by Colin Dann
‘Toad. He was attacked and couldn’t defend himself. He died bravely and the rest of us have declared war on the rat hordes by night and day.’
‘Poor harmless, good-hearted Toad,’ Plucky murmured sorrowfully. ‘He never offered a threat to a soul. How glad I am I’m back in time to help defend our home. Are all our other friends still living?’
‘Yes, thankfully,’ said Tawny Owl, ‘though I haven’t seen a lot of them since I’ve been so busy hunting.’
‘Have you caught rats?’
‘Heaps,’ the bird answered. ‘My youngsters are insatiable and, naturally, I have to eat too.’
‘You look as if you’ve done that all right,’ Plucky observed. ‘You’ve become rather portly.’
Tawny Owl drew himself up. ‘I – portly? What nonsense, you cheeky young fox. I could hardly be portly when I’ve never been more active.’
But Plucky, though he forbore to say more, was right. The owl was portly and, as he accompanied the fox on his short journey home across the Park, Plucky could see how heavy Owl’s flying had become, just as if his wings were scarcely sufficient to support him any more.
By day the rats mostly kept out of sight. Plucky, of course, was eager to begin hunting but he looked forward to his reception at his homecoming. He ran fast and Tawny Owl, puffing and blowing, battled to keep abreast. Fox and Vixen were overwhelmed by Plucky’s return. Owl perched close as Plucky related how he had escaped from the other reserve.
‘Ingenious indeed,’ Fox said admiringly and congratulated his young relative. ‘You remind me so much of Bold, your grandfather,’ he said softly.
There could be no higher praise in Plucky’s view. The tale of Bold’s adventures and exploits in the outside world and his sad fate there had been part of the young fox’s upbringing. Bold was almost as much a hero as the Farthing Wood Fox himself. ‘You flatter me,’ Plucky said humbly. He looked about him. ‘I shall join your hunting party tonight,’ he said, ‘but now there’s a particular friend I want to see.’
‘No difficulty in guessing who that is,’ Vixen commented. ‘She’s sure to be somewhere close by. I know you’ve both missed your games and races. It’s a pity you’ve been separated so long, for things have turned very serious here since.’
‘No time for play now,’ Plucky acknowledged. ‘More important matters for all of us to attend to. I – er – I’ll leave you now, if I may. Dash and I were close companions and I’m impatient to renew our friendship. I only hope she hasn’t forgotten me.’
‘That day will never come,’ Vixen assured him. ‘She hardly talks of anyone else.’
Plucky, full of high spirits and keen anticipation, loped away to his longed-for rendezvous.
‘A fox and a hare,’ mused Tawny Owl. ‘Such a strange sort of friendship. It could only happen amongst Farthing Wood animals.’
‘You mistake them,’ Fox told him. ‘Dash and Plucky are White Deer Park animals through and through. Farthing Wood is only a name to them.’
‘You know what I mean, Fox,’ Tawny Owl answered. ‘The place has gone but the spirit of Farthing Wood lives on here. And so it will, as long as we keep it alive.’
Fox was moved. ‘Oh, Owl,’ he said, ‘how good it is to hear you say those words. It puts new heart into me.’
Plucky discovered Dash drowsing on her form in some long grass. He stood looking at her for a while, hoping she would wake of her own accord. The sun shone on her silky fur and a slight breeze was ruffling it. At last she opened her eyes and, at the same instant, sprang up and bolted. The image of a fox being the first thing she saw, she took instinctive action before there was time to recognize the animal.
‘Dash, Dash, come back,’ Plucky called disappointedly. ‘Here’s your old playmate back at last. Don’t you know me?’
The hare had run quite a way before she turned and then raced back at full stretch. She leapt over Plucky in her glee, then jinked to right and left, her marvellously elastic body making Plucky’s head spin. She butted him and tumbled him over and then she ran round and round in an ebullience of spirits so overpowering she couldn’t check herself.
‘Stop!’ Plucky cried, delighted though he was to see her reaction. ‘You’re making me dizzy!’
