“They’re little hexagons, with ridges, and they look like they have connectors holding them together,” I said. “The wires are like rigid links.”

I stepped back to let Jordan take a look. He stared down the scope, using the little dials to move the slide back and forth.

“You know what these are like?” he asked. “They’re like tiny versions of those spider bots in Minority Report. Those things gave me nightmares.”

“Oh, yeah, those were cool. Would you consider Minority Report a relatively unsung film in the Spielberg canon?”

“I would indeed,” Jordan said, continuing to look intently through the lens. “But not as unsung as A.I. You think this is what’s making the animals crazy?”

“If I had one of them on my cerebral cortex, it would make me crazy.”

“How do you think they work?”

“Dunno. Maybe they attach to the skin under the fur? Or maybe not. After my mom sedated the crazed dogs, she gave them a thorough examination and found nothing like this. I’m guessing those thingies burrow under the skin and either get up to the brain, which makes the most sense, or attach to the adrenal glands.”

Jordan looked up from the scope. “But no one is going around implanting these in individual animals, right? I mean, that big bear was a massive beast. I can’t see anyone getting that thing onto an operating table first.”

“No, there must be some way for these little suckers to attach themselves to the animals and get inside.”

“And we’re talking about all kinds of animals.”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling out a chair to sit. “Raccoons, cats, possums …”

“Coyotes, boars …”

“Wild hogs, skunks … and Mrs. Porter called my mom to say a bunny bit her leg.”

“‘Oh, it’s just a harmless little bunny, isn’t it?’” Jordan said, channeling John Cleese from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I laughed. “Seriously, though, you know how many people have reported animal attacks to my mom since we got back to town? Thirty-six.”

“That doesn’t even count my wild boar, who wasn’t being defensive when he attacked me. Like the bear, this guy was coming after me. With ill intent.”

“Hmm,” I said, sitting back. “It’s like they’re being controlled, commanded to attack through that implant. Wait right there.”

I sprang up and dashed out to the refrigerator where Mom kept deceased animals. I returned with a stiff black Labrador retriever in my arms.

“Dinnertime already?” Jordan asked.

“Help me out with this, goofus,” I said as I placed the canine corpse onto the X-ray table, and Jordan and I positioned its head under the square of light, its legs sticking straight out over the table’s edge. I took the pictures, and we checked out the results.

“Bingo,” I said, tapping the screen to show Jordan the image lurking underneath the dog’s brain. There was more to this thing than what we’d found inside the baggies. This nanobot had longer and more plentiful tentacles, thin as thread and winding through the cranium like tree roots. These ultra-skinny wires must have been burned up in the cremation.