Wild Stories

by Colin Thompson

  In the pond life slowed down too. For weeks the sun had shone down into the clear water until it was as tender as a warm bath. Even the darkest shadows under the lilies were warm, and great clouds of tiny water-fleas swam everywhere. The moorhens’ eggs had hatched and as soon as their chicks had been old enough their parents had taken them back to the canal.

  In the forest of slime things were happening to the tadpoles. Their soft black coats of velvet had changed to speckled brown and green and strange things were happening inside them.

  ‘I don’t half feel weird,’ said Susan.

  ‘How do you mean?’ said Brenda.

  ‘Well, sort of lumpy,’ said Susan.

  ‘Do you keep thinking about climbing out of the water?’ said Doreen.

  ‘Yes, I do. Do you?’ said Susan.

  ‘Yes,’ said Doreen.

  ‘Maybe we’re not well,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Of course,’ said Susan. ‘That’s it. That’s why we’re all off-colour.’

  ‘I think we’ve got mumps,’ said Doreen. ‘That’s why we all feel lumpy.’

  ‘It’s more than lumps,’ said Brenda wriggling out from the leaf she’d been hiding behind. ‘It’s legs.’

  The other tadpoles looked at her and sure enough she had two tiny legs growing out of her. She had shrunk too. Where there had been a long elegant tail Brenda now had a dumpy stump.

  ‘Oh, that’s awful,’ said Susan backing away from Brenda. The others did the same and when Brenda stopped nibbling slime and ate a water-flea they all swam off feeling quite sick. But one by one they grew legs and not just two but four, and one by one their tails slowly disappeared and the strangest thing of all was that they all thought they looked rather good.

  ‘My back legs are so big that I can jump right out of the water,’ said Doreen.

  ‘My back legs are so big that I can jump right over a mouse,’ said Susan.

  ‘Jumping’s not so special,’ said Brenda. ‘Anyone can do that.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Susan. ‘And what amazingly special thing have you got then?’

  ‘Warts,’ said Brenda. ‘Great big wrinkly green warts.’

  ‘So’ve I,’ said Doreen. ‘So’ve I.’

  ‘We all have,’ said Susan. ‘We’re all as warty as toads.’

  There was a long silence. The tadpoles stood in the mud staring at their feet. They looked at each other and realised that they weren’t tadpoles any more. They looked at the peaceful green toad all covered in bumps and warts lumbering through the bulrushes, the quiet brown-eyed giant they had called gherkin face, and realised that she was the mother they had all been looking for.

  ‘You know,’ said Brenda later that day when they had all crawled under a big wet stone. ‘When you look at her closely, she really is incredibly beautiful.’

  Geoff the Snail

  ‘Come on, hurry up,’ said Geoff the snail. ‘If we don’t get there soon, someone else will get it.’

  ‘If we don’t get there soon,’ said his brother John, ‘it will have turned into a fossil.’

  The two snails were inside a milk bottle where they had been hibernating since the autumn. Early that morning the spring sunshine had shone through the glass until the damp air inside the bottle was as warm as a summer’s day. The warmth had woken the two snails from their long sleep and in the grass outside they could see an old brown apple core. This was what they were now trying to reach.

  ‘I’m starving,’ said Geoff. ‘In fact, I’m so hungry that I can’t even remember when I last ate something.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ said John. ‘Snails haven’t got any memories. If something happened a few minutes ago us snails can’t remember it.’

  ‘Remember what?’ said Geoff.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘If I don’t get something to eat soon,’ said Geoff, ‘my shell will fall off and I’ll look like a slug.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting,’ said John. ‘Horrible naked creatures.’

  ‘Where?’

  This is one of the reasons that snails are so slow. It isn’t just that they move very slowly, but it’s also that they keep forgetting why they are moving or where they are moving to.

  ‘It’s nice in here, isn’t it?’ said Geoff.

  ‘Where?’ said John.

  ‘Hey, look out there,’ said Geoff. ‘An apple core.’

  By the time John had turned round to look Geoff had forgotten what it was he was looking at.

  ‘I think I’ll go inside my shell for a bit,’ he said, and disappeared.

  ‘Who said that?’ said John. When he couldn’t see anyone he got frightened and went back inside his shell too.

  A bit later Geoff stuck his head out and said, ‘I’m starving. In fact, I’m so hungry that I can’t even remember when I last ate something.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ said John, reappearing too. ‘Snails haven’t got any memories. If something happened a few minutes ago us snails can’t remember it.’

  By the time they got outside it was raining and the apple core had started growing into a tree.

  Joan the Sparrow

  It was raining everywhere. It was the end of July and the air was warm and heavy. The heat of summer was caught and hemmed in by the rain that came down in heavy sheets. In sheltered places, under leaves and inside the old car, swarms of busy flies sheltered from the storm. Imprisoned by the rain they hovered in crowded confusion as they waited for it to pass.