Dash became still. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you weren’t carried out by Whistler. You must have been very clever indeed to arrange your own escape. And Plucky, I simply can’t tell you how I feel. I’ve been lonely. The other hares are not exciting at all and, in any case, there’s been no time to play or run or – or – anything, except to look out for those hateful rats. You must tell me everything. Did you dig under the wall, or learn to climb, or sprout wings or – ’
‘Let me get a word in!’ Plucky begged. ‘Then I’ll soon explain.’ Dash fell silent and watched the fox eagerly. ‘It wasn’t such a clever plan really, you know. I just thought I’d leave that enclosure as I entered it.’ He described exactly what he’d done.
‘It’s brilliant,’ Dash said. ‘I don’t care what you say. Even Fox himself never thought of your idea. Only you could have come up with it. I’m so proud you’re my friend. I can’t believe my luck. Hares are so dim-witted by comparison with you foxes. I wonder why I’m so fortunate?’
‘We’ve grown up together, haven’t we? We’ll always be friends, no matter what else happens. We shall have our own mates and our own litters one day, but you and I will always have our own special relationship. Friendship’s for ever.’
‘Yes,’ said Dash. ‘Friendship like ours really is for ever.’
13
Bully’s Cunning
The rats returned to the Pond. There was plentiful food here in the mass of froglets and toadlets hiding amongst the surrounding vegetation, and, led by Bully, a swarm of males and unmated females descended on the miniature amphibians and reduced their mass to a fraction of what it had been.
Bully smacked his lips as he crunched up the tiny prey. ‘There’s food to be had everywhere in this place,’ he told some of his henchmen, ‘if you know where to look. We know where to look, don’t we? Nothing like a rat for digging up a meal somehow. And we need to feed up, all of us, so’s we’re strong and fast. Sharpen your teeth too, when you can, for the main assault. It’s coming. We’ve got most of them on the run here but the main battle’s to come. If we can push those old comrades back – back till they’re cringing – we’ll be supreme at last.’
‘Who are the old comrades?’ a young rat piped up.
‘Who are they? Why, the ones who drove our friends out of that wood and thereabouts – on the other side of the Park. They think they’re so almighty, the fox and the badger and the owl and the weasel – all their hangers-on – but we’ll show them. We’ll be able to raise such a horde soon that we’ll drown them in bodies.’
‘Dead bodies?’ the young rat quavered.
‘Don’t be pathetic!’ snapped Bully. ‘What good would that be to us? Live bodies, live bodies, running all over them and pulling them down like wood ants on caterpillars. We’ll advance through the wood, taking a tree at a time. Then we’ll climb the trees, some of us on each, many of us on each,’ he corrected himself with a sneer. ‘Up and on to the low branches, see? And clinging to the trunks. They won’t be able to reach us there. Then, when we’re ready, and good and thick on the tree trunks, we’ll drop down on them like wasps on rotten fruit.’
‘You’re a great one for allusions, Bully,’ a big rat called Spike said. ‘But from what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t call the Farthing Wood animals rotten at all. There’s nothing soft about them. They’re tough and hard and cunning. Look at their leader. Everyone knows about him. It won’t be so easy . . .’
‘They’re old, all of them,’ Bully growled. ‘Their fighting days are mostly behind them.’
‘How have they killed so many of us, then?’
‘We weren’t organized, that’s why. The others who went in – most of them females – were overawed in advance. They expected to be caught and chased and killed
. They hardly fought at all. It won’t be like that next time, I can tell you. I’ve got every bit as much wit and cunning as that fox.’
‘How will we be safe up the trees with an owl picking us off?’ demanded Brat.
‘Yes, yes, the owl is a terrible hunter,’ squealed the young rat.
‘Is he so terrible?’ Bully grinned at his junior. ‘Have you seen him? He’s so fat he’ll soon be incapable of flying at all. Let him catch some more of us, yes, let him do it! The faint-hearted ones like you!’ The young rat quailed. ‘A few more of us in his stomach is all to the good. We’ll weigh him down, ha ha! Even dead rats can be useful to my plan!’ He leered at his astonished listeners. ‘Make no mistake,’ he said, ‘we’re going to tackle that precious band of compatriots. And we’ll begin with the snake. I’ve heard enough about his insidious way of fighting. He only likes to seek out the weakest of us. Let’s see how he enjoys fighting the strongest!’
