Wild Stories

by Colin Thompson

  ‘My old man’s the same.’

  ‘So fat they’ll have to live in that big box over there,’ laughed Trixie.

  ‘Yeah, next to the stupid starlings,’ roared Katie and they both shook so much with laughter that the nesting box fell off its hook onto the lawn.

  ‘See,’ said Max, looking down at the pieces of broken wood on the grass. ‘I told you they weren’t safe.’

  DorisEthel

  DorisEthel sat in her apple box looking across the lawn at the house. The sun was warm on her feathers, the air was soft and still and the old chicken soon fell asleep. As she slept she dreamt of days gone by when she had been young and there had been other chickens in the garden.

  They had all lived in a smart hut with three nesting boxes and the garden had been full of fresh earth to scrape about in. In her dream there were worms as fat as carrots and there were fluffy yellow chicks round her feet looking up at her with love and admiration. And she dreamt of Eric. What a wonderful cockerel he had been, so tall and bossy and with such lovely tail feathers. DorisEthel could still remember how proud she had felt every morning when he had flown onto the shed roof and crowed his head off. She could remember too, running away just before next door’s upstairs window opened and the bucketful of water came flying out. Eric may have been big and beautiful but he had also been very, very stupid. Every morning, just after his third cocka-doodle-doo, he had been soaked to the skin. The window opened, Eric looked up at the noise and got the water right in his face.

  ‘I’m going down the bottom of the garden tomorrow,’ he used to say, but he always forgot and DorisEthel didn’t see why she should remind him.

  When DorisEthel woke up she was broody. It was a terrible fidgety feeling that she hadn’t felt for years and years and no matter what she did she couldn’t settle down. She wandered round the garden to all her favourite places, but none of them seemed quite right.

  The old hut where all the chickens had lived was broken down now. She hopped up inside it and looked in the nesting boxes. They were all full of weeds and the wooden sides were broken and rotting away. There were holes in the roof and a small tree growing up through the floor. In a few more years there would be nothing left except a pile of compost and some rusty nails.

  ‘I’m too old to lay an egg now,’ she said to herself. ‘Anyway, Eric’s not here any more.’

  The air was filled with the hum of early summer. Flies hovered above the bright grass and a lazy robin hopped through the branches of a nearby bush. On the lawn the children were lying in the grass reading. Their mother was asleep in a deckchair. She had been knitting a cardigan but as the sun had climbed higher in the sky and the day had grown warmer she had nodded off.

  I wonder if she’s dreaming of eggs, DorisEthel thought to herself.

  As she walked past the children, DorisEthel saw a big round egg. It was powder blue and lying in a soft fluffy nest in a basket. No one was sitting on it or even paying it any attention so she climbed up and settled herself down. She closed her eyes and was soon fast asleep.

  ‘Hey, chicken,’ said a loud voice. It was the children’s mother and she was poking DorisEthel with her finger. The children were standing beside her laughing and pointing.

  ‘Hey, chicken,’ said the woman, ‘get off my knitting.’ She picked up the old chicken and put her down on the grass. The children tickled the top of her head but it didn’t seem to feel as good as it usually did and she wandered off into the bushes clucking to herself. A big black slug was eating its way across a dock leaf right in front of her but DorisEthel just didn’t feel hungry.

  ‘I don’t want much out of life,’ she muttered to herself as she drifted restlessly round the garden. ‘Just a dry box, some soft straw and something to hatch. It isn’t much to ask.’

  She walked past the rabbits and under the tall trees complaining softly to herself. The other animals called out good mornings as she went by but she didn’t seem to notice any of them. She dragged her feet in the earth, looked out across the canal and sighed deeply.

  ‘What’s the matter with the old chicken?’ they asked, but no one knew.

  ‘I just want an egg to sit on,’ said DorisEthel.

  ‘An egg?’ said a rabbit. ‘You’re too old for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed another. ‘You should be enjoying your retirement.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said a third. ‘You don’t want to be thinking about children at your age.’

