cruz said. “Promptly.”
“Serotonin,” Guitierrez said. “No question.”
Still, Ellen Bowman remained uneasy. “But why would a lizard bite her in the first place?”
“Lizard bites are very common,” Guitierrez said. “Animal handlers in zoos get bitten all the time. And just the other day I heard that a lizard had bitten an infant in her crib in Amaloya, about sixty miles from where you were. So bites do occur. I’m not sure why your daughter had so many bites. What was she doing at the time?”
“Nothing. She said she was sitting pretty still, because she didn’t want to frighten it away.”
“Sitting pretty still,” Guitierrez said, frowning. He shook his head. “Well. I don’t think we can say exactly what happened. Wild animals are unpredictable.”
Mike Bowman then showed Guitierrez the picture that Tina had drawn. Guitierrez nodded. “I would accept this as a picture of a basillsk lizard,” he said. “A few details are wrong, of course. The neck is much too long, and she has drawn the hind legs with only three toes instead of five. The tail is too thick, and raised too high. But otherwise this is the lizard.”
A day later Tina was released from the hospital. “Go on. Say thank you to Dr. Cruz,” Ellen Bowman said, and pushed Tina forward.
“Thank you, Dr. Cruz,” Tina said. “I feel much better now.”
Dr. Cruz smiled and shook the little girl’s hand gravely. “Enjoy the rest of your holiday in Costa Rica, Tina.”
“I will.”
The Bowman family had started to leave when Dr. Cruz said, “Oh, Tina, do you remember the lizard that bit you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You remember its feet?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did it have any toes?”
“Yes.”
“How many toes did it have?”
“Three,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I looked,” she said. “Anyway, all the birds
basilisk lizard –