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  “Oh my gosh!” Jing gasps. “I wasn’t thinking. For some reason, I just really wanted to hold it.”

  You can understand why. The frog was so cute, like the tiny rubber toys you used to get in goody bags as a little kid, but you know that even a slight touch of their skin on yours can be lethal. And the more brightly colored the frog, the more poisonous it is.

  “Let’s get back to camp,” Jing says. “I’ve got enough photos for today. And I’ve had enough close calls!”

  “Sure,” you say. “It’s getting late anyway.”

  The two of you head back in the direction you came in. Or so you thought. After a while, you realize that you’ve been walking in a big circle, and you end up in the same spot you were in before.

  “I think camp is that way,” Jing says, pointing to your left.

  “Are you sure? I thought it was that way.” You point in the opposite direction.

  Uh oh. This could be bad. You do not want to be lost in the jungle.

  → continue this adventure!

  “Okay. I’m coming,” you say. You take the extra battery out of the camera bag that Nathan’s left on the shore and walk to the edge of the river.

  “It’s starting to get dark,” you caution again. “Remember, caimans hunt at night.”

  “Do you see any gators around here?” Nathan asks. “It’s clear. And I’ll be done filming in a few minutes.”

  You look at the anaconda and understand why Nathan doesn’t want to stop filming. The mammoth snake, which is the largest in the world, is simply astonishing. It could be as long as six of you! You’re are amazed that you’re lucky enough to see the mighty snake sunning itself on a branch. Anacondas spend a lot of time hidden underwater until their prey come near them. Then they wrap themselves around whatever’s unlucky enough to come along—like fish, deer, caimans, and tapirs.

  Taking a good look around again, you don’t see anything. So you gently wade into the water, carrying the battery high enough that it won’t get wet. Caimans are attracted to splashing, so you’re careful not to stir up the waters.

  “Thanks, mate. See, you’re hardly making a ripple and won’t disturb a thing,” Nathan says.

  “This will be amazing to put on the blog tonight,” you reply, starting to get excited about the comments that students from all around the world post about your entries. You know that they’re learning a lot about the Amazon from you—and it feels great to get fan mail.

  Suddenly, you hear Nathan yell. Something is pulling him into the river!

  “What the…” he shouts, letting go of the camera. PLOP!

  Caimans. You knew it! You start to stumble back to shore, but next thing you know, you feel something sharp pierce your foot and yank you underwater…

  THE END

  “If it’s okay with you, I think we should keep trying to get back to camp,” you say. Even though you could try to build a shelter and wait out the night, you doubt you’d actually be able to get any sleep without your hammock or mosquito net. Plus, you know everyone must be worried sick about you. If you don’t come back all night, who knows what kind of panic that might create.

  “That’s fine,” Jing says. “I’m scared of sleeping out here anyway.”

  You mark the tree where you are and start to walk in one direction, flattening the vegetation on the ground to make a clear path. Then you follow your path back to your tree and make another path outward, looking for signs of the route you took from camp. You do this a few more times, making a new path each time. But as it gets darker, it’s getting more and more difficult to make your way without getting hurt.

  “Watch out!” Jing says as you stumble over a fallen tree branch in the dark. You feel a thorn scrape along your pants and tear them a little, and you check for blood. You wonder what you and Jing will look like when you finally do get back to camp. If you ever get back.

  “OW!”

  You suddenly feel a stabbing pain in your shoulder and reach for it, but nothing is there.

  “What happened?” Jing asks nervously.

  You feel your shoulder throbbing and blood flowing.

  “Something bit me!” you gasp.

  “I saw it fly away,” Jing says. “I think it was a vampire bat!”

  You hope Jing is wrong. Vampire bats don’t suck all your blood out like in horror movies, but they bite with razor-like teeth and suck out some of it. And, they can give you rabies in the process.

