Let me start by saying we love and purchase everything by Stuart Gibbs, especially in the Fun Jungle series. I did appreciate, in the author's note in the back, that he felt he had to take Teddy and Summer's mis-adventures with wildlife out of the zoo / theme park or the state of Texas would shut it down for good. I was kinda wondering the same thing, after Lion Down.
This location -- next to Yellowstone -- is ideal to attract tourons (tourist morons) to a low-key (for now -- with JJ you can never be sure) theme-park type attraction of Native American wildlife.
This time, Teddy and Summer are at a bison ranch outside Yellowstone National park that JJ is thinking of buying. Ok, he just needs a tiny bit of persuasion to buy it. He's inclined to purchase it, as it's the place he bought an enormous sapphire for his wife for a pittance from a Native resident who didn't know the true value of what he had. JJ swindled the kid. The jewel is now worth millions.
His wife wears it to the lodge. The sapphire goes missing almost immediately, after a grizzly bear enters the lodge / house looking for food. Teddy suspects the bear's been "baited," or led into the house with vanilla in raw hamburger.
The search for the bear (a rather huge, distinctive beast named Sasquatch) leads to JJ and Summer sparking a bison stampede with their helicopter. There consequently is a scene with Teddy on his stomach clinging desperately to the backend of a horse that kept us laughing, bent over double, for … gosh, I don't know how long. Best highlight of the book!
Several bison on the ranch have disappeared as well. They're being rustled, or stolen, too. But how does a several-ton animal just go poof!? You'd need a very large vehicle, a mammoth of a vehicle, to transport one stealthily. And a vehicle that wouldn't stand out, like huge semi-trailer truck. And probably it would only work if the bison involved was not upset.
Gee, I wonder what kind of vehicle that describes, with thousands of them driving all around Yellowstone…I will say no more, for fear of spoiling it for readers!
Teddy is on both cases, and I look forward to (maybe?) more animal mishaps and mysteries in Yellowstone.
