An Owl Called Star

by Helen Peters

  Mum looked at her in surprise. “Really?”

  “Sure. You’ve had a busy day. You should sit down and rest.”

  Mum narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What’s going on, Jasmine?”

  Jasmine’s eyes widened in outraged innocence. “Just because I’m being kind and thoughtful, you think there’s something going on? That’s not very trusting.”

  Nadia smiled. “You’re right. Thank you for sorting it out. Now, go and get ready for bed, all of you.”

  “That was lucky,” muttered Manu, as they trooped upstairs.

  “But we still haven’t found Biscuit,” said Tom.

  Jasmine felt sick. How could she possibly tell Aisha that she’d lost her beloved hamster?

  “She will come back, won’t she?” said Manu.

  “Course she will,” said Jasmine. “When she gets hungry, she’ll come back.”

  And she really, really hoped that was true. Because she had absolutely no idea what she would do if Biscuit didn’t come back.

  Jasmine draped a blanket over Biscuit’s cage and threw lots of clothes over it.

  “If Mum asks, I’ll just tell her I’m in the middle of making her something for Christmas,” she said. “Then she won’t peek underneath it.”

  Tom looked doubtfully at the enormous blanket-covered cube. “What would you be making her that’s that size?”

  Jasmine shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’m always making stuff. She won’t suspect anything.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to tell her?” said Tom. “All these secrets are stressing me out.”

  “I was going to,” said Jasmine. “But we can’t tell her now. She’d go mad if she knew I was looking after Biscuit without asking her and I’d nearly got her killed and now I’ve lost her.”

  “Mm,” said Tom. “Yes, maybe it’s best she doesn’t know yet. Not until we’ve found Biscuit.”

  “Exactly. If we leave the cage door open and put food inside, maybe she’ll come back tonight.”

  “I think we should put Star in another room,” said Tom. “Biscuit might be able to smell him, and then she won’t come back in here.”

  Jasmine looked at him thoughtfully. “You’re right. But where?”

  “We could put him in the dining room,” said Tom. “And that will be an even better reason for everyone to keep the cats shut in the scullery. So it will work for Star and Biscuit.”

  “We can tell Mum we’re worried he might keep us awake if he stays in my room,” said Jasmine. “Since he’s getting so much more lively.”

  Nadia laughed when they told her this. “Far more likely that you and Tom would keep him awake. But it’s probably a good idea for him to be in a quiet room on his own. Hopefully he’ll be able to feed himself by tomorrow, and then we can release him on Sunday.”

  When Jasmine woke up on Saturday morning, her first thought was Biscuit. But when she looked into the cage, the food was untouched. She checked every inch of the cage, but Biscuit wasn’t there.

  Tom sat up in bed as she was checking the last nest box.

  “Not back?”

  Jasmine shook her head. Her insides were twisted with worry.

  “I don’t know what to do. How can we get her back?”

  “Let’s look online,” said Tom. “I bet there’s stuff about how to find an escaped hamster.”

  There was. They were relieved to read that they had done the right thing by leaving the cage door open with food inside. They were slightly reassured, too, to read that many hamsters do return safely to their cages, sometimes after several days. And they followed a tip to place four sunflower seeds on the floor in every room of the house, so they could count them regularly to check whether Biscuit was in a particular room.

  After breakfast, Nadia, Tom and Jasmine went to feed Star. When Jasmine lifted the towel from his cage, Star backed into the far corner and went into full defensive posture. He lunged his head forward, hunkered down as low as he could go, spread his wings up, fluffed out his feathers and swayed his head from side to side. Then he stopped moving and held his pose very still, his huge eyes staring out at them.

  As Jasmine watched him, she was filled with a strange mixture of affection, admiration and also another emotion, one that she had never felt about an animal before.

  Fear.

  Star was a bird of prey. And last night, when she had seen his spear-sharp talons heading straight for the little hamster, Jasmine had, for the first time, properly understood what that meant.