‘What if the humans come back?’ Spike asked subtly. He knew no rat could combat their deviousness.
Bully didn’t answer at once. It seemed as if he hadn’t thought quite as far as that eventuality. Then he said in a whisper, ‘They won’t come back. Didn’t we wait until we were sure they’d gone? And have we seen any of them since we came back here? Why would they come back if they don’t know we’re here?’
The other rats were silent. They weren’t competent to give opinions on the ways of humans. Bully munched his way through another froglet, satisfied he had dealt with the doubters.
Adder’s loathing of rats intensified after he saw what they had done to his old companion Toad. He couldn’t forget how, at the end of each season, the pair of them had generally managed to choose a hole for hibernation that suited them both. It had been a comfortable arrangement. Now the snake was fated always to winter alone.
Adder could see that if the rats once gained a permanent foothold in the Reserve, the way of life for every resident of White Deer Park would change. The white deer themselves, or at any rate the timid hinds, were fearful for their fawns. They had no previous experience of rats and they suspected these scavengers to be lurking in the midst of every tuft of grass. Adder, always so close to the ground himself, was more aware of the rats’ movements than most. He knew where many of the females had made their nests, and he set himself to visit as many of these as he could. The blind and naked rat young were defenceless against the snake’s arts and, where the females tried to intervene, Adder’s poison found its mark.
‘Another strike for White Deer Park,’ he would lisp as he slid from a nest, having eaten or otherwise disposed of the young who had been there. When Sinuous the she-viper joined him the pair of snakes made a potent strike force. Bully, however, was about to put a stop to this.
Information was brought to the big rat and his followers of Adder’s sphere of activity. Bully decided to ambush the snake as he prepared to launch an attack. Despite the female rats’ protestations (they never trusted the males near their helpless babies) Bully, Brat, Spike and a number of other males secreted themselves in a nest not far from a mossy bank where Adder loved to sun himself. They were confident of trapping him there and then ridding themselves of him for good. There was no doubt that Adder had done considerable damage to the rat colonies.
The squeaking of tiny rat nurselings was like a magnet to Adder and Sinuous. Their tongues flickered rapidly as they picked up the babies’ scent. Red eyes glowing, the pair of snakes slithered eagerly through the undergrowth. Twigs and dry bracken crackled beneath their scaly bodies.
‘Warm pink rats asleep in their den, not knowing that Adder is coming again,’ the snake would hiss to himself in a sort of sing-song voice.
Sinuous augmented this humorously. ‘A rat makes a break in the diet of a snake.’
Side by side they slid to the nest where Bully and his followers awaited them. Adder entered the run first. Inside the nest there was perfect silence as the nurseling rats quivered in a mass, sensing the presence of a predator. The snake’s long slim body was enveloped in darkness. His busy forked tongue quickly picked up the new odour of the male rats. He came to a halt. There was danger here, he knew. He called behind to Sinuous, ‘Stay outside! There’s a trap for us!’
Sinuous made off in a different direction at all speed. At the same time Adder, in the act of coiling around in a circle to make his retreat, felt two pairs of jaws clamp him in the middle. He instantly opened his mouth and struck out with his fangs in the darkness. Brat and Spike had seized him from the rear but Adder’s head was free and he endeavoured to lunge at his other assailants to keep them at bay.
‘Hold back,’ Bully shrieked. ‘There’s death in those fangs.’ The other rats couldn’t approach the swaying mosaicked snake’s head, which lashed first to the right, then to the left. But Adder’s long thin body was held firm by the gripping jaws and, try as he would, he couldn’t shake them off.
‘You’ve made one sortie too many, Poisonous One,’ Bully taunted him. ‘You’ll soon tire of your dipping and weaving. We can hang on till you do. You’d like to murder all our babies, wouldn’t you? Well, you’ve killed one too many!’ Adder’s head and neck continued to sway from side to side. He was desperate to get his venom into one of the ambushers and reduce the odds against him. But he simply couldn’t get close enough.
