Animals require love and love requires sacrifice. Nine-year-old Winifred "Fred" Allweather is swamped with the care of her pets and best friends, Rico and Nico, a pair of mischievous raccoons, as she tries to enjoy a carefree life in the swamplands of modern-day Gainesville, Florida. Life crimples Fred with a dramatic sixteen-year-old sister suffering separation anxiety from her college-bound crush and a lack of kids her own age who can look past her eccentric love of animals and see the big heart that makes her who she is. Fred's father, Danny, saved the two raccoons when the wildlife conservation facility that he was working for closed down, and since, they have become family. But, while Rico strives to obey house rules, Nico wreaks havoc when he has food on his mind, which is all the time. The result is Danny giving Fred an ultimatum: keep her pets out of trouble or lose them. Frog capturing is put on hold when Fred gets serious about keeping her beloved pets. But then her pets escape for the swamp of her own front yard. Fred puts her life at risk trying to find them, exploring the swamp with a mad hunter on the loose, a man using all he's got to see what he suspects are mere thieving vermin out of town and out of existence.