  It was Star’s instinct to hunt and kill. Everything about him, from his silent flight to his super-sensitive hearing, was designed to make him a better hunter. He was beautiful, but he was also deadly.

  Nadia smiled. “He’s so much livelier. That’s great to see.”

  “Shall we see if he’s ready to eat by himself?” asked Jasmine.

  “Yes. I’ll hold him while you put the meat in.”

  Nadia put on her gloves and lifted Star out while Jasmine tipped the food on to the cage floor. Then Nadia put Star back.

  “He probably won’t eat it straightaway. Owls expect their prey to be moving, not lying still. But I think he’ll work out that it’s food eventually, if we leave him to it.”

  Jasmine and Tom decided to research barn owls while they were waiting.

  “I can’t believe how ugly the chicks are when they first hatch,” said Tom, who was looking through Nadia’s book on owls. “Can you believe Star ever looked like that?”

  “Oh, no!” said Jasmine.

  “What?”

  “Look. Star might have chicks to feed. It says the father brings food to the nest for up to fourteen weeks, and chicks can be born any time from March to August. So Star might have a family.”

  “We should go and look in the barn,” said Tom, already getting to his feet. “See if we can find a nest.”

  “Wait,” said Jasmine. “We should find out what we’re looking for first.”

  They looked at pictures of barn owl nests, which weren’t really nests at all, just piles of squashed droppings and pellets. They discovered that barn owls don’t build nests, so they need to use a level surface, somewhere sheltered from rain and wind.

  “It would be really cool to find owl pellets,” said Tom. “Look, there’s a chart here of all the animal bones that might be inside a pellet.”

  “Let’s go up to the barn now,” said Jasmine. “Imagine if we found Star’s family!”

  “We won’t be able to have the party in the barn if owls are nesting there,” said Tom.

  Jasmine stared at him. She hadn’t thought of this.

  “No,” she said. “We won’t. But Star and his family are more important than the party.”

  Before they went to the barn, they checked on Star. He was standing in the corner of the cage with his eyes shut. All the mince had disappeared. Jasmine ran to the kitchen to tell Nadia.

  “Come and look, Mum! He’s eaten all the food by himself!”

  “That’s an excellent sign,” said Nadia. “We just need to flight-test him now, make sure he’s properly better. If he’s flying well, we can release him tomorrow.”

  “How will we flight-test him? Won’t he just fly away?”

  “We need to do it in an aviary,” said Nadia. “The Heathfields have got one, up at Sheepfold Farm.”

  “What’s an aviary?” asked Tom.

  “It’s an outdoor bird enclosure,” said Nadia. “Big enough for birds to fly around in, but with chicken wire over the top and sides, so they can’t get out. Mrs Heathfield used to keep golden pheasants in hers, but it’s empty now. I’ll give her a call.”

  Tom and Jasmine took torches to search the barn. They couldn’t see any sign of a nest among the roof beams, so they shone their torches over the floor to look for feathers, droppings and pellets.

  Suddenly Tom said, “Look! Over here!”

  Jasmine hurried over. Tom’s torch beam lit up splashes of what looked like white paint.

  “Barn ow
l droppings!” she said. “Exactly like the picture on the website.”

  She shone her torch up to the roof beams. “I can’t see anything that looks like a nest, though.”

  “No,” said Tom, who was doing the same. “I think an owl is just roosting here, not nesting. There’s no feathers around.”

  “And I don’t think it’s been a roost for very long,” said Jasmine, “or there’d be a lot more droppings.”

  “There should be pellets somewhere,” said Tom. “The book said owls cough up one or two pellets after each night’s hunting.”

  But although they searched for a long time, they didn’t find anything that looked like an owl pellet.

  “That must mean the owl wasn’t here for very long,” said Jasmine. “If it was Star, maybe he never came back from his night’s hunting because he crashed into the window.”

  “We should look at the window,” said Tom. “See if there’s any marks on it.”

