Wild Stories

by Colin Thompson

  ‘Potatoes can’t speak,’ said Dennis, feeling a bit unsure of himself.

  ‘For goodness sake,’ sang the mice:

  ‘Listen stupid owl.

  You wearing earplugs?

  We’re all just round potatoes.

  Fly off and eat some slugs.’

  And that was what poor Dennis did. Every night he shuffled around under the bushes scraping up the grass like an old chicken and eating slugs and beetles. It was no life for an owl. His feathers were broken and muddy, his claws were worn down and his back ached from all the bending over. There were thousands of slugs but no matter how many he ate part of him always felt empty. As the sun began to rise he went back home to bed and wondered if it would be like this forever.

  His sleep was full of dreams of when he had been young, of the long summer after his sisters had gone and he had had his mother all to himself. The days were full of sunshine pouring into the warm nest inside the tree. He sunk into the soft feathers and moss and slept until evening. When it was dark his mother flew in and fed him with soft strips of meat and sweet moths. Like the best summers of childhood it had seemed to go on forever and ever. Now it was all just a fuzzy memory.

  When the people had arrived it had hardly effected Dennis. The crows had come to live in the trees after they had been pushed out of the chimneys and it had become a lot noiser. The children had built a wooden house in the next tree, but none of it had made much difference to the lonely owl. By the time he came out at night, the children were back indoors and the crows were fast asleep. The rest of the animals in the garden generally ignored him. Most of them were asleep too and the other night creatures were too busy making their own livings to be bothered with a miserable owl.

  He had tried talking to other animals, but they didn’t want to know. He tried hanging round outside the rabbit warren at the bottom of the garden but the rabbits just thought he was trying to eat their babies and slipped out of the back door. He tried talking to the hedgehogs but they were making so much noise crashing through the grass and sucking snails out of their shells that they didn’t hear him. He even tried talking to the sparrow that was nesting in the old car but she sank down into the darkness and pretended she wasn’t there.

  ‘All I want is a friend,’ said Dennis. ‘It doesn’t even have to be a special friend, just someone who will talk to me.’

  ‘I’d just like to be a little bit important to someone,’ he said to no one.

  There were wild cats across the canal in the derelict factories but when Dennis went near them they hissed and spat at him and cut the air with their claws. An ordinary owl who caught mice and screeched at the moon wouldn’t have been scared of cats but Dennis was a gentle soul and even the kittens chased him away. The foxes that lived along the canal pretended he wasn’t there.

  In his whole life only one animal, apart from his mother, had been kind to him, and that had been an old horse. One moonlit night a barge had tied up at the bottom of the garden. The giant horse that pulled it stood silently under the overhanging branches of the oak trees. The round windows of the boat glowed yellow like a row of pale suns and thin smoke trickled up into the cloudless sky making a pale ribbon across the moon. Dennis flew down to the fence by the towpath. He had never seen a horse before.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Hello,’ said the horse.

  ‘You’re not a potato, are you?’ said Dennis. The horse took a few steps backwards.

  ‘Er, no,’ said the horse. And realising Dennis was a bit strange he added, ‘You’re not are you?’

  ‘No,’ said Dennis. ‘I’m an owl.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the horse, ‘I thought you were.’

  ‘Well, you were right,’ said Dennis. In the bushes behind him there was a crashing sound as three young rabbits fell laughing off the pile of twigs they had climbed up. The horse leant down and took a mouthful of grass. Dennis sat on the fence and watched him. An hour later the horse was still eating grass and Dennis was still watching him.

  ‘Did you want something?’ asked the horse.

  ‘Well, I was wondering,’ said Dennis, ‘if you’d be my friend.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said the horse, ‘I’m actually a bit busy at the moment.’

  ‘Well, when you’re not busy,’ said Dennis. ‘How about then?’

  ‘All right then,’ said the horse. ‘Come back tomorrow.’ But tomorrow never came, for the next night the barge and the horse were twenty miles away and Dennis never saw them again.

  And then his whole life changed.

  One night the man was driving home down country lanes. The rain threw itself out of the sky in a violent summer thunderstorm and as the car went round a bend the man saw something flapping in the middle of the road. He stopped and in the headlights’ beam he saw a bird with a broken wing. It was struggling towards the side of the road, dragging its wing through the crashing rain.

  The man got out of the car and wrapped the bird up in his coat. It was a wild-eyed owl and although he was rescuing it, it tried to attack the man as he carried it back to his car. He laid it on the back seat and went home.

  For the next few weeks the injured owl lived in the garage. It hid away in the darkness up in the beams of the roof staring down at its rescuers with wild yellow eyes. The vet came and mended its wing but it was never able to fly again. It looked down at the food the children brought but only when they had gone and it was quiet again would it flutter down to eat. Even after a month when all its bones were mended and the feathers it had lost were growing back again, it wouldn’t let any of the family go near it.