Sinuous darted through the undergrowth, alarmed for her own safety and, believing the rats had already disposed of Adder, she expected that they would soon come after her. She had her own escape route under a large flat rock, but this was a good distance away and, as she shot towards it, she shuddered to think of Adder’s fate. There would be the most horrible revenge taken, she was sure, on the creature who had dared to lay low the future generation of the rodent horde. She had no connection herself with the Farthing Wood animals, other than with Adder himself, and the idea of trying to bring him aid from his friends would never have occurred to her. The snake was as good as dead already, in her own mind. However, by sheer coincidence, in her headlong rush towards the rock bolt hole, she slid under the very noses of Plucky and Dash, who were sunning themselves together on a high bank overlooking the stream.
The fox and the hare at first thought they were seeing Adder approaching them. But this snake had no battle scars on her body and no blunt tail. They jumped up as Sinuous came closer.
‘What’s the trouble? You’re in a hurry!’ Plucky barked.
The she-viper was aware this fox was one of Adder’s oddly chosen acquaintances. ‘The rats have turned the tables on us,’ she hissed urgently. ‘An ambush – back there. They’ve been studying our movements; how else could they have known?’ (She was talking half to herself.)
‘Is Adder caught up in this?’ Plucky demanded.
‘“Caught up” is the exact expression,’ Sinuous told him. ‘The rats won’t let him give them the slip this time.’
‘Tell me where he is,’ Plucky commanded. ‘He needs help.’
‘I fear you’re too late for that,’ was the snake’s response. ‘But if you must go to see his demise, I’ll tell you how.’
‘Dash, run off and get the seniors – any of them,’ Plucky ordered her. ‘We need some support straight away. Now then’ – he turned once more to the she-viper – ‘give me the directions without delay.’
‘You’re used, I suppose, to giving orders, are you?’ Sinuous commented cynically. She objected to this young animal’s tone. Who was he to make demands of her?
‘Oh, don’t waste time with such remarks,’ the fox said with exasperation. ‘Do you hold Adder’s life so cheap that you can’t even put his rescuers on the right track?’
‘I said I would,’ the snake hissed crossly, and she did have a sort of fleeting regard for Adder’s welfare; as much, at least, as was possible for a reptile of her independent nature. ‘Go towards the slope and follow it down. Run through the heather to a bare patch of ground where the bracken shoots are beginning to uncurl. You’ll see a small hole under a patch of bilbe
rry. That’s where he is.’ She continued on her way at once, without pausing longer to see Plucky take the correct way. The sun-warmed flat stone, under which she could hide herself against the cool, dark earth, was an objective from which she didn’t wish to be diverted for one more moment.
Plucky sped away, wondering at the cool blood of Adder’s one-time mate. But he soon forgot about her in his vital race to the snake’s aid. The rat hole was easily found. Plucky, of course, couldn’t get into it. It was far too small for him. He put his muzzle to it. The smell of rats was overpowering. ‘Adder!’ he called sharply. ‘Are you all right? It’s me – Plucky. I’ve come to help!’
The snake, who was still fighting bravely to prevent any additional rats seizing hold of him, answered in a drone, ‘I’m certainly not all right. Unless,’ he added, ‘carrying two large rodents on my back with their teeth transfixing my skin is a normal state of affairs.’ Even with his life imperilled, Adder’s naturally sarcastic temperament didn’t desert him.
Plucky began to dig into the hole with his front paws, scattering the earth behind him as he did so. Every so often he raised his head and barked loudly so that he could be located by Dash and any of their friends she might manage to find. The hole grew bigger and, very soon, Plucky could see some of the rats, who backed further into their run as they became exposed to view.
Pretty soon Bully, who had been dodging Adder’s lunges, along with the others, could see that, with the advance of Plucky, the contest was about to dip to the rats’ disadvantage. He tried a bluff. ‘Keep your distance, young fox, and leave our nest alone,’ he cried, ‘or the snake dies!’
Plucky hesitated. He couldn’t yet see Adder, who was deeper into the hole. He decided to bargain. ‘Very well, let Adder go and I’ll come no further. But if you don’t, I’ll dig you all out!’ He turned and barked out his position once again, and Dash heard his call as she streaked across ground for more help. Plucky waited. There was no sign of Adder. Then the squeaking and squealing of the male rats as they discussed their position became very audible. Plucky knew they had no option but to release Adder and, once the snake was safely away, he intended to flush out every last rodent from the den. There was no place for sentiment in the animals’ campaign against the rats.