  ‘It’s all very well saying that,’ said DorisEthel, ‘but you’re not a chicken. That’s what we do, sit on eggs. That’s what we’re for.’

  As the days went by and the summer grew fuller, DorisEthel got more and more miserable. All around her the other animals had children. Baby rabbits peered out from the safety of their burrow as she went by. Above her in the trees the nests were full of hatching eggs. In curled up nettle leaves tiny new spiders ate their way to the outside world and in the pond tadpoles wriggled in the sunlight. Even in the old overgrown car by the apple trees there was a nest of young sparrows. It seemed as if the whole world had babies except her.

  No one could say anything to get the old chicken out of her mood. As the days went by and the summer grew fuller, she got worse and worse. If she went near anything that was in the slightest bit round she sat on it and tried to hatch it. The garden was soon full of squashed toadstools and polished stones. Whenever she found some dry grass and a few twigs she scraped them up into a nest and sat in the middle of it with her eyes shut. One day as she ambled across the lawn Elsie the mole popped up from her tunnels and before she could burrow down again DorisEthel sat on her.

  ‘I could have sworn it was morning,’ said Elsie as she opened her eyes in total darkness. She thought the sky had fallen down on top of her but when she realised that the sky smelt of damp chicken she understood what was happening.

  ‘If you don’t get off me this minute,’ she shouted, ‘I’ll bite you.’

  ‘I thought you were an egg,’ said DorisEthel as she stood up. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Do I look like an egg?’ said Elsie.

  ‘Some days everything looks like an egg,’ said DorisEthel. ‘And today’s one of those days.’

  ‘Stupid chicken,’ said Elsie and dived back into her tunnel. She had smelt a big worm thirty feet away and wanted to catch it before it got away.

  DorisEthel wandered aimlessly down to the pond and stood ankle deep in the mud at its edge. For half an hour she just stood there staring into the water. Little creatures wriggled between her toes in the puddle but she didn’t notice them.

  ‘Excuse me, mister,’ said a voice beside her.

  ‘What?’ said DorisEthel, too depressed to bother telling the owner of the voice that she was a mrs not a mister.

  ‘Is that your mud or can anyone have a go?’

  DorisEthel looked down and saw a huge round toad sitting on a clump of grass staring at her. She dragged her feet out of the mud and paddled off into the undergrowth.

  ‘Help yourself, warty,’ she said.

  ‘Ooh, someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning, didn’t they?’ said the toad and flung himself into the puddle.

  The next morning DorisEthel felt a little better. The children brought her mug of corn before they went off to school and when they tickled her on the head it nearly felt wonderful again. But the broody feeling was still there. Every time she shut her eyes she saw fluffy yellow chicks running round her legs.

  ‘Cuckoos are always on the lookout for somewhere to lay their eggs,’ said one of the rabbits. ‘Why don’t you have a word with them? Maybe they’d lay one in your box.’

  ‘What’s a cuckoo?’ said DorisEthel and the rabbit told her.

  ‘That’s awful,’ said the old chicken. ‘I don’t want some horrible bird kicking all my babies out of their nest.’

  ‘You haven’
t got any babies,’ said the rabbit.

  ‘I will have,’ said DorisEthel, ‘when Eric comes back.’

  The rabbit started to say, ‘Eric was a casserole years ago,’ but she stopped herself and said, ‘Oh yes, well, I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Well, I’m going back to my box in case Eric comes back while I’m out,’ said DorisEthel and walked off. When she got to the lawn she remembered about Eric.

  ‘What a stupid old chicken I am,’ she said to herself.

  It was Sunday afternoon. The man came out of the house, uncovered a small hole at one side of the lawn, dropped a golf ball at the other and swiped it with a golf club. The ball rolled across the grass and after another couple of taps fell into the hole. He took another golf ball out of his pocket and sent it down the hole after the first one. Over and over again he took the two balls to one side of the lawn and knocked them back into the hole. Two sparrows were sitting in a tree watching him.

