11 October 2008 SCAT by Carl Hiaasen, Knopf, January 2009, 371p., ISBN: 978-0-375-83486-8; Libr. ISBN: 978-0-375-93486-5

"'Do you understand?'

"Smoke crossed his eyes as he stared down the yellow shaft of Mrs. Starch's No. 2 Ticonderoga.

" 'I guess,' he said.

"Then he calmly chomped the pencil in half, chewed up the graphite along with the splinters, and swallowed the whole mouthful with a husky gulp.

"Mrs. Starch backed away, eyeing with alarm the moist stump of wood that remained in her fingers.

"Nobody else in the room moved a muscle except for Smoke, who dropped his biology book into a camo-patterned backpack, stood up, and ambled out the door."

"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone." -- Joni Mitchell

October 6 (ENC) -- "The world's mammals are in the grip of an extinction crisis, with almost one in four at risk of vanishing forever, according to the latest scientific assessment revealed at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's World Conservation Congress, which opened Sunday in Barcelona.

"The new study conducted for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species for the first time assessed all of the 5,487 mammals on Earth and found that at least 1,141 of them are known to be threatened with extinction."

When they chant "Drill, baby, drill!" at a Sarah Palin appearance, should we all join in rooting for the sight of oil derricks off of our coasts?

Is it a good thing if crude oil and gasoline prices go up, or is it better if they go down?

On one hand, when there is $4- or $5-per-gallon gasoline, very wealthy people might complain a bit (assuming they don't own shares of stock in Big Oil) while shelling out $60 or $80 or $100 to fill their tanks. It is the people who are far less wealthy who are far more severely impacted by having to spend a significant portion of their paychecks at the pump. And, even before the current economic catastrophe, those whose personal finances are really impacted by higher gasoline prices have been, for the most part, the same people who could not begin to fathom spending thirty-five or forty grand on one of the high-efficiency hybrids which we all should have been driving long before now.

On the other hand, if most of what I have learned about global warming is true -- and I have no reason to doubt the substantial and still growing scientific evidence behind the theoretical models (nor this summer's melting of the North Pole) -- then it might be far better if gas prices soared and forced millions or billions of people out of their vehicles (particularly when driving solo) and into more efficient modes of transportation.

How many of us -- if faced with the Ghost of Christmas Future (or a clear look at the planet when our children or grandchildren are our age) -- might try to better mitigate our carbon footprints today for the sake of those to whom we will leave what is left of Mother Earth?

At what point are we willing to accept the extinction of 10 or 100 or 1,000 mammalian species in exchange for what some might see as a higher quality of life?

Are we in Iraq because of our insatiable demand for gasoline?

When the greed that is supposedly inherent in capitalism leads people to rob grave markers and plunder houses under forclosure in order to sell the increasingly valuable metal to scrap dealers or to try and figure out how to drill for oil under government-protected preserves, is it time to change our economic and political and energy systems?

Such are the sorts of questions that might come to the mind of the inquiring young reader or be dished up to those students who are fortunate enough to have a teacher bring SCAT, Carl Hiaasen's latest and greatest middle school novel, into their classroom.

"'The law's pretty harsh when it comes to killin' panthers. The feds got no sense of sport sir.'

"'Panthers -- ha!' Drake McBride snorted. 'Out west they're just plain old cougars, and you can shoot 'em like coyotes.'

"He pronounced 'coyote' with a long 'e' on the end, which made Jimmy Lee Bayliss cringe. He wasn't fond of phonies.

"'If that cat comes back here and somebody spots it, we got a problem,' Drake McBride said. 'Last thing we need are nosy game wardens trampin' all over our project site -- you follow?'

"'The panther's long gone, sir. I fired two rounds over its head with a deer rifle, and you never saw anything run so fast in all your life. Wouldn't surprise me if it's still runnin'.' "'Hope you're right, friend.' "I hope so, too, thought Jimmy Lee Bayless. Panthers were Florida's most endangered species, and public sightings attracted lots of attention. If some overeager wildlife officer decided that Red Diamond's drilling activities were disturbing panther habitat, the whole project could be delayed, or even shut down."

At the center of SCAT are two teens, Nick Waters and Duane "Smoke" Scrod Jr. Nick's father had joined the Florida National Guard in order to supplement his income so as to pay for Nick's education, not knowing that it would lead to his being shipped halfway around the world to the Anbar Province of Iraq. As the story begins, Nick is preoccupied by the worrisome fact that his father has not corresponded in a far longer time than is his habit. Meanwhile Smoke, who has not heard a word from his mother since way back when he was a little kid and she abruptly left him, his dad, and Florida behind for the flavors of Paris, is having a verbal (and somewhat gastronomic) confrontation with their harsh, demanding, and arguably effective biology teacher, Mrs. Starch.

Nick comes to really know Smoke, as this damaged duo play very different roles in a mystery involving the subsequent disappearance of Mrs. Starch, the kitten abandoned by the gunshot-disturbed panther, and a forest fire in that wildlife preserve where the oil men are attempting to illegally drill outside of their own legitimate but "worthless" drilling lease area.

SCAT contains a liberal dose of the irresistible Hiaasen humor found in HOOT and FLUSH, his previous middle school novels. But I find myself amazed by and more focused upon how Carl Hiasen has the spot-on genius to create such an entertaining mystery while simultaneously depicting vital real-world issues that are directly and severely affecting so many kids in America today.

And to borrow the sentiment from something I've read elsewhere, it doesn't matter to me whether or not I ever get to see a panther in the wild. What matters is that I know they exist.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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