Carl Hiaasen’s works return again and again to environmental issues—particularly those facing his home state of Florida—and Scat! is no different. The plot focuses on illegal oil drilling in the Florida Everglades, a unique subtropical ecosystem supporting many rare and endangered species. Among these is the Florida panther, a species of big cat on the brink of extinction, one of the nation’s most endangered animals. Industrial development, driven by human greed—like the illegal drilling operation—directly threatens this irreplaceable creature and the entire vanishing ecosystem in which it lives. When the oil workers shoot at a mother panther to scare her away from the oil rigs, one of her cubs dies and the other is abandoned, leaving the novel’s characters in a race to reunite the cub with its mother. 

Even beyond the predicament of the abandoned panther cub, the novel is full of reminders of Florida’s imperiled wildlife. One of the most eerie, atmospheric scenes in the book describes Mrs. Starch’s taxidermy collection of extinct animals; her demanding biology curriculum is shown to have real, life-and-death consequences in Black Vine Swamp and beyond. Morality in this novel means protecting the environment, and every character is judged by how they defend, or destroy, the Everglades.