The Higher Power of Lucky

After Miles left, while Brigitte went through a stack of bills to take to the post office later, Lucky thought hard about how to keep from having to go away and live with a foster family. Maybe if Brigitte realized that one day Lucky would become a world-famous scientist like Charles Darwin, she would stop missing France all the time. She would have the extreme glory of being a world-famous scientist’s Guardian.

Before she could become a world-famous scientist, Lucky needed to turn herself into a famous Hard Pan scientist, and the way to do that was to get lots of people to come to the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center. It was her job of cleaning its patio that had given Lucky a brilliant museum-improvement idea. The problem was that it wasn’t museumy enough. It was just glass cases against the walls with old mining equipment and old photos and a few old bugs, but not enough bugs or birds. Plus you couldn’t lean on the glass cases, which you needed to do in order to get a really good close look.

Lucky’s idea was that, even before she became really famous, people in other countries, and especially in France, would hear about the museum’s amazing new scientific display—Lucky already envisioned the display exactly—and they could come for a visit. Brigitte could talk French to them and explain that it was actually her ward (meaning Lucky herself) who had made the display. All the French mothers would wish they had wards like Lucky.

The timing to work on her secret museum-display idea was perfect, because at ten o’clock everyone in Hard Pan went to the post office for their mail. Since there was no market or restaurant or even a gas station in Hard Pan, people liked to stand around getting the latest news in town while they waited for the Captain to distribute the mail into each P.O. box. So Brigitte would be gone for at least half an hour, enough time for Lucky to get a good start on her display.

She was in her canned-ham trailer gathering her specimens together when Brigitte called from the connecting kitchen trailer.

“Did you put all your dirty clothes in the machine, Lucky? I am starting a wash.”

“Yeah, everything.”

“Can you listen for the end of the cycle and put the clothes in the dryer if I’m not back yet from the post office? I want these towels to have the California softness.”

“Okay.” California softness was Brigitte’s way of saying fluffy, dried-in-the-dryer towels, as opposed to straight, crispy, hung-on-the-clothesline towels.

“Do not forget, please, Lucky. I have to do the sheets after.”

“’Kay.”

After Lucky heard the screen door slam and the Jeep start, she carried everything for her project to the Formica table in the kitchen. She wasn’t supposed to work on her specimens at the table, but she needed to spread out. And anyway, she’d be done by the time Brigitte got back.

The collection of specimens, taken out of their Altoid boxes and lined up in a row, was magnificent. She had a hoverfly (waspy looking), two craneflies (mosquitoey looking), a giant tarantula hawk wasp, and a delicate baby scorpion.

Lucky measured the wasp specimen head to tail. It was almost an inch long, a beauty with big, orange wings. The first time you see one may be alarming when it zooms around diving-bombing at you. Brigitte was afraid of them, even though Lucky had explained that they mostly wouldn’t hurt people. All they wanted was a nice fat tarantula.

Lucky began writing the description that would be put in the museum case. It needed to be both dramatic and scientific. She wrote:

The Story of Tarantula Hawk Wasps

and Their Victems the Tarantulas

DO NOT READ ALOUD TO VERY YOUNG CHILDREN

1. The main job of the TARANTULA HAWK WASP is to find a tarantula and sting it between its legs. By the way even though these wasps are pretty big and scary looking, don’t worry. Human beings are a total waste of their time.

2. Finally the TARANTULA HAWK WASP finds a tarantula. This is pretty easy in the fall, when all the tarantulas walk across the main road

Lucky stopped to think about this for a moment. She had not yet discovered why the tarantulas were all traveling southwest in the fall, and she thought it would be interesting to include this information. She thought the museum visitors who came from around the world would want the complete story. Later she would ask Short Sammy, but for now she wrote:

but no one knows why, unfortunately.

3. Then there is a big fight! The tarantula tries hard to get away. The wasp wins the fight, she is happy because now she can lay her egg which is her most important duty.

WARNING: THE NEXT PART IS GRUSOME

4. The TARANTULA HAWK WASP stings the tarantula, who becomes paralized but not dead. Then the TARANTULA HAWK WASP digs a hole, a GRAVE for the tarantula, and lays her egg inside the tarantula’s actual STILL ALIVE body. When the egg hatches, it isn’t a flying wasp yet. It is only a grub. But it is very hungry and guess what it eats? The tarantula!