"My life at McGill Zoo isn’t a situation that every duck finds himself in, but I suppose it could be worse. I could be a typical mallard, trapped in a family of freakish fowl that no one wants to associate with. I could be nothing more than good ol’ Foster Flymore — a regular mallard with regular mallard likes and dislikes, feelings and beliefs, hopes and dreams."
But I’m not that kind of bird.
I’m a detective.
When Clyde Capybara, zoo newcomer and clothing designer extraordinaire, disappears, Foster sets out to track him down and expose the truth about the zoo's most notorious predator...before it’s too late.
"My life at McGill Zoo isn’t a situation that every duck finds himself in, but I suppose it could be worse. I could be a typical mallard, trapped in a family of freakish fowl that no one wants to associate with. I could be nothing more than good ol’ Foster Flymore — a regular mallard with regular mallard likes and dislikes, feelings and beliefs, hopes and dreams."
But I’m not that kind of bird.
I’m a detective.
When Clyde Capybara, zoo newcomer and clothing designer extraordinaire, disappears, Foster sets out to track him down and expose the truth about the zoo's most notorious predator...before it’s too late.
Chapter 1
            Every day, hundreds of hairless apes visit my home, the McGill Zoo. And why not? The place is full of freaky, furry creatures. There are turtles the size of tractors, giraffes taller than streetlights, and lizards that spit blood from their eyes. We even have the world’s heaviest cheetah—although that’s not something most of us are proud of. Really, my zoo has everything—from antelopes to zebras—so it doesn’t surprise me that herds of hairless apes (sorry; “humans”) show up to see all the exotic animals.
            I, however, am not an exotic animal. I am a duck.
            And if we’re splitting feathers, I am a mallard. We mallards have a sophisticated look, like a duck from an upscale clothing store. I have tan wings with just a hint of blue, a proud yellow beak, and dark emerald feathers on my head. A thin ring of white around the neck brings the whole thing together. It’s a great look, and it might get me noticed ... if I weren’t surrounded by animals that glow in the dark or with jaws that can bite a car in half.
            Don’t get me wrong. I’m not bitter about being ignored. The McGill Zoo is a great place for a duck. There’s a large lake at the western edge, with no exotic animals or footpaths. The water is clean and cool; fish and plants are plentiful. Best of all, the whole lake is inside the zoo. In the wild, you don’t often find a great lake that’s also surrounded by a ten-foot-high security fence. The lake even has a small island at its center, which is the perfect finish line for both flying and paddling contests. With such ideal conditions, you can see why Mallard Monthly always lists the zoo lake in its “Top Three Places to Live” article.
            The thing is, I don’t live at the lake. I live on a train.Â
            Okay, okay, I am exaggerating. A bit. I don’t actually have a nest on the zoo train, or anything. My stuff is located in the shallow pond directly south of the train station. My family shares the pond with some koi fish, who are pretty cool about it. Even though the pond is my home, I spend so much nonflight time on the train, it feels like it’s my home.Â
             Now, you might ask, “What’s a young mallard doing on a train?” That’s a good question. In fact, it’s a great question, one that I have asked myself, many times. The answer can be found in the form of a slight, bowlegged adult mallard by the name of Millard Flymore. Millard suffers from a very rare disease that I call “Trains-on-the-Brain.”Â
            This obsession with trains makes Millard a very odd duck. Most adult male mallards like to chat about migratory patterns, good preening tips, and—of course—sports. Millard prefers talking about engine efficiency ratios, reducing track friction, and the advantages of synthetic versus natural oil. Once these topics come bursting out of Millard’s beak, conversations tend to stop midflight, since no other duck has any idea what he’s talking about. If he could sometimes talk about normal things, I think other ducks would come to respect Millard for his unusual talents. But Millard’s one topic is trains.Â
            After a while, no one at the lake wanted to talk to him, and they started giving his family the frosty wing as well. So, Millard moved his family to the pond next to his beloved train. We’ve lived there ever since, floating on a tiny patch of stagnant water a short flight away from Mallard Paradise.
            Yes, Millard is my father. You would’ve figured it out, sooner or later. I might as well tell you now and get it over with.
            I can’t say the rest of us have enjoyed living at the train station pond, but my father certainly has. Being so close gives him time to work on the train’s engine. That’s the other thing about my dad—he’s a really, really good mechanic. This is not a skill that most ducks can appreciate, much less understand. As his only son, I’ve spent enough time around Dad to understand most of the technical stuff. Sometimes, though, I just nod my head up and down and hope he doesn’t realize that I couldn’t tell the difference between a “5/16ths hex screw” and a “3/8ths hex screw” if my wings depended on it.
            You can’t argue with Dad’s results, though. He’s kept the zoo train running smoothly for more than a year. When I hear the happy squeals of the human kids as the train glides out of the station, I take pride in the fact that my father is responsible for their enjoyment. Most of the regular zoo employees give all the credit to Gus, the slouchy excuse of an engineer who’s officially in charge of the train. If they saw what I see when Gus tries to work on the train, they'd fire him on the spot. If there’s a broken part, mostly he just kicks it. Other times, he stares at it hatefully while smoking a cigarette and cursing. After a while, Gus oozes away to pester Mabel, the female in charge of the Primate Palace, leaving his tools all over the ground. That’s when my father rushes over to his beloved metal baby, stroking it with his flight feathers before getting down to work.Â
            The next day, the train is working again. It’s a Zoo Miracle!