  Jing uses a shirt to help you stop the bleeding and builds a lean-to shelter for you to take cover in for the rest of the night. But you can’t sleep, both because of the pain and because you keep imagining what other dangers are lurking in the jungle. In the morning, you have a fierce headache and your shoulder is stiff and swollen.

  “Are you going to be able to hike?” Jing asks.

  “I’ll try,” you say, even though you wonder how long you’ll last. But after only a few minutes, you hear shouting through the trees.

  “Over here!” Jing yells.

  Carlos and Dan rush toward you. You’ve been found! You’re in a daze while they start asking you a million questions about what happened. Jing does the talking while you both guzzle water on the way back to camp.

  You’re relieved to rejoin the rest of the team, and you feel a little better once Rania gives you some medicine for your pain. But, unfortunately, the pain doesn’t stop there. You’re evacuated to a hospital back home so you can get a series of rabies shots over the next four weeks. Ouch! And to make things even worse, everyone you know insists on joking that you must be a vampire now.

  Not funny, you think. Not funny at all.

  THE END

  With your fingertips, you try to squeeze out whatever is causing the bump on your arm. But pressing hard on either side of the bump doesn’t work: nothing comes out. Using the edge of a fingernail, you dig into it and make the hole bigger. It looks like something is in there, but you can’t reach it.

  The next day, there’s a red ring around the bump, and it’s become even more sensitive. You still see something in there, and pick at it again, this time with tweezers. You pull out half of a tiny white worm. The rest breaks off and stays inside you. Gross! You show Carlos.

  “That looks like part of a botfly larva,” he tells you, concerned. “If you had covered it up with tape, it would have suffocated, and then you could have removed it safely. You can’t pull a larva out while it’s alive without breaking it.”

  After a week, the pain is worse. The broken larva stuck inside you is causing an infection. Rania says that you’ll need to have it surgically removed at a hospital back home. You beg to stay, but there’s no worming your way out of this—you’re going home!

  THE END

  The next morning when you get up, the flooding is so bad around you that your camp feels like an island. But your team and your things are safe.

  “Wow. Good thing you didn’t pick that spot,” Rania says, pointing to the other site you were considering. “We would have lost half of our gear for sure, and that would have set us back weeks!”

  The team is deciding whether to try to build a fire or skip the coffee and eat a cold breakfast when Carlos and Freddy return.

  “Hey, everyone. Sorry we got delayed last night. It was suddenly too dark, and we were forced to camp before we made it back here,” Carlos says.

  “But we have a peace offering,” Freddy adds with a grin, holding out a few small packages of cookies. Yum!

  After a tasty snack, the team gets ready to head out. You and Dan make your way down to the river to collect the fishing nets.

  As you’re walking along the riverbank, you have to step over a fallen tree that has spikes all over its bark.

  “Be careful of those spikes,” Dan warns you. “One nearly went through my boot!”

  “Whoa. Look at that!” You point to the water.

  “Dan!” you shout. But he doesn’t respond.

  “Dan! Dan!” you shout again. “Get out of the water!” He’
s just lying there, facedown, not moving.

  You can’t believe Dan actually reached out for the electric eel, and that he was so unaware of its power. You know that the shock of a mature electric eel can deliver as much as 1,000 volts of electricity, which is enough to knock out an adult.

  Dan could drown if you don’t get him out of the water, fast. He’s not responding to your shouts, and you assume he’s unconscious. Do you jump in after him and pull him out of the water?

  The electric eel is still hanging around nearby, looking sinister. Is it possible that the eel used all of its electricity on Dan and now needs time to recharge? If so, you could dive right in. But something makes you hesitate. Could the eel deliver another shock? Should you look for a vine to wrap around Dan’s body and pull him out without getting into the water yourself? That will take you longer, though, and every second counts…

  JUMP IN THE WATER or LOOK FOR A VINE

  The piranhas look too threatening to pick up with your hands, so you shake the net out into the bottom of your raft. You plan to use your foot to push the fish into a burlap bag. But the fish start flopping around in the raft, and as you try to get them into the bag, one goes overboard. You turn around to try to stop another from escaping and… OUCH! A piranha sinks its teeth into your toe! You try to shake it off, but you tip your raft and land in the water with a splash!

