After the pen had blown over the night before during the great hurricane, Nada had run toward Mr. Ned's house perched on a hill 150 feet above the surrounding marsh.  It was raised up on stone pillars with palmetto and azalea bushes alternately planted all around to hide the underneath from view.   Nada had run through the thick evergreen shrubs and found shelter underneath the house until the storm was over.

    Nada was anxious to find her cousins.  Surely they had found safety under the house too.  She sat quietly listening for any sounds but heard none.  She stood up on her hind legs and looked around.  In the semidarkness and with only one good eye, she could see no movement.  Maybe they were still sleeping or too afraid to move.

    Nada walked slowly toward the front of the house. She saw a mound of something that seemed to be moving from side to side.   Her heart began to pound uncontrollably.  It must be her cousins.  She was so relieved that they were safe.  She ran up to them to say hello.  When she reached the moving mass, she nuzzled it affectionately.

    Hisssss.  Pishhhhh.  Yaowwwwww.

    Surprised at the sound, Nada jumped back slamming into one of the cold, damp pillars.  A black and white cat dashed out from under the mound and disappeared through the shrubs.

    Nada inched her way over to the mound.  She touched it, but it did not move.  It was cold and damp.  It had short hair, not like nutria fur at all. The mound of fur was just a piece of old carpet someone had thrown under the house.  Nada slowly let the air out of her lungs in disappointment.

    I wish I had two eyes to see with, she thought, then I wouldn't be fooled so easily. Why should any of my cousins stick by me she said to herself.  She remembered the time her cousins had listened to her and almost been eaten by a puma back home in Argentina.  It only made sense that they would want to hide in a different place from her.

    Nada sat for a few minutes until the wave of disappointment passed.  She looked toward the azaleas and palmettos blocking her view of the yard.  Their branches were all twisted in disarray.  They looked like disheveled hair after a sleepless night.  She didn’t want to walk up close and peak out through the leaves.  She didn’t know what she might find.  She thought about Aimée, Charmainne, and Bernadette.  Lothario would be so proud when their babies were born.  She remembered how happy Gourmand had been after he recovered from his illness.  Then she thought about Queeny and how, if it weren't for her, Colère would always be huffing and puffing in anger.  And, of course, there was Fierté who primped all the time, but really didn't have to because she had the silkiest, most shinny fur of all the nutria Nada had ever known. Nada's insides squeezed up tight within her as though they were trying to hug the cousins that weren't there.  She had to find them.

    Nada took several deep breaths then charged out through the shrubs.  She immediately stopped in her tracks.  Her body turned cold, then hot.  Nada had never seen such a mess before.  Red-orange clay shingles were broken and scattered all over the ground.  They had blown off the top of Mr. Ned’s house.  She stepped carefully through them, trying not to cut her feet.  Broken tree limbs littered the ground.  Old tires, tin cans, broken glass, a horse harness, even the roof of the old storage shed were lying around instead of where they were supposed to be.  And where the old storage shed had once stood was now just a slab of cement.

    Nada wandered through the debris feeling here and feeling there under the rubble.  She finally reached the spot where the pen had been.  The only way she recognized it was that it was the spot where no grass was growing.  But no trace could be found of the wire sides and top.  It was as though no pen had ever been there at all.

    Nada's heart sank.  Where on earth could her cousins be? She could only hope that they had not been eaten by whatever made the terrible sound that had come from the bayou the night before.

    Nada's stomach growled.  Nutria usually eat in the late afternoon or early evening, but she felt hungry because of the new situation she found herself in.  What was she going to do?  She had not had to get her own food since arriving from Argentina.  No cattails, bullwhips, or alligator weeds were left from the night before.  And Mr. Ned was nowhere in sight.

    She looked off in the direction of the bayou.  All she could think of were the strange eyes that glowed there during the night.  Many creatures must live in the bayou, she thought, because some of the eyes were big and red, some of them were medium and greenish yellow, and others were small and bluish yellow.  She was convinced that every creature living in the bayou must be very large indeed.  Certainly, she who was the runt of the litter and could only see out of one eye would be no match for those creeping, crawling, slithering, flitting, flying, flapping vermin.

    Her stomach growled again.  She took a deep breath.  She knew the bayou was the only place where she was going to find plants to eat.  And maybe even her cousins.

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