Where It All Goes Down
Wahoo's Place
Can you imagine living in a zoo? That is what life is like for Wahoo Cray who wakes up every day to, "gators, snakes, parrots, mynah birds, rats, mice, monkeys, raccoons, tortoises and even a bald eagle…" (1.14), which he now has to take care of by himself because his dad is out of commission. This Florida home is as wild as the wilderness surrounding it (besides the metal cages and glass tanks) and so is Mickey, Wahoo's dad. They live simply and comfortably, not minding daily chores, simple cheap meals, and sharing a cell phone. They are the working middle class Americans most of us can identify with… minus the twelve-foot gator.
They also have a fake Everglades set, which Mickey built for filming underwater scenes. It is perfect for getting close-up shots of a real alligator swimming, and it is perfect for Alice, since she is too big to move out of the backyard. This is where our story begins, mainly to contrast how inappropriate it is that Derek's crew enters the sacred space of the real Everglades to shoot a fake show with wild animals.
The Real Deal: The Everglades
Most of the story takes place on the tree islands of the Everglades. The Cray boys leave the comfort of their odd home for the wilderness, where "The director of Expedition Survival! selected for the first camp a tree island […] surrounded by a natural mote that was shallow enough to wade, but then the crew encountered a fierce tangle of thorny vines and clawing shrubs. It required tough work with sharp blades to hack a path into the cool canopy of the interior" (11.61). We can imagine this area to be green and full, hardly giving a view of the surrounding wilderness. Other than this description, there are only bits and pieces of what the Everglades actually look like. The author relies on the reader's prior knowledge to picture it. Unlike the fake set at Wahoo's home, the real Everglades are not meant for camera crews.
Despite the rundown of predatory wild animals that Sickler gives to Derek, this space is actually rather vacant—not only of people, but also of animal life. Like the narrator tells us, thinking about airboats, "They were so loud that panthers heard them coming from miles away and ran for cover" (10.100). Even though there are wild animals here, they aren't all packed into a little clearing like in a Disney movie and, also unlike a Disney movie, they hide when they hear people. Only twice do the characters run into animals while out in the Everglades: Wahoo and Tuna see a python putting the squeeze on a bird, and Derek gets flipped by a boar. Any mishaps that involve animals occur because the humans seek the animals out and bother them, not because the land is swarming with vicious beasts looking to kill.
Hiaasen does a good job showing us what wild spaces are really like—uncomfortable and inhospitable for people, but not hostile. The people who are prepared and know what to expect and how to react to the wild things they encounter end up just fine. In Chomp, the wildest things we see are human.