Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
And Bennie heaved a big sigh. “We’ve heard that before.”
A few minutes later, they stopped and Black Spot pointed toward
what appeared to be a creek bed running through the cleft of the
mountain. “Just over this,” he said. But as they drew closer, they real­
ized it was a chasm that ran up and down as far as they could see,
about twenty feet wide, and frighteningly deep—a dizzying labyrinth
of twists and turns that spiraled downward in such a way as to make
it impossible to know what dead bottom was. It looked as if the
earth’s core had cracked and split the mountain.
“Could be a sinkhole,” Roxanne said. “We saw one in the Galá­
pagos. Six hundred feet deep, that was the guess. No one knew for sure,
since everyone who went down to investigate never came back up.”
“Thanks for telling us that,” said Bennie.
Bisecting this abyss was a flimsy-looking bridge made of bamboo
slats held together with a network of ropes. The ends were lashed to
large tree trunks. It did not convey a sense of architectural compe­
tence or engineering rigor. I would say it looked rather like a wooden
clothes rack sitting on top of a place mat. Evidently my friends
thought so, too.
“They expect us to go over that?” Heidi squeaked.
“It doesn’t look sturdy,” Vera agreed.
“I can do it!” Esmé chirped, twirling her reclaimed parasol.
“You stay right here,” Marlena snapped, and grabbed her daugh­
ter’s arm.
Fishbones scrambled to the middle and jumped up and down to
show the tourists that the bridge was safe and strong. He loped eas­
ily to the other side, covering the twenty feet in a matter of seconds,
then returned halfway and extended his hand.
“It must be safe,” Bennie said to the group. “I bet these places have
to pass strict safety standards to be designated a tourism site.”
Moff peered into the ravine, at its great yawning mouth of rocks
and scrubby brush. He picked up a stone the size of his fist and
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