by Colin Dann
‘Don’t worry,’ he replied. ‘I know my duty. Fox is the leader; I’ll do as he says.’
The rats broke across the open ground. In the darkness the individual rodents were difficult to see but the friends had no difficulty in detecting the rapid movement of the mass before them. They waited quietly, thinking their own thoughts. Many of them had a score to settle. They remembered Toad and Sinuous. The death of Mossy was as yet unknown to them.
As the invaders approached, the Farthing Wood animals saw with horror the task that faced them. The lines of rats appeared limitless, stretching out into the far distance of the night-clad Park. The sight was awesome. There were quick intakes of breath and little cries of horror, hastily muffled.
‘We’ll fight to the end,’ Fox said quietly. ‘We’ll save our homes, or die in the attempt. Steady yourselves.’
Bully and Spike got themselves out of the headlong rush, along with some others of Bully’s stoutest fighters. They could see where the enemy was gathered behind the sheltering screen of holly. They began to taunt the animals for their faint-heartedness, but the Farthing Wood band wouldn’t be drawn. The leading rats crashed against the dense holly scrub, pushed and urged forward by the serried lines behind. There were squeals and shrieks of pain as the needle-sharp prickles lanced their skin. Now the surge slowed a little, allowing the rats to proceed more carefully. The foxes snapped as each rodent tried to force its way through. Weasel, a furious fighter, attacked a group of three rats who were endeavouring to thrust themselves between the end of the holly scrub and the young beech saplings which grew either side of the prickly screen. Tawny Owl, Holly and Whistler flew overhead, preparing themselves to pounce on the flood of scrambling bodies which smashed through the barrier. The owlets watched to see what was the next move.
Now the battle began in earnest. The rats opened up gaps in the holly and swept through, hurling themselves in clusters at the beleaguered friends. Foxes, rats, owls, Weasel, Adder, hedgehogs and Whistler were in the mêlée, fighting tooth and claw with scarcely time to draw breath. Many of the rats were young and inexperienced and were easily crushed, but the big males, now joined by Bully, Spike and the other champions, gave a good account of themselves. Female rats too were in the fight. The Farthing Wood animals were close to being overwhelmed. Their bodies were covered by scratching, biting rodents. They tossed them aside, snapping to left and right, but the sheer weight and volume of their attackers began to tell.
Frond now ran forward to lend assistance. She could no longer stand her ground as she watched the ferocity of the contest. Badger was left unguarded, but even he heard the fierce sounds of battle raging a short distance away. He shook himself and lumbered to his set exit. His friends were sorely pressed, fighting for their lives. How could he remain outside the battle zone? He didn’t wish to survive in a Park devoid of his old companions. He came at a limping run into the heart of the fight, and the savagery of the hateful rats encompassed him too.
Dash and her father raced away from the scene with one thought in their minds: to rouse the rest of the Park’s population, deer herd and every willing creature alike, to come to the rescue and to fight side by side to save the Nature Reserve. Now, more than ever before, Dash’s blinding speed came into its own. She left her father far behind as she hurtled through the Park, calling in her high-pitched, carrying voice to every beast, every bird, who would listen, begging them to come to the aid of the embattled band of friends. Leveret’s message was the same. Whenever he encountered another creature he pleaded with it in the name of White Deer Park to help, to bring others to help.
The messages got through. The entire population of the Reserve had been touched by the menace of the rats. Some had suffered badly, others had watched the rodents’ multiplying numbers with fear and alarm. Now the two hares were urging them all to rally round. Predator and prey, carnivore and herbivore began to respond to the plea. They gathered in groups and, seeing other groups assembling nearby, thronged together in their pressing need to liberate themselves and the Park. Dash alerted the white deer, the largest animals in the Reserve. She made them knit together as a herd, stag and hind, by her pressing clarion calls. The herd, with the stags at their head, trotted forward, then broke into a canter. Dash streaked on, crying repeatedly as she criss-crossed the Park. More and more animals swelled the original trickle of nervous contenders into a constant stream. There had never been anything like it in the Park before. The rats were everyone’s enemies and it was as though all the inhabitants of the Reserve had regarded the Farthing Wood animals as a kind of final bastion against the rodents’ depredations. If these, too, fell before them, each creature realized White Deer Park was doomed. In the air owls, hawks, crows and magpies – any bird sufficiently confident in its own size – flew over the tree-tops to the common destination in the darkness.
