Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16 Bob ran up to the very top of his tree to get a better look. "Merle's flying toward a man in a suit!" he reported down to Pearl. Pearl's heart sank. "Is he wearing sunglasses?" she shouted back up. "Yes! How did you know?" Pearl needed to think fast. Michael, Mrs. Gomez, and Jane were still at school. Dr. Gomez was still at work. "What do I do? What do I do?!" She looked back over her shoulder into Michael's bedroom and saw the drone she had been piloting. Taking a deep breath, she scurried from the windowsill back into the room. "Where are you going?" Bob called out. "Merle's going the other way!" Merle, in his drone prison, was getting closer and closer to the man in the suit and sunglasses. His remote was useless. Merle's only way to escape was to jump, but he was way too high. "I wish I were Glaucomys volans!" Merle cried, recalling the scientific name for the Southern flying squirrel. "Gliding now would be just fine!!!"

WHRRRRR! Pearl, piloting her drone, zipped out of the window, racing toward Merle. "Yeah!" cheered the Tennessee squirrels. At that moment, Michael, returning home from school, turned the corner onto his street. Hearing drone engines, he looked up and saw Pearl. "Pearl?!" he shouted. "What are you doing?!" "I'm saving Merle!" she shouted back. Suddenly, Pearl's look of determination turned to terror as she realized she no longer had control over her craft. She, too, was being reeled in by the man in the suit and sunglasses!

she screamed. "What's happening?!" Michael called out, not able to see the man from his vantage point. The Tennessee squirrels made a terrible racket shouting down at Michael, trying to tell him what was happening. Unfortunately, Michael did not speak squirrel and so made out only a cacophony of panicky squeaks.