  They retraced the path they’d taken through the brambles on Thursday evening, until they were standing under the window in the exact place where they’d found Star.

  “That smudge in the dirt,” said Tom, pointing. “Do you think that might be where Star hit the window?”

  “It looks like it might be,” said Jasmine.

  “I hope he doesn’t fly into another window once he’s free again,” said Tom. “That would be awful.”

  “We’ll have to be really careful where we release him,” said Jasmine. “Somewhere far away from any hazards.”

  Manu was disappointed that they hadn’t found an owl pellet. “I wanted to dissect it,” he said, “and find all the little skulls of the animals he’d eaten.”

  “You can buy owl pellets online,” said Tom. “I’ll get you one for your next birthday.”

  “Did you phone the lady with the aviary, Mum?” asked Jasmine.

  “Yes, and she’s very happy for us to do Star’s flight test tomorrow. I arranged to go at eleven o’clock.”

  “I can’t wait to see him fly,” said Jasmine. “It’ll be amazing. Can Tom come, too?”

  “Of course,” said Nadia. “Oh, that reminds me, Tom. Your mum phoned to say she’ll pick you up around five o’clock.”

  “So can we do some baking this afternoon?” asked Jasmine.

  “If you like. What do you want to make?”

  “Halloween cupcakes and biscuits. In case anyone comes trick-or-treating here.”

  “That’s a nice idea,” said Nadia. “Though I can’t imagine anyone bothering to walk all the way up the farm track to come trick-or-treating. You might end up eating all the cakes yourselves.”

  “Oh, well,” said Jasmine. “That wouldn’t be so terrible.”

  Before they started baking, they checked Biscuit’s cage and counted all the sunflower seeds. Nothing had been eaten and there was no sign of Biscuit.

  “It doesn’t seem right to have a party when Biscuit’s still missing,” said Jasmine.

  “I think she’ll come back tonight,” said Tom. “She’s nocturnal, remember, so she’s probably curled up asleep somewhere. Maybe she’s under the floorboards in your room. You can listen out for her this evening.”

  “I will,” said Jasmine. “And I’ll make more Halloween decorations while I’m listening.”

  “Should we decorate the barn tomorrow morning, before Star’s flight test?” asked Tom. “I can say I’m meeting you in the woods to walk Sky.”

  “Sure,” said Jasmine. “And I’ll bring Sky with me, so it won’t even be a lie.”

  Jasmine checked the sunflower seeds twice more that day, but they were all still there. She checked Biscuit’s cage again, but it was still empty.

  She sat quietly in her bedroom all evening, cutting out silhouettes of owls and bats and spiders from black card, and threading them on lengths of cotton. She listened out the whole time for any sounds of Biscuit waking up and moving around. But she heard nothing.

  Jasmine woke up on Sunday morning full of hope, but Biscuit still wasn’t in her cage and the fresh food was untouched.

  She tried not to panic. There was still time.

  Not much time, though. Aisha was coming back tomorrow, and how could Jasmine possibly face her if Biscuit hadn’t been found by then?

  How could she have been so stupid? If Manu had left the cage door open, she would have been absolutely furious with him.

  Jasmine realised, with an unfamiliar feeling of respect for her brother, that not once had Manu told her she’d been stupid. And he hadn’t breathed a word to Mum and Dad, either.

  She got dressed and put the Halloween decorations and fairy lights in her backpack. As she passed Manu’s room on her way downstairs, she saw him kneeling on his floor building a complicated Lego model. It was impossible to tell what it was. Manu never followed the instructions; he just made whatever he felt like making.

  “I’m taking Sky for a walk,” Jasmine told him. “Would you mind checking the sunflower seeds?”

  “OK,” said Manu, adding a pirate to his construction.

  “And Manu?”

  Manu gave the pirate a machine gun. “What?”

  “Thanks for being so helpful with all this. And for not telling anyone.”

  Manu looked at her in surprise. “That’s OK,” he said.