  ‘She can live in the garden,’ said the man. ‘And we’ll have to feed her for the rest of her life.’

  ‘She can live in our tree house,’ said the boy and that’s what she did. They filled in the sides that faced into the wind and made a perch from a broom handle. And when everything was ready and she had her bandages removed, the man put on a pair of thick gloves and carried her up the ladder to her new home. They tethered her to the perch to stop her falling out of the tree until she got used to it and went back into the house.

  ‘Maybe she’ll get better one day,’ said the boy, ‘and fly away.’

  ‘I think we’ll call her Audrey,’ said the girl.

  Audrey sat on her perch looking out into the twilight. It was the middle of June and below her in an apple tree a blackbird was singing its summer song. The bats were up and about, swooping in and out of the trees chasing flies.

  I wonder what they taste like, thought Audrey. Bats that is, not flies.

  They flew so fast that she had never caught one and she certainly wasn’t going to now.

  If she stretched her legs and leant right forward, she could see right down to the ground below. A hedgehog was drinking at the edge of a little pond. Audrey had to drink out of a tin cup.

  If the man hadn’t picked me up, she thought, I wouldn’t be drinking out of a tin cup.

  She thought back to the night of the storm. She had been hunting far away from home when it had started and in her rush to get back she had flown straight into a telephone wire and broken her wing. She thought of her home in the sycamore tree in the middle of a large wood, and as she sat there daydreaming she almost missed the black shape flying right in front of her. It was silhouetted across the evening sky, a shape just like her own.

  ‘Hey,’ she shouted and the shape crashed into a tree.

  ‘Ow,’ said a voice in the darkness.

  ‘Over here,’ she called.

  ‘Where?’

  This went on for a while, but at last Dennis stood on the edge of the tree house looking at Audrey.

  ‘You’re an owl,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’m not a potato,’ said Audrey.

  ‘I can see that,’ said Dennis. ‘You haven’t got any fur or paws.’<
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  ‘What?’ said Audrey.

  ‘Well...’ Dennis started to explain.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Audrey, ‘don’t tell me.’

  ‘Will you be my friend?’ said Dennis.

  Audrey looked over the edge of the tree house and said, ‘See those little furry things running round down there.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dennis, ‘the potatoes.’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Audrey, ‘the potatoes. Well, if you go and get me one of those, I’ll be your friend.’

  ‘All right.’

  Dennis flew down and although the mice rolled up as small as they could and sang every song they knew, it did no good. Dennis had a friend and his friend liked potatoes.

  A week later the man took the tether off Audrey’s leg and, although she never flew properly again, she hopped and fluttered from branch to branch through the great oak trees. And in the spring she fluttered into Dennis’s nest and laid four eggs and a month later he had four more friends and was so busy catching potatoes that he never had time to be lonely again.

  The Five Dorises

  DorisEthel the chicken was teaching her five chicks how to catch worms. She had taken them to a newly dug bed of earth in the vegetable garden where she scratched about with her feet and then jumped back, head to one side, to see what she had uncovered. The chicks were bored. They had all the food they wanted brought to them by the children and they couldn’t see the point of grubbing about in a load of mud. They had scraped up a row of radishes and wanted to do something else.

  ‘Mum,’ said Doris One, ‘can we go and play?’

  ‘Yeah, Mum,’ said Doris Four, ‘we’re fed up.’

  ‘Listen children,’ said DorisEthel. ‘This is very important. It’s the most important thing you will ever learn.’

  ‘What, rummaging about in the earth for those horrible worm things?’ said Doris Two.

  ‘Yes,’ said DorisEthel. ‘It’s what chickens do. All over the world there are chickens scraping up the dirt and eating worms and slugs.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to,’ said Doris Three. ‘I’m going to eat porridge.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Doris Five.

  ‘And us,’ said the other three Dorises.

  ‘And cake,’ said Doris Three. ‘Don’t forget the cake we got last Sunday.’

  DorisEthel could see that she was wasting her time. The chicks were in an awkward mood and no amount of talking would make them change their mind. Maybe she was old-fashioned but she could think of nothing more wonderful than pulling a big wet worm out of the soft earth and feeling it wriggle down her throat as she swallowed it.

  ‘Children today,’ she sighed, and waddled off across the lawn towards the house.

  ‘Cake indeed,’ she said. ‘What’s the world coming to? When I was their age we had to eat second-hand caterpillars and newspapers.’

  Mind you, she thought to herself, it was nice cake, especially the raisins all slimy in the middle like slugs.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ said Doris One as the chicks rushed after the old hen.

  ‘Play,’ said Doris Two.

  ‘Go on then,’ said Doris Four, ‘do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ said Doris Two.

  ‘Play.’

  ‘Er, right then,’ said Doris Two, ‘come on.’ She scuttled up the back doorstep and wriggled through the cat flap into the house. The four other chicks ran after her, landing one after the other on the mat. DorisEthel tried to get through the flap after her children but she was too fat. She paced up and down outside the door clucking loudly and calling them. Inside, the five chicks pretended they couldn’t hear her. They stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and looked around.