  “Are you okay?” Jing calls from the shore.

  “Yeah, I think so,” you gasp, pulling your burlap bag behind you as you climb back onto your raft, empty now of all the piranhas, and paddle to shore. There are only two fish in your bag, and you limp back to camp disappointed to have lost most of your dinner, but also worried about the bite on your toe.

  “That looks pretty serious,” Jing says, looking at your toe, where a chunk of flesh is missing.

  Back at camp, the team makes a stew out of the two fish, while Rania dresses your wound.

  “This should heal okay,” she says, “as long as you keep it clean and dry.”

  Unfortunately, in the rain forest, you can’t keep the area very clean or dry. Over the next week, the bite area gets infected and looks like a giant ulcer. Even though you take antibiotics, you end up getting a raging fever and headache.

  “We need to get you to a town with medical facilities where you can recover for a few days,” Rania advises.

  “A few days? But won’t that delay the mission?” you ask.

  You see Rania and Carlos exchange a glance, and you realize that the mission will go on as scheduled, only without you. And all because of a measly fish, which really bites.

  THE END

  You reach down into the net, grabbing a piranha by the tail. It starts to flop around like crazy. The slippery fish is hard to hold on to, and… SPLASH! It flips back into the water. You try to lift another fish, and this time watch the teeth of the piranha come dangerously close to your elbow. You let go of the fish and watch it escape.

  You end up losing several fish the same way, until the net slips out of your hand altogether and the rest of the catch swims to freedom. Jing shouts something to you from the shore, but you can’t hear what she said until she repeats it when you get closer.

  “What did you do? You’re supposed to grab them by the gills!”

  You see the disappointment on her face and, later, from the rest of the team, when you get back to camp empty-handed. Everyone grumbles as they eat only beans and rice again, and you find yourself imagining what a fresh catch with some garlic and onion would taste like.

  That night, when you’re looking for a good spot to hang your hammock, you notice some fruit on a tree that you don’t recognize. The fruit is ripe and smells sweet. Your mouth waters as you think about how delicious it will be, especially after yet another bland dinner.

  You know that there are plenty of foods in the jungle that are unsafe to eat, but this one looks and smells a lot like an apple to you. Do you take a bite, or do you rub a little of the fruit on your skin?

  TAKE A BITE OF THE FRUIT

  or

  RUB SOME OF THE FRUIT ON YOUR SKIN

  You jump into the water and wrap your arms around Dan’s body. The electric eel looks right at you, and doesn’t move. But then, suddenly… ZAP! You feel a jolt go through your body, like you’ve stuck your finger in an electrical outlet.

  The next thing you know, you come to, sputtering and coughing. You must have passed out briefly. You see Dan lying facedown a few feet from you, and you drag his limp body to shore.

  “Dan!” you shout as you turn his body over. But Dan doesn’t respond.

  You were trained in CPR, and furiously go through the motions now, pumping Dan’s chest and blowing into his mouth. Finally, you hear him gasp, and you almost cry with relief.

  “Are you okay?” you ask. “You touched the electric eel and it knocked you out.”

  “I’m… okay,” Dan coughs. “Sorry.”

  You both lie on the shore until you regain your strength, and then walk back to camp and explain to everyone.

  “Dan ingested a lot of water. He’s lucky you got him out when you did,” Rania says.

  “But you took a serious risk going into the water instead of using something to get Dan out. If you had gotten a worse shock and stayed unconscious longer…” Carlos adds, his voice trailing off.

  You don’t want to think about that either.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Dan says before heading off to bed, “except thanks for being there for me… again.”

