But the iguana had tasted awful, and Mickey Cray’s headaches only got worse. Wahoo’s mother was so concerned that she wanted Mickey to see a brain specialist in Miami, but Mickey refused to go.

Meanwhile, people kept calling up with new jobs, and Wahoo was forced to send them to other wranglers. His father was in no condition to work.

After school, Wahoo would feed the animals and clean out the pens and cages. The backyard was literally a zoo-gators, snakes, parrots, mynah birds, rats, mice, monkeys, raccoons, tortoises and even a bald eagle, which Mickey had raised from a fledgling after its mother was killed.

“Treat ’em like royalty,” Mickey would instruct Wahoo, because the animals were quite valuable. Without them, Mickey would be unemployed.

It disturbed Wahoo to see his father so ill because Mickey was the toughest guy he’d ever known.

One morning, with summer approaching, Wahoo’s mother took him aside and told him that the family’s savings account was almost drained. “I’m going to China,” she said.

Wahoo nodded, like it was no big deal.

“For two months,” she said.

“That’s a long time,” said Wahoo.

“Sorry, big guy, but we really need the money.”

Wahoo’s mother taught Mandarin Chinese, an extremely difficult language. Big American companies that had offices in China would hire Mrs. Cray to tutor their top executives, but usually these companies flew their employees to South Florida for Mrs. Cray’s lessons.

“This time they want me to go to Shanghai,” she explained to her son. “They have, like, fifty people over there who learned Mandarin from some cheap audiotape. The other day, one of the big shots was trying to say ‘Nice shoes!’ and he accidentally told a government minister that his face looked like a butt wart. Not good.”