  The ancient car had stood at the bottom of the garden for thirty years. Its tyres were dull and cracked like the skin of an old rhinoceros and its wheels sunk deep into the ground. Tall grass and weeds grew everywhere hiding the dark spaces beneath the floor and creeping up inside the engine. For as long as anyone could remember there had been birds’ nests inside it, and in the horse-hair seats there were families of mice. Spiders had laid cobwebs across the steering wheel and in the soft ferns growing on the damp floor was a world of silverfish and centipedes, a small jungle hidden away in a city garden.

  Joan the sparrow stood on the back of one of the car seats and picked flies out of the air. There were so many she hardly had to lift a wing to catch them. In the glove compartment of the old car her five chicks were so fat they were almost falling out of the nest. Their adult feathers were nearly grown and in another few days they would be gone.

  Summer had come so early that there would be time for a third brood. Joan had never had three lots of children in one summer before. She had met other sparrows who had, and in fact she had been the child of a third brood herself. The winter had come suddenly that year and her brothers and sisters hadn’t survived the cold frosts. Joan had escaped by crawling into the heating vent of a café where she had stayed for three months, living on the fat that had collected on the pipes over the past twenty years. The sun had come out at Christmas and Joan had climbed out of her hideout to find the rest of her family gone.

  The rain moved away and Joan flew out of the car into the warm sunshine. Everything was so rich and green that it was almost growing before her eyes. Joan’s partner Charlie flew out from the bushes where he had been sheltering and they hopped across the lawn collecting the flies that hadn’t survived the storm.

  ‘The children will be off in a couple of days,’ said Joan.

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Charlie. ‘We’ll get a bit of peace at last.’

  ‘Well, I had thought we could have a third brood,’ said Joan. ‘It’s only July.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Charlie. ‘We’re just about to get a bit of peace and quiet and you want to start all over again.’

  ‘I know,’ said Joan, ‘but...’

  ‘It’ll be autumn soon,’ Charlie added. ‘It’s time we were fattening ourselves up, never mind another lot of babies.’

  ‘I know, I know.’


  But it didn’t matter what either of them said, instinct held them in its grasp. They both knew the risks and they knew there wouldn’t be a spare moment for the rest of the summer. While all the other animals in the garden were building up their strength for the winter, they would be using all theirs raising a new family that would probably be too young to survive the snow. They knew all these things but it made no difference. They had no choice. Because they could have children they would have children. That’s how nature works. It never leaves any empty spaces. If it did, everything would have died out thousands of years ago.

  So a few days later the second lot of chicks flew off into the garden and Charlie cleared out the nest in the old car. When it was ready Joan laid five more eggs. The days passed and she sat contentedly in the nest. Looking out of the little hole in the side of it she could see the back of the car seat. For fifteen years, since the door had fallen off, the wind and rain had blown into the old car and the seat that had once been bright red leather was now dull brown. There was grass growing in the folds where the leather had split and the mice that had lived inside the seat for generations were thinking of looking for somewhere warmer to live.

  Joan watched for three days while a spider wove a beautiful web between the seat and the glove compartment. Backwards and forwards over and over again the spider went until she had finished. Then she came to a spot just below Joan’s nest and waited for the flies to get caught in her trap. But she didn’t get any flies, instead she caught a big fat sparrow called Charlie who swore and cursed as he pulled the cobwebs off his legs. And she also got eaten.

  ‘I’ll sit on the eggs for a bit, if you like,’ said Charlie, hopping onto the nest.

  ‘Yes, I could do with stretching my wings,’ said Joan.

  ‘There’s a huge ants’ nest down by the pond,’ said Charlie, ‘and there’s loads of slugs on the cabbages.’

  Inside their shells the tiny sparrows began to grow. The warm weather went on and on. It looked as if the third brood was going to be a success but then the man decided to move the car.

  ‘Aunty Ferguson used to go to school in that car,’ he said to his children. ‘We’ll take it into the garage and do it up.’

  ‘But it’s all rusted away,’ said the boy.

  ‘And the door’s fallen off,’ said the girl.

  ‘And there’s a garden growing inside it,’ said the woman.

  ‘We can fix all that,’ said the man. ‘When we’ve finished, it’ll look like new.’

  So they chopped down the weeds and bushes that had grown up round the car and propped it up on blocks of wood while they fitted new tyres and poured oil on the wheels. The children searched through the grass and found all the bits that had fallen off and carried them up to the house. Inside her nest Joan sat as still as midsummer’s night while Charlie flew from branch to branch round the apple trees complaining loudly, but everyone was too busy with the car to notice him.

  When the wheels were fixed they lowered the car to the ground and inch by inch pushed it slowly across the vegetable garden towards the garage at the side of the house. They rolled the car right across the vegetable beds, digging up carrots and cabbages as they went, until they reached the back of the garage.

  When the car had been taken down to the bottom of the garden all those years before, there had been a flat lawn next to the garage. Now there were tall trees growing there with no way through.

  ‘Well, we’re not cutting the trees down,’ said the man. ‘We’ll have to make a hole in the back of the garage.’