  Tom was walking towards the barn from the other direction as Jasmine arrived. She gave him the disheartening news about Biscuit.

  “But Manu’s checking the sunflower seeds,” she said. “So you never know.”

  “Fingers crossed,” said Tom.

  He had brought all the things for the Halloween maze. “I cooked the spaghetti before Mum and Dad woke up,” he said proudly.

  “It’s going to be so creepy,” said Jasmine. “I can’t wait.”

  They were planning to blindfold the guests, two at a time, and lead them outside, where they would make them do things like handle a lump of cold spaghetti (brains), pick up peeled grapes (eyeballs) and put their hands in a bowl of ketchup (blood), while playing a soundtrack of eerie noises and telling them a story about a gruesome murder in the woods.

  “It will be so scary,” said Tom. “Noah will totally freak out.”

  The decorating took longer than they’d expected, especially as the decorations kept getting caught on cobwebs when they tried to throw them over the beams. But by the time they had finished, the barn was transformed. There were fairy lights looped up over every convenient nail in the walls, and bats, spiders and owls hanging from all the beams.

  “It looks amazing,” said Tom.

  “Even better than I thought,” Jasmine said. She checked her watch. “We’d better go.”

  “I can’t wait to see Star fly,” said Tom.

  “Let’s hope he can,” said Jasmine. “I think he needs to be back in the wild as soon as possible.” She laughed ruefully as a thought struck her. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Star’s in a cage, but he really needs to be in the wild. And Biscuit’s in the wild, but she really needs to be in a cage.”

  The aviary was actually a big orchard, with apple and pear trees growing in the long grass. The only thing that made it different from a normal orchard was that the whole space was enclosed by a high cage made of chicken wire.

  They set Sky’s carrying case down on the ground. They hadn’t fed him today. He needed to be hungry so he would come back for food after his flight.

  “Right,” said Mum. “What we want is to see him make a vertical take-off from the ground, and then fly strongly and evenly. And he needs to be able to land and balance on a swinging perch.”

  “Is there a swinging perch here?” asked Jasmine.

  “A thin branch will be fine,” said Mum. “We just need to check that his strength and balance are good enough for him to cope in the wild.”

  Jasmine took the towel from the cage. Star was standing facing her, his bright eyes wide open.

  “We’re going to watch you fly, Star,” she said.

  “Stand right back and be ve
ry quiet, you two,” said Mum.

  She put on her gloves, lifted Star out and set him on the ground. Jasmine held her breath.

  Star stood completely still. A gentle breeze ruffled his wing feathers. He moved his head very slightly to the right. Watching. Listening.

  Then he lowered his head, raised his wings and spread them high and wide above his body. He bent his legs and took off, his legs stretched out behind him, his wings spread in a great fan. He flew close to the ground, flapping his wings a few times, then soared up and landed on a fence post on the other side of the aviary. His talons gripped the post and he tucked his wings in close to his body and stood upright again, turning his head slightly to take in his surroundings.

  “Wow,” whispered Jasmine. “He didn’t make a sound.”

  Nadia was smiling. “He seems to be flying strongly. I’d just like to see him land in a tree if possible.”

  As they watched, Star lowered his body again, spread his wings and sprang into the air. He soared silently towards them and landed on a tree stump. He looked around enquiringly. Then he took off again and flew between the apple trees. He flapped his wings and soared above the treetops. He swooped down and landed in the topmost branch of the tallest tree. The thin branch swayed slightly, but Star stayed firmly upright, his talons wrapped tightly around the wood.

  “That’s a swinging perch, right?” whispered Jasmine.

  “It definitely is,” murmured Mum. “He’s ready to be released.”

  It took a while to get Star back in his cage. They put meat inside but he took no interest in it at first. He was clearly enjoying flying back and forth through the trees, landing on branches and posts and then taking off again.

  Eventually, though, he swooped down to the cage door, walked inside and started to eat. Mum closed the door behind him and went to the farmhouse to thank Mrs Heathfield while Star finished his meal.