  The next day, Dan is a little slow on your trek. Then, over the next few days, he gets weaker and starts to cough a lot. Pretty soon, he has a high fever and can hardly walk. Rania says he’s developed severe pneumonia from the water ingestion.

  “I’m taking Dan with Rania to the nearest town to get medical treatment,” Carlos tells the team that night. “I’m not sure if he’ll be able to return with us, or what will happen to our mission. I’m leaving you with Freddy for now.”

  Carlos doesn’t ask, but you figure he could use more help getting Dan to town. The part of you that feels responsible for not getting him out of the water quicker—by using a vine to pull him out—is encouraging you to volunteer to go with them. The other part of you feels that you’ve done enough already and wants to continue on the mission, putting this situation behind you. Dan will be in good hands with or without you. What do you do?

  HELP GET DAN TO TOWN

  or

  CONTINUE WITH FREDDY

  You run over to a tree nearby, cut off a long piece of vine, and tie a loop around one end. Then you throw the loop around Dan’s body and use it to pull him toward shore. When he’s close enough, you grab hold of him and drag him onto the riverbank. Meanwhile, the eel stares at you and doesn’t move. You are about to try to resuscitate Dan when he starts to cough and sputter.

  Phew!

  “You’re okay, Dan,” you say.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  “The electric eel zapped you. Why in the world did you touch it?”

  “I didn’t think the shock would be so strong,” he replies.

  Dan’s shoulders are shaking, and you realize that he’s started to cry.

  Oh great.

  “I know Carlos is going to kick me off the expedition, after the snake incident and now this. I don’t want to leave,” he sniffles.

  “Look, that’s between you and Carlos. Let’s go find the others,” you say, a little irritated now. Maybe Dan should go back home. You have to admit, his poor judgment at times does put him and others in danger.

  The two of you hurry to catch up with the team, but you leave Dan to tell Carlos what happened on his own.

  “You WHAT?” you hear Carlos explode from across the camp. When you get closer, you see that Dan’s face is beet red, and he just looks at the ground as Carlos gestures wildly and shouts. It doesn’t look good. Later, Dan comes over to you.

  “Carlos is furious and said he wants to send me home at the next town we stop i
n. He says I could have drowned if you weren’t with me.”

  “What are you going to do?” you ask.

  “If I have to go home, I have to go home,” he responds sadly.

  You know he was careless, but looking at Dan’s face and thinking about all the ways he’s been helpful on this mission, you realize that you hope he doesn’t have to leave.

  Another month has passed and you are now in the heart of Brazil. In the end, Dan wasn’t sent back to Montana. By the time you reached the next town, Carlos had cooled off and decided to give Dan another chance. And since you all got a nice break boating down the Amazon for two weeks, everyone’s been in a great mood.

  When you set out to hike again, in a town called Amatura, you all said good-bye to Freddy since he was scheduled to rejoin his family in Peru. You’re going to miss his company. The next day you met your new interpreter for the remaining two months of the trip, Abadia. She’s a member of the Ticuna tribe, and she speaks English, Portuguese, and some Spanish in addition to her native language. Plus Abadia seems to know everything about the Amazon.

  You enjoy spending time with Abadia and are happy to go out and explore with her and Rania one afternoon. Abadia points out a palm tree with large sharp spines all over its trunk. It has a reddish-orange fruit growing in bunches on it.

  Abadia slices open one of the fruit, revealing a yellowish flesh and a big seed inside. She offers you a bite, and you expect something sweet, like a peach, especially since it’s called a peach palm fruit. But instead it’s bland like a potato.

  “It’s pretty good,” you say politely.

  “We’ll boil these in some salty water for dinner tonight,” Abadia says, smiling at your reaction.

  As you’re walking, your feet start to hurt. Even though you’ve been trying to care for your feet well, you’ve developed big blisters. You see a bunch of young Ticuna boys playing barefoot in the river, and you wish you could run and join them. One boy is fishing and you see him pull up a piranha.