  They took out the window in the back wall and got hammers and chisels and knocked out enough bricks to get the old car into the garage. When it was safely inside, they put all the bricks and the window back again and only then did they notice the two sparrows.

  Charlie had followed the car into the garage and while the man had been cementing the bricks into place, he had sat up in the roof. Only when the window had been put in did the bird panic and flutter against the glass, but when the boy opened the window Charlie didn’t fly out. Instead he flew inside the front of the car and then the children saw Joan sitting on her nest.

  They left the window open so Joan and Charlie could come and go as they wanted. When the eggs hatched they were back and forwards all day long fetching food for the new chicks. The man, who liked to take life easy, was happy for an excuse to leave the car alone for a while. The children thought it was wonderful that a family of birds was actually living in part of their house.

  When autumn came and the air grew cool the family of sparrows stayed safe and warm in their new home. Each day the children brought them food so that when the cold snows came they didn’t have to go outside at all. The next spring when life began again they flew out into the world fat and healthy and happy.

  Inside the garage the man blew the dust off his spanners and set to work on the car. It took him six years to finish it and all that time the sparrows’ nest stayed where it was and every summer Joan laid three lots of eggs in it.

  ‘You always said you wanted to move,’ said Charlie as they sat in an apple tree looking down at the yellow patch of grass where the car had been.

  ‘So I did,’ said Joan, ‘so I did.’

  Dennis the Owl

  There were seven large oak trees in the back garden and three more in the front. They were the oldest living things in the street and towered over everything, each one like a small forest in whose branches and leaves birds and squirrels and other creatures lived their lives. The trees had been there two hundred years before there had been any houses, and the oldest house was over a hundred years old. In one of the great oaks there were owls. They had lived there since the trees had been big enough to give them homes.

  Owls are proud and dignified birds, as majestic as oak trees themselves.

  Silent and sleeping during the day, at night they glide like soft ghosts through the darkness hunting small creatures that hurry across open fields and quiet hedgerows. Other animals keep away from owls and treat them with respect.

  The two children who had come to live at fourteen had built their tree house in one of the oaks and in another close by lived Dennis the owl. At least, when he could find the right tree, he lived there. Quite often he would come back at dawn and land on the wrong tree. He would swoop down through the wrong branches and smash the top of his head into the wrong trunk exactly in the place where the hole he lived in should have been.

  ‘Someone’s stolen my house again,’ he would say as the stars spun round in his head. ‘You go out to get your dinner, not wanting to bother anyone, and while you’re out someone steals your house.’

  If the weather was warm he would just stay where he was and if it was cold he would flutter unsteadily down to the old car and sleep on the back seat. Sometimes as he sat there it would start raining and he would wake up with water running down his neck and wonder what he was doing wrong.

  ‘I’m sure life should be better than this,’ he said to no one. ‘All I want is a warm place to sleep and a nice soft mouse for supper. And people to stop hiding my house. And crunchy moths for breakfast and warm slugs for tea.’

  ‘And a friend.’

  ‘And a dry neck.’

  The trouble was that Dennis wasn’t a proud and dignified bird. He was lost and lonely and not very clever. Nature seemed to have only a certain amount of brains to give out and by the time Dennis had hatched, his three sisters had got them all and there was none left for him.

  ‘Better to have a kind heart,’ his mother used to say, ‘ than be as clever as...’

  ‘As clever as an owl,’ said his sisters, laughing and pointing at him.

  ‘...and have nobody love you,’ continued his mother.

  He was all alone now. His mother had gone a long time ago and so had his sisters. On still summer nights he sometimes thought he could hear the hooting of another owl far a
way but he had never seen one.

  ‘What use is a kind heart,’ he said to himself, ‘if no one knows you’ve got one?’

  Most of the time it was all right, he just got on with things. His house was quite often in the right place. He found plenty of slugs and bits and pieces to eat and he didn’t think about anything. Sometimes though, there were dark days when the sun refused to shine in the sky or in his head. On those days he sat in the shadows of his home unable to move. Sadness wrapped him up in its arms and filled him with a terrible loneliness.

  ‘All I want...’ he said to himself, but he didn’t know what it was.

  ‘All I want is something.’

  The mood would pass and the next night he would be out at dusk with a huge appetite searching up and down the towpath for mice. In his whole life he had never caught a mouse. The mice had soon realised that Dennis was not like other owls. They realised that they were much cleverer than he was and, although they could never hope to be able to run fast enough if he swooped down on them, they could still stop him eating them.

  One would keep watch and as soon as Dennis approached he would shout, ‘TSP ALERT,’ at the top of his voice. The mice called him TSP which stood for Two Short Planks.

  ‘Because that’s what he’s as thick as,’ they said.

  As Dennis swooped, the mice rolled onto their backs, tucked up their legs and sang:

  ‘We are just potatoes.

  Cut us into strips,

  Fry us in a pan

  And make us into chips.’

  ‘You look like mice to me,’ said Dennis.

  ‘No, no,’ sang the mice:

  ‘We really are potatoes.

  Boil us in a pan,

  Mash us up with butter

  And eat us with some ham.’