  ‘What do you think he’s doing?’ said the first sparrow.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said the second, ‘but I’d be suprised if they hatch out after the bashing he’s given them.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said the first sparrow. ‘The shells must be as hard as concrete.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the second, ‘and whoever’s inside them must have a terrible headache.’

  The constant clattering of the golf balls finally woke DorisEthel up. She watched the man put an egg on the grass and bash it with a bent stick. The egg flew across the lawn and vanished and then the man did it again. DorisEthel couldn’t believe it. The man had been so kind to her. He’d given her a smart new box to live in and every day his children brought her food. Yet here he was killing baby chickens.

  DorisEthel climbed out of her box and ran onto the lawn squawking loudly. As a golf ball rolled past her she threw herself on top of it. The man walked over and squatted down beside her laughing.

  ‘What are you doing, chicken?’ he said with a smile. Animals can’t understand what humans say any more than humans can understand animals so DorisEthel just sat there glaring at him.

  ‘Stay there,’ said the man, ‘I’m going to get my camera.’

  He got up and went into the house. The minute he was out of sight DorisEthel stood up and pushed and shoved the golf ball until it was hidden in the long grass. By the time the man got back with his camera she had sunk down on top of it almost out of sight.

  ‘Doris,’ called the man, ‘where are you?’

  He went back into the house to get his family to help him find DorisEthel and while he was gone the old chicken rolled the other ball into her nest.

  ‘An egg,’ she murmured to herself, ‘and another egg.’

  ‘She’s not in here,’ said the children, looking in her apple box.

  ‘Five eggs,’ whispered DorisEthel who couldn’t count.

  ‘She’s not in the shed either,’ said the woman.

  Seven eggs, thought DorisEthel.

  At last they found her. She sank down as flat as she could but the man slid his hand underneath her and found the two golf balls. But he didn’t take them away because he knew what DorisEthel wanted and the next day he got planks of wood and a roll of felt and mended the old hen house. When it was finished and tight against the wind and rain he filled it with fresh straw and five eggs from a chicken farm. Then he sat DorisEthel in her new nest and gave her a bowl of rice pudding, which was her favourite food.

  For almost three weeks DorisEthel sat on the eggs. On good days the man left the hen house door open and DorisEthel dozed in the sunshine. In the middle of the day when the sun was at its hottest she climbed off the nest and went outside to stretch her legs and eat a few slugs. On wet days she sank down into the warm straw and listened to the summer rain dancing on the roof. Inside the eggs life began to stir and DorisEthel could feel the chicks tapping at the shells.

  At last the waiting was over and one by one the eggs broke open and once again DorisEthel had fluffy yellow chicks round her feet, looking up at her with love and admiration. And once again she felt loved and important.

  ‘We’ll have to find names for them all,’ said the little girl.

  ‘Which ones are boys and which ones are girls?’ said her brother but no one knew.

  ‘Oh well,’ said the girl, ‘we’ll just have to call them all Doris.’

  Brenda the Tadpole

  It was midday and the sky was blue from side to side. The sun shone down into the pond through a colander of leaves. Two moorhens swam around, leaving ripples in the water that carried the light into dark corners at the water’s edge. A frog blinked and slipped into the water with a soft splash. Dragonflies, woken by the warmth, flew backwards and forwards along their territories meeting each other with a fierce clattering of wings before flying on again. Birds came to the edge of the pool to drink and on its surface pondskaters dented the water as they hunted for food.

  Below the water was another world, a world hardly touched by wind or rain, a complete universe of tiny jungles and fearsome creatures. Great diving beetles hunted through the roots of waterlilies like lions. Newts paddled through the pondweed like tiny dinosaurs in slow motion, and in a shallow sunlit corner, new tadpoles hung on clouds of soft green slime.

  ‘Do you like being a tadpole?’ said a young tadpole called Susan.