Meanwhile the rats were in the ascendancy. Bully saw the fight as being nearly over. Adder was buried under a score of rodents as he vainly tried to fasten his fangs into Spike. Fox, Vixen, Friendly, Plucky and all the other foxes were twisting and turning, their bodies encased in clinging, climbing, biting rats, as they continued wearily to snap and lunge at the horde. Their jaws ached, their limbs shook with fatigue. A few more moments and they would succumb; their strength was well-nigh exhausted. Weasel was already on the ground on his back, kicking and lashing out with tooth and claw at his assailants. Tawny Owl, Holly and Whistler continued to make weakened lunges and darts, but the heron’s long legs were being scaled by determined rats and an escape into flight was now denied him, weighed down as he was. Frond was still relatively fresh and battled on grimly, creating a circle of rat corpses around herself. Badger, who felt any moment he must draw his last breath, somehow held off the rats who tried to pull him down. Tawny Owl and Holly flew to a low branch, utterly spent. They could swoop no more, their efforts wasted as they saw with the utmost horror the last of their friends about to be engulfed. They called to the owlets to take refuge in the highest boughs.
But now the other animals of the Reserve burst upon the scene, led by the deer herd. The tightly packed deer trampled across the carpet of rats as they galloped into the battleground. They left a mat of squirming bodies behind them, then turned to pound over them again. For the first time, many of the rats fell back, giving the Farthing Wood animals a breathing space. Adder emerged once more into the open and slid out of the path of the deer hoofs. Back came the herd again. The stags lowered their old antlers, which soon would be shed, where the rats were thickest, and swept the rodents up with a toss into the air, from where they fell back to the ground, bruised or maimed. Bully’s swagger left him as he saw the tide begin to turn.
At this juncture the first of the other creatures – stoats, weasels, badgers and others eager to lend their support – arrived to tilt the balance further. There were still hundreds of rats as yet unmarked, and now, with the new forces called up by Dash and her father pitching themselves into the struggle, the battle took a different turn. The rats, who had felt they had the upper hand, now found themselves sorely strained as more and more animals arrived while, at the same time, fierce birds made attacks on them from the air.
The embattled Farthing Wood group and their friends took new heart. They found a fresh strength and resolve. The foxes hurled the clinging rats from their coats and, shaking themselves free, plunged into the fray again. Badger and Frond stood together, solid on their feet. Only Weasel now was still in dire straits. The other animals were fully occupied. Suddenly Tawny Owl, who considered himself to be Weasel’s last hope, launched a final swoop. He darted down into the midst of the writhing mass of bodies, and claimed two victims with his talons and another with his beak. Weasel was able to clamber back on to his feet. ‘Thanks,’ he gasped, and the next instant began to fight even more furiously.
Dash and Leveret returned to a scene vastly different from the one which had set them speeding away. The rats were falling back. Bully was squealing orders to retreat
before they were all killed. Spike was at last felled by the determined Adder, whose fangs sank into the big rat’s hide with an accompanying hiss: ‘Sin-u-ousss.’
Fox, free of immediate assailants, sought out Bully. He wanted the mass of rats to lose hope, and the quickest way of achieving this was to deprive them of their leader. He saw the rat scuttling away, out of the thick of the fighting, and gave chase. But another animal was ahead of him. Vixen had remembered her solemn vow to Toad. She fastened herself on Bully and picked him up in her jaws. Then she ran away from the battleground. Bully struggled but Vixen’s teeth clamped down more tightly. She ran for the perimeter fence and Fox followed her. They reached the boundary. Vixen clenched her jaws together, tighter and tighter . . . The helpless Bully was crushed between them. Then Vixen shook the carcass terrier-fashion and tossed it adroitly over the fence beyond White Deer Park. It was a symbolic action.
