Twelve-year-old Nellie Tibbits and her herpetologist mother have been in Bog Hollow for a month, but most of the other children regard Nellie as a weird Northerner; however her pet corn snake wins the friendship of Daryl Tate, who is as obsessed with snakes as his grandmother is with stray cats, and when one of the cats disappears Nellie joins the Bog Hollow boys in the search--and hatches a plan to help get Granny Tate's strays adopted.

In Georgia the Bog Hollow State Park Junior Bass Fishing Tournament is only a week away, but most of the bass seem to have disappeared from Bog Hollow, and brothers Austin and Ethan Finch and their friends are determined to find out if it is a case of pollution, an invasion of mudfish--or something more sinister.