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"Thank you, Dr. Cruz," Tina said. "I feel much better now." She reached up and shook the doctor's band. Then she said, "You have a different shirt."
        For a moment Dr. Cruz looked perplexed; then he smiled. "That's right, Tina. When I work all night at the hospital, in the morning I change my shirt."
        "But not your tie?"
        "No. Just my shirt."
        Ellen Bowman said, "Mike told you she's observant."
        "She certainly is." Dr. Cruz smiled and shook the little girl's band gravely. "Enjoy the rest of your holiday in Costa Rica, Tina."
        "I will."
        The Bowman family had started to leave when Dr. Cruz said, "Ob, Tina, do you remember the lizard that bit you?"
        "Uh-huh."
        "You remember its feet?"
        "Uh-huh."
        "Did it have any toes?"
        "Yes."
        "How many toes did it have?"
        "Three," she said.
        "How do you know that?"
        "Because I looked," she said. "Anyway, all the birds on the beach made marks in the sand with three toes, like this." She held up her hand, middle three fingers spread wide. "And the lizard made those kind of marks in the sand, too."
        "The lizard made marks like a bird?"
        "Uh-huh," Tina said. "He walked like a bird, too. He jerked his head like this, up and down." She took a few steps, bobbing her head.
        After the Bowmans had departed, Dr. Cruz decided to report this conversation to Guitierrez, at the biological station.
        "I must admit the girl's story is puzzling," Guitierrez said. "I have been doing some checking myself. I am no longer certain she was bitten by a basilisk. Not certain at all."
        "Then what could it be?"
        "Well," Guitierrez said, "let's not speculate prematurely. By the way, have you heard of any other lizard bites at the hospital?"
        "No, why?"
        "Let me know, my friend, if you do."

    The Beach

    Marty Guitierrez sat on the beach and watched the afternoon sun fall lower in the sky, until it sparkled harshly on the water of the bay, and its rays reached beneath the palm trees, to where he sat among the mangroves, on the beach of Cabo Blanco. As best he could determine, he was sitting near the spot where the American girl had been, two days before.
        Although it was true enough, as he had told the Bowmans, that lizard bites were common, Guitierrez had never heard of a basilisk lizard biting anyone. And he had certainly never heard of anyone being hospitalized for a lizard bite. Then, too, the bite radius on Tina's arm appeared slightly too large for a basilisk. When he got back to the Carara station, he had checked the small research library there, but found no reference to basilisk lizard bites. Next he checked International BioSciences Services, a computer database in America, But he found no references to basilisk bites, or hospitalization for lizard bites.
        He then called the medical officer in Amaloya, who confirmed that a nine-day-old infant, sleeping in its crib, had been bitten on the foot by an animal the grandmother-the only person actually to see it-claimed was a lizard. Subsequently the foot had become swollen and the infant had nearly died. The grandmother described the lizard as green with brown stripes. It had bitten the child several times before the woman frightened it away.
        "Strange," Guitierrez had said.
        "No, like all the others," the medical officer replied, adding that he had heard of other biting incidents: A child in Vásquez, the next village up the coast, had been bitten while sleeping. And another in Puerta Sotrero. All these incidents had occurred in the last two months. All had involved sleeping children and infants.
        Such a new and distinctive pattern led Guitierrez to suspect the presence of a previously unknown species of lizard. This was particularly likely to happen in Costa Rica. Only seventy-five miles wide at its narrowest point, the country was smaller than the state of Maine. Yet,