Fox watched her, grim-faced. ‘The others will follow,’ he growled.
18
The Park is Saved
The White Deer Park animals, slowly at first, then more swiftly, drove the rats before them. The rodents gave up the fight and ran back to the wood where their comrades, in great agitation and alarm, still clung to the low branches of the trees they had climbed. While the battle raged these latter had waited nervously to play their part in it. They had heard the animal cries – from shrieks and squeals to grunts, barks and growls – and were prepared to drop down on their enemies and finish them off the very moment they were pursued under the trees by the conquering Bully and his troops. They had got themselves so conditioned to this plan that when the defeated rats came running under the trees they automatically leapt on them and began to fight viciously. So rat fought rat in the darkness and many were slaughtered by their own kin before the rodents quite realized what was happening.
Fox and Vixen rushed back to the side of their allies who were still chasing the remnant of the rat horde through the Reserve. Only Badger and Adder stayed behind at the original battleground, congratulating each other on an unexpected victory.
‘Well, we survived,’ the snake whispered.
‘Yes,’ Badger panted, ‘thanks to the Park’s community spirit.’
‘You can call it community spirit,’ Adder drawled. ‘I prefer a more down-to-earth explanation. And that is, that every single inhabitant of this Reserve came to hate the sight of a rat.’
‘Sight and smell,’ Badger muttered distastefully as he glanced around at the heaped rat carcasses. ‘Their odour is disgusting. The entire Park is defiled by it.’
As the rats were harried and chased and picked off by their enemies while they tried to escape, their bodies left a trail through White Deer Park. Poor Mossy’s remains were hidden by a pile of vanquished rodents. So his death was kept a secret from his friends and, unlike Toad’s, his loss could not be mourned. The survivors from the great rat invasion bolted to their runs under the Park’s perimeter fence,, through which they had so confidently entered the Reserve weeks before. None of them dared to stay within its boundaries. They thought only of the familiar dark tunnels of the sewer system where, unmolested, they had enjoyed a thriving existence in the past. They found themselves longing for the labyrinth’s darkness and its racy fumes. In an hour no rats still breathed within the confines of the Park they had set out to dominate and make their own.
Their pursuers watched their scuttling departure with huge satisfaction. Plucky said to Dash, ‘You saved us. You rescued White Deer Park.’
The young hare replied, ‘No. It’s just that our neighbours responded. But I always knew my great speed was given me for a purpose. When the moment came I had to make use of it.’
The animals, weary but triumphant, dispersed. The deer herd trotted away, their heads held high. The Farthing Wood creatures returned to their own area, as did the other beasts to theirs. Birds greeted the dawn with joyful cries. Together, all of them had rid the Park of the threat that had hung over it for so long. And, as light began to fill the Nature Reserve again, the true scope of their achievement became apparent. Right across the Park to the boundary fence rat carcasses littered the ground. In some places there were single bodies, in others they were strewn in great numbers. They lay thickest of all where the Farthing Wood animals had taken their stand.
The friends looked at the rodent debris in some awe. ‘I never realized before just how numerous they were,’ Fox muttered. ‘This is an astonishing and a horrible sight.’
‘Horrible?’ Tawny Owl queried. ‘You surely can’t be regretting what we’ve done?’
‘Of course not,’ Fox answered. ‘We’ve kept the Park free from the risk of disease. But our beloved Reserve is made ugly by this mess of bodies.’
‘What should we do?’ Frond asked.
‘The Warden will take care of things,’ Badger told her. ‘What a shock he’s going to have when he sees all this.’
‘Badger, how do you feel?’ Fox asked. ‘You shouldn’t have come to the fight. We thought – ’
‘Never mind what you thought,’ Badger interrupted him. ‘You surely know me well enough to realize I wouldn’t idle in my set when my friends were facing extinction.’
Fox gave him an affectionate look. ‘Dear old Badger. How glad I am we’ve all come through. Frond, you must cosset him. Badger has proved once again how much we need him.’
Badger was doubly pleased. He knew he hadn’t let his old friend down and now he looked forward very much to his cosy arrangement with the young Frond continuing. He had even forgotten about Mossy.