            Now, my dad doesn't have a monopoly on strange in the family. The fact is, my whole family’s pretty odd. My younger sister Constance acts fairly normal. She stays as far away from Dad and his train as possible. If you saw her paddling around the big lake with her friends, you might think there was nothing out of the ordinary about her. Yet Constance—pretty, intelligent Constance—the pride and joy of the Flymore family, as she reminds me every day, has an obsession as weird as Dad’s.Â
            Constance is madly, deeply, tail-over-beak in love with a lion. That’s L-I-O-N, as in “massive killing machine.” Bad enough, right? But there’s more! He’s the meanest, nastiest beast you can imagine—an albino lion named Tamerlane. I’ve told Constance many times that having a crush on a predator is not a wise path for a duck to waddle. She blocks me out as if I weren’t even talking. When the topic is Tamerlane, she’s as one-track as Dad.Â
            “You’re just a silly boy, Foster,” Constance would say. “Love can conquer all.”
            “What a load of eggshells. Suppose, just for a moment, that the two of you do actually date and then get married. Can you imagine what your wedding would be like? Half the wedding guests would end up stalking the other half. It wouldn't be a proper wedding—more like a bloodbath in formal wear.”
            Constance paused. “We’ll just run away together, then. Tamerlane and I will get married in Las Vegas. He used to work there, you know.”
            No matter what I say, my sister always has a reply. I thought about telling my parents, but Constance would hate me if I did that. I am sort of fond of her, even if she is my annoying baby sister.
        My mother seems normal. She asks me how my day went and is always giving me hugs I kinda want (but won’t admit to liking). But she did marry my dad, and she’s still hanging around with us, so I know there’s something weird about her. I just don’t know what it is yet. Sometimes when I fly back to the pond, I expect to find her practicing the tuba or fighting off ninjas. At last, I would think. Mom’s secret is revealed. This hasn’t happened yet, but it might. (If it does, I hope I can learn martial arts from her.)
The last family member is yours truly, Foster Flymore. Son of a train engineer and brother to a lion lover. This isn’t a situation that every duck finds himself in, but I suppose it could be worse. I don’t actually know how it could be worse, because in terms of my popularity things are really, really bad. Still, I suppose it could be worse. I mean, I could be a typical mallard, trapped in a family of freakish fowl that no one wants to associate with. I could be nothing more than good ol’ Foster Flymore—a regular mallard with regular mallard likes and dislikes, feelings and beliefs, hopes and dreams.Â
But I’m not that kind of bird.Â
I’m a detective.Â
Foster Gauge Flymore is just a mallard duck living in a zoo with the weirdest family imaginable. He has a father who is obsessed with trains and their machinations (very odd for a duck), a sister who seems to be unable to stand Foster but is madly in love with an albino lion, and a mother who seems fairly normal but, as Foster reasons, she "did marry my dad, and she’s still hanging around with us, so I know there’s something weird about her", but that is yet to be revealed. But Foster's life is upset when he meets a capybara called Clyde Erkenbert Wynant, obsessed with clothing, who soon after goes missing, and Foster and his best friend, Tarika the Madagascar hissing cockroach go on an investigation to find him before it is too late.
One of the most interesting things about this story is how Darush shapes the world building of the zoo. Completely unbeknownst to the human zookeepers, it has an entire political and social structures, with the squirrels who have mastered electricity in charge. It is clear Darush has put much thought into that aspect of the world, and there are always more surprises each chapter.
But as is true with any YA novel, it would come to nothing without a relatable young protagonist, and that is what Darush delivers with Foster Flymore. He is a flawed character, a little cocky, not always forthright to his parents, as has been true with most people as children. But he does have a drive to help his friend. The relationship between Flymore and his family was one of the most interesting one's in the book. In a genre where far too often the parental figures end up being sidelined or conveniently dead, it was interesting to see Foster's parents as generally supportive of him trying to help his friend, even when that requires sacrifice, as well as challenging him to be a better person. His parents, especially his father, being far more aware of what Foster is doing than he thinks was also a nice touch, because it reflects how younger people frequently perceive their parents in contrast to how they actually often are.
Tarika, of course, was an excellent character. Darush does well in playing into how cockroaches are frequently perceived by humans. Tarika is small, but her presence still unnerves nearly everyone, other than, of course, Foster. And she is fierce, arguably the brawn of the detective work. But more than that, she clearly deeply cares about Foster. Foster has a family at the zoo, but Tarika does not, and so it is probable that she knows and loves Foster more profoundly than Foster does her. The exploration of this dynamic was excellent all throughout the novel.
And if the intrigue is not enough to hold a reader, the humor will, with many compelling first-person commentaries from Foster.
It is fresh. It is mysterious. It is comical. It is surprisingly tense. If any of those things appeals to you, The Capybara Caper would be an excellent choice.