"Come on, you gotta come see this!" Roland urged to Jessica and Roger from the edge of the dock that had been built outside the old hotel that was to be the new Animalian colony in Brazil.
It was true that the hotel was definitely a fixer-upper, but it still presented a great deal potential progress for Animalia that carried on in spite of many of the political hurdles that Animalia faced or had to worry about. When Animalia started, it was pretty much limited to the small village/settlement next to Lyre and largely centered around the Brown farm. Since then, Mieni Atoll had been added to it and eventually this hotel outside Manaus would hold a similar status, and the Brazilian government had allowed for it. It was an opportunity that Horizon as a company and Animalia wasn't going to let pass by.
"The wood does seem to still be strong!" Sophie added, as that seemed to be the concern that Jessica and Roger seemed to have with regard to concern that the two predominantly have.
Jessica and Roger did slowly make their way out with Melbourne following behind them. And once they came out, they joined Sophie and Roland at the edge of the dock and looked out toward where the city of Manaus was, which they could see from the edge of the dock, which had actually been why Sophie and Roland had come out onto the dock in the first place. Jessica and Roger came out slowly, still a bit nervous over the idea that they might run into a rotten board and fall into the river. But, they did make it and the boards didn't break. The two rabbit Animalians looked out and could easily see what Sophie and Roland had seen.
"Wow," Jessica said slowly.
The sight wasn't too bad, and they could easily make out some of the roofs of the the buildings of Manaus poking out above the trees. The buildings weren't that tall, but since they were only one mile away and presently standing out a way into the Amazon river, they weren't looking down the treeline at the water's edge. It was just enough of a angle that they could see of Manaus's taller buildings poking out above the trees. It made for an interesting contrast with the green of the trees and the rainforest and the brown of the power pules that rose up from the river and ran back toward Manaus.
"It is quite a sight," Roland commented, "Isn't it?"
"It is," Jessica agreed.
They all nodded and looked out, noting that the power lines that had once run to the hotel had either been removed from the poles or had never been installed, which would take time to put in, but in theory would be fairly easy. They watched with some degree of marvel at the scene when the sound of a great splash was heard behind them making all of them jump. They turned to see Melbourne go under the water with something
"What the...!?" Sophie gasped aloud as water was thrown in the air as Melbourne seemed to wrestle with something under water and was soon making his way toward the shore.
The sight had startled all of them and was enough to even make Jessica and Roger consider bolting inside for help from Samson or Abby or from Malice, Sarah, Travis, and Simon, as this was too much a surprise and after the earlier mentions on Black Caiman being in the river and being a potential threat there was enough worry that they would run into something that could over power them. However, calling didn't seem to be an issue as they soon heard Samson and Abby making their way quickly back to the riverside and as Melbourne actually made their way back to the river side. To their surprise, Melbourne emerged from the river holding a live Black Caiman, though it was of smaller size, only about four feet long at most, and he had it gripped under its arms and straddling it slightly so that it couldn't swing its tail to hit Melbourne's legs.
"What the..." Abby said slowly, "What's going on?"
"Sorry to startle anyone," Melbourne answered as he set the caiman belly down on the ground and then pinned its head down. "But I spotted this fella movin' by. And since you said you wanted to uplift these guys... with this fella bein' a little guy, I figured it was worth it."
Abby and Samson looked to each other while Jessica and the others came off the dock. The caiman was hissing and growling its discontent, but it also seemed to have been exhausted by the wrestling match in the river.
"I think the uplifting plan was to go after the hotel was actually closer to being up and running," Abby commented, "from what I can see... is that while it could work... we have a solid month's worth of work to, especially if most of the labor force will be coming out from Manaus."
"I might ultimately be a better thing to have a local being part of the work," Melbourne comment, "unless you plan to stay here until all the work is completed."
Abby pulled her lips back and almost made a frown, as the IAC wasn't too terribly far in the future and she would need to be back in Animalia for the competition and to see who would do better between her and Durga. Samson shared a similar look.
"Well... maybe we can talk to the scientists that will be staying in Manaus while the project is going on," Abby admitted slowly, "Though... we'll need to find a way keep this guy safe and not a threat to us."
"Maybe hold him in an interior room of the hotel," Samson commented, "He looks pretty little in comparison to the photos we were shown."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Meanwhile, inside the hotel Sarah, Malice, Simon, and Travis continued to look up and down the halls of the hotel. With it found that the hotel had no electric power at present, they had to rely on their keen sense of smell to help them navigate the halls as while there were windows at the end of each hall, the fact that the rainforest had encroached on the hotel since it was abandoned had reduced a lot of the natural light that would come in. That, however, wasn't too bad, though the four soon ran into a problem with regard to having a good sense of smell.
"Guh..." Malice gave grunt and raised one hand up to the tip of her muzzle, "one thing about being an Animalian that's great... is knowing where the bathroom is."
"I'd think that'd be the plus of being a dog," Sarah commented, "as dogs can be trained. Without training... they tend to go where they want, to."
Malice looked over to see Sarah with a small smile. Sarah was remembering when her family was toilet training Malice when she was a puppy. They actually did rather well in that, but until then, Mary Alice had had a few "accidents." It actually made Sarah chuckle a little bit at the irony that it was Malice who was complaining about poo.
"Well... the plus side of a good sense of smell is that we can avoid stepping in it," Simon commented.
Travis and Malice soon nodded and they made their way along the hall that separated the various rooms. They found that interior doors were still there, but were left completely open or at least unlatched. They had looked in to find many of the rooms had looked like animals from outside had come in from time to time, though they didn't find any while they were there... at least not on the lower floors.
"The one thing I'm wondering on," Travis commented as they made their way to a set of stairs at the end of the hallway, "is that we've found all this evidence that animals have been in here... but we haven't seen any."
"Any on the lower floors has probably heard us and left," Sarah commented.
They continued their exploration and going to each floor, one floor than a time. With each floor up, they found that there was less and less signs of animal activity in the hallway. Some of it they figured that going up a floor presented some sort of risk and that few ground dwelling animals did that sort of thing a lot. Once they found that the building wasn't a hill, they stuck to areas where they knew they couldn't be cornered by a predator. However, the further up the building they went, the greater sign of things like birds or monkeys appeared. Eventually as they came onto the top floor, they could actually hear the natural bird calls of various parrot like birds, though none of their group fully knew what any individual bird species would sound like.
Eventually Malice's curiosity got the better of her and she opened a door. To her surprise, she was greeted by a great honking and a flash of red feathers as as an adult Scarlet Macaw flew at her. Malice gave a startled yip and backed up as the bird soon landed at her feet with its wings flared to make it look bigger. It's calls were soon answered by another and after a moment, the Macaw recovered, turned and flew out the window where it was soon joined by another and they flew off into the rainforest.
"You okay?" Simon asked to Malice.
"Yeah..." Malice nodded, "I didn't expect to be attacked by a bird... but I'm okay."
"But we did get to see some local wildlife, finally," Sarah commented.
"We aren't uplifting that one," Malice declared with a humph.