8 SASSAFRAS

CHAPTER 8 SASSAFRAS? I waded back to the opposite side of the stream with Pip once again on my shoulder. He hopped down when we got to shore. "I'm really worried about those poor merhorses, Zoey. They're so hungry! I don't think I can find any mooflies, but someone in the forest might have something they can eat. I'll check back with you later?" I gave a big sigh of relief. "That is a wonderful

idea, Pip. They definitely need to eat. You work on that, and I'll try to figure out where the pollution is coming from." Pip hopped into the forest. I opened my journal and added everything I'd just learned. QUESTION: Where is the stream pollution coming from? OBSERVATIONS: Seems like soap is being dumped on weekends? pollution started about a week ago. I looked up to see my mom and dad coming toward me, but I didn't see Sassafras anywhere. He

was probably hiding up in a tree again, freaked out that a drop of stream water might get on him. "Sassafras?" I called. "Sassafras!" Where was that cat? My mom and dad joined me. "Sassafras," we all hollered. Finally we heard a faraway "Meeoooooow!" "What is Sassafras doing way down there?" I asked. We headed toward the distant meowing. Every few feet we stopped and called "Sassafras!" And each time the meow got louder. We rounded a bend in the stream and found him balancing on a log. His tail was all fluffed up and he was growling at some white foam caught behind a log. Wait... foam! Soap! "Sassafras!" I said. "You found the soap!" I ran over to pet him, and I noticed a pipe above his head. "Mom! Dad! What is this weird pipe? It must be where the soap is coming from." Mom bent down, swiped some of the soap foam, and sniffed it.

"Um, Mom? Why are you smelling it?" Mom laughed. "That must look strange! I was checking to make sure that it wasn't natural foam. Sometimes when leaves and other bits of the forest break down, they can make bubbles that look similar to soap bubbles. But there's no mistaking the smell of store-bought soap. Here, see what I mean?" Mom put her foam-covered hand out to me, and I sniffed. It smelled sort of like dish soap. Definitely not at all like a forest or leaves or stream water.

"I still don't get it," I said peering into the pipe. "What is this pipe? Where is this water coming from?" "It's stormwater," Mom and Dad said at the same time. I looked at them, completely confused. Stormwater? It wasn't raining. And I was pretty sure that water from storms came from the sky and the clouds, and not from pipes in the ground. "When it rains, what happens to the rain here in the forest?" Mom asked. "It goes into the ground and makes mud and stuff?" I answered. "Exactly," said Mom. "Now, what happens when it rains on sidewalks and roads?" "Hmmm." I thought. "It makes puddles? And it makes little rivers in the gutters?" "Right, and where do those little rivers in the gutters go?" asked Mom. I thought and thought, but I wasn't sure. I mean, the water must go somewhere. I needed my Thinking Goggles! I squinched my eyes tight, pretended my Thinking Goggles were on my head,

and tried to think about little rivers of water in gutters. I stretched and reached for a distant memory in my mind. There it was! My friend Sophie and I had been waiting by the side of the road for our bus in the pouring rain. We'd broken some sticks into little pieces and dropped them into the gutter river. The sticks zoomed along, and they went down into some sort of drain! "Into a drain thingy!" I announced proudly. "Yes, a storm drain," Mom said. "If we didn't have them, our roads and sidewalks would flood. Rain can't soak into sidewalks and roads like it can into the forest dirt. So we collect all the extra water in gutters and it goes into a storm drain—" "And then it comes out here? At the stream?" I