But suddenly Adder said, ‘We haven’t all come through, Fox. Do we have such short memories?’
Fox looked chastened. Of course Toad was missing from their numbers, and the only possible comfort they could derive from the recent event was that his death had been avenged.
Vixen said, ‘We’re lucky that more of us weren’t killed.’
Now Badger was made to recall his little friend. ‘Mole,’ he muttered with a puzzled look. ‘Where’s Mole?’
There was a silence. No-one knew about Mossy but they exchanged glances of distress. They seemed to guess that an accident must have befallen him. Why else wouldn’t he have joined them?
‘Perhaps he’s still in his tunnels,’ Badger said feebly. ‘I told him to stay underground. But I don’t suppose he . . . could remain underground . . . always, could he?’ He turned a sorrowful face from one to another of his companions, looking for an expression of hope. There was none offered. Everyone appeared to know Mossy had somehow dropped out of their lives.
‘I must discover the truth,’ Badger murmured. ‘When I’m not so weary I’ll . . . I’ll. . . .’ His voice faded.
‘Let me help you back,’ Frond whispered. ‘You need to rest.’
The young animal’s kind voice soothed the old creature and he allowed himself to be escorted back to his set. He certainly was dreadfully tired: tired beyond belief.
‘Do you think he’ll recover?’ Whistler asked. There was a sad tone to his voice.
‘On his own, perhaps not,’ Vixen murmured. ‘But he has Frond now. And she’ll try to make sure there’s a different outcome.’
The friends, greatly fatigued, made their way to their own dens and nests, exchanging fond words with one another on the way. Before the group had quite broken up Weasel made sure he spoke to Tawny Owl. He had a solemn look about him. ‘I say, Owl, I can’t let you go before I’ve properly thanked you.’
Tawny Owl looked at his feet. ‘What – what do you mean, Weasel?’
‘I mean that – well, I wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t been for your action.’
‘Oh, I could see you were in difficulties. Say no more about it.’ Owl was embarrassed.
‘I must say more about it. It was all up with me. You saved me. Why did you do it?’
Tawny Owl started. ‘Why? What a strange question. Aren’t we supposed to be . . .’
‘“Friends”, were you going to say?’ Weasel guessed.
‘You see, you couldn’t quite say it. And that’s what’s wrong with us two. Because you are a friend, Tawny Owl. You’ve proved it in the best possible way. I don’t know why we’ve always niggled each other. Shall we . . . shall we make a fresh start and try and be more . . . ?’
‘Sympathetic?’ Owl hazarded.
‘Yes.’
‘Weasel, I should like that. I really should.’
Badger had been quite right. Later that morning the Warden saw the carnage that had taken place in his preserve overnight. He could scarcely believe his eyes and he tried in vain to picture the tremendous battle which must have taken place. Of course there were not only rat carcasses. Some of their smaller antagonists had also fallen but it was obvious that what had happened illustrated the Park wildlife’s will to survive. It was an uplifting example and he marvelled at it. He quickly organized assistance to clear the unsavoury accumulation of dead animals from the Reserve. When he discovered how they stretched as far as the perimeter fence he knew there had been some sort of wondrous alliance amongst the inhabitants which had determinedly driven the invaders lock, stock and barrel from the sanctuary.
Meanwhile Fox and Vixen were curled up, nose to tail, in their earth. ‘Another crisis has come and gone,’ said Fox. ‘Wouldn’t it be a refreshing change if something happened to the Park that would be of benefit to all of us?’
A couple of days later Whistler saw a puzzling sight. As he flew across the edge of the Reserve, returning from a hunting flight, he noticed a new fence, linked to White Deer Park’s, was being erected across a portion of the downland. He pondered over the meaning of this but could come to no conclusion and, for the next few days, forgot all about it. Meanwhile rumours, carried by other birds who had also witnessed the construction, spread across the Park. The animals began to dread that the new fence might be connected with some new purge of White Deer Park’s inhabitants. They lay low, close to their dens and burrows, but Fox requested Whistler to take a closer look.