  ‘How do you mean?’ said one of her sisters.

  ‘You know,’ said Susan, ‘would you rather be a tadpole or something else?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Susan.

  ‘A filing cabinet,’ said a tadpole called Doreen.

  ‘What’s a filing cabinet?’ said Susan.

  ‘It’s that brown rusty thing down there in the mud,’ said Doreen.

  ‘You don’t half talk a load of rubbish, you lot,’ said a tadpole called Brenda.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Susan. ‘And what amazingly important things have you got to talk about then?’

  ‘Well, what about green slime?’ said Brenda. ‘That’s important.’

  ‘Go on then,’ sneered Doreen, ‘talk about green slime.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice isn’t it?’ said Brenda.

  ‘Is that it?’ said Susan.

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Great,’ said Susan. ‘That’s really important. Green slime’s nice. That’s brilliant.’

  ‘Well, what about our mummy,’ said Brenda. ‘Why haven’t we got a mummy?’

  Doreen and Susan and the other tadpoles looked awkward and confused. It was midday and the sun was as high as it could be in the sky. Bright light shone down into the pond, in some places reaching right down to the mud at the bottom. All the tadpoles wriggled nervously in the sun’s warmth.

  ‘Of course we’ve got a mummy,’ said Susan. ‘We wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t had a mummy.’

  ‘The waterlilies haven’t got a mummy,’ said Doreen.

  ‘They don’t count,’ said Susan. ‘They’re plants.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what we are,’ said Doreen. ‘Plants.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Brenda. ‘We’re animals and as far as I can see, we haven’t got a mummy.’

  ‘Or a daddy,’ said Doreen.

  ‘We must have,’ said Susan.

  ‘All right,’ said Brenda, ‘where is she?’

  ‘Maybe she’s not in the pond,’ said Susan.

  ‘She’d have to be,’ said Brenda. ‘We can’t leave the water, can we?’

  The others agreed she was right and so a search was organised. All eighty-seven tadpoles swam round the pond searching for the giant tadpole that would be their mother. An hour later the seventy-four that hadn’t been eaten gathered together in the cloud of green slime.

  ‘Well,’ said Brenda, ‘has anyone seen our mummy?’

  �
�No,’ said everyone.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Brenda.

  ‘What does our she look like?’ asked Doreen.

  ‘Like us only bigger, stupid,’ said Susan. ‘A giant tadpole.’

  ‘How beautiful,’ said Doreen, all dreamy eyed. ‘A huge vision of smooth black loveliness.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Brenda impatiently. ‘Has anyone seen her?’

  ‘No,’ said everyone.

  They had seen horrid wriggling things with sharp pincers that had chased them out of the shadows. They had seen shiny black beetles swimming through the tiny seas carrying bubbles of air under their wings. They had seen dragonflies creeping down into the water to lay their eggs, and they had seen a giant green toad all covered in bumps and warts lumbering through the bulrushes. In every place there was life, some so small it could not be seen, but nowhere was there a sign of the giant tadpole that would be their mother.

  ‘Apart from us everything else in this pond is ugly,’ said Doreen.

  ‘Especially the toad,’ said Susan.

  ‘Yuk,’ said Brenda. ‘I don’t even want to talk about that disgusting thing, all green and warty.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Susan, ‘horrid gherkin face.’

  The summer moved slowly on. The giant flowers on the waterlilies opened wide and turned their hearts towards the sun. The bulrushes grew taller and taller, casting their shadows longer and longer across the pond and out onto the grass. All day long the air was filled with a haze of flies. Swallows dived down between the trees catching the flies and dipping their heads in the smooth water. The garden grew fat and lazy. Animals dozed in the midsummer heat of July and those that did move did so with slow deliberation and only in the cool of evening. Under the midday sky, flowers drooped and trickled their pollen into the soft air. It seemed as if everything had slowed down to a complete standstill and the world would stay this way forever.