  ‘Is this playing, then?’ said Doris Three.

  ‘Yes,’ said Doris Two.

  ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ said Doris Five.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ said Doris One.

  ‘We could eat the cat food,’ said Doris Three.

  ‘Cat food?’ said Doris Four nervously. ‘Do you mean there’s a cat in here?’

  ‘Well, if there’s a cat flap, there must be a cat,’ said Doris Three.

  ‘What, a big cat with teeth and claws and stuff?’ said Doris Four.

  ‘Errr, yes,’ said Doris Three, looking round.

  ‘I want my mummy,’ cried Doris Four, running back to the door. The other chicks rushed after her and they all collided in a great heap on the mat.

  ‘Mum, Mum,’ Doris Four cried as they scrambled out into the garden, ‘there’s a giant cat after us.’

  ‘It’s going to eat us all up,’ said Doris Three. The five chicks ran as fast they could across the lawn and back into the hen house. DorisEthel, who knew there wasn’t a cat in the house, waddled slowly after them. Inside the hut all the chicks jumped into the nesting box and hid in the straw, except Doris Four who jumped on top of the box and pretended to be brave.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle,’ she shouted.

  ‘Who said that?’ said DorisEthel as she came into the hut.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ said Doris Three.

  ‘It wasn’t us,’ said Doris One and Doris Five.

  ‘Said what?’ said Doris Two.

  ‘That cock-a-doodle noise,’ said DorisEthel.

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ said Doris Four. ‘It just sort of came over me.’

  ‘Do you know what it means?’ said DorisEthel.

  ‘No. I don’t even know why I said it,’ said Doris Four.

  ‘Is it rude?’ said Doris Three. The four chicks in the nest box started sniggering and nudging each other.

  ‘It’s rude. It’s rude,’ they chorused.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said DorisEthel. ‘It means that Doris Four is a boy.’

  The four chicks in the nest box giggled even more.

  ‘No I’m not,’ said Doris Four. ‘I’m a chicken.’

  ‘Yes, of course you are,’ said DorisEthel, ‘but you’re a boy chicken. You’re a cockerel.’

  The other four Dorises jumped out of the nest box and stared up at Doris Four. He looked very confused and shuffled off to the back where they couldn’t see him. But a cockerel he was and there was no getting away from it.

  ‘I don’t want to be a boy,’ he said. ‘I won’t say it any more.’ But he couldn’t stop himself. He felt the words coming up inside him and he clenched his little beak shut as tight as he could but he just couldn’t stop them.

  ‘COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!’ he shouted at the top of his tiny voice.

  ‘Wow,’ said Doris Three. ‘That was great.’

  Her sisters thought it was great too, but no one thought it was as great as DorisEthel did. She fluffed her feathers out with pride. Over the summer Doris Four grew into a magnificent cockerel and once again the days began with a great crowing as he stood proud and tall on the shed roof and woke the sleeping world. And once again, like Eric before him, he got soaked to the skin as next door’s upstairs window opened and a bucketful of water came flying out.

  Doris Four’s sisters had grown up too and were laying eggs every day. The hen house was a constant bustle with clucking and crowing and the children forever in and out. It was all too much for DorisEthel so she went back to the peace and quiet of her apple box to dream of days gone by when she too had been part of it all.

  ‘If he’s a cockerel,’ said the boy, ‘we can’t call him Doris any more.’

  ‘We’ll call him Kevin,’ said the little girl.

  ‘No, no,’ said the boy. ‘We’ll call him Boris.’

  And that’s what they did, though to his sisters and DorisEthel he was always known as DorisBoris.

  Arnold the Mouse

  As night fell over the quiet streets the animals that slept through the day began to wake up. In dark tunnels and soft nests, creatures stirred an
d opened their eyes. They stretched their legs and wings, tasted the evening air and thought of breakfast.

  For a few it would be the last night of their lives. Hedgehogs, blinded by two suns, would be squashed by cars. Mice, racing across open lawns, would be food for cats and owls. But for most of the animals, living by night was safer than living by day. In the darkness they could slip into places unseen and while the rest of the world slept they could live their lives in peace.

  As the sky disappeared, the rabbits came out of their burrows. With eyes still full of sleep they sniffed the fresh air and spread out across the garden and canal bank. They crept into next door’s garden and ate their way along the neat rows of flowers. The nervous man and his thin wife put wire netting along the fence but the rabbits just went underneath it. On warm summer evenings next door’s cat sat on the patio and watched them. The moles burrowed under the lawn and threw up piles of earth on to the neatly clipped grass, and on calm nights spiders spun their webs between tall grass and low branches.

  This night was a calm night. It was so quiet that Arnold the mouse could hear the traps going off in the other houses along the street. He rolled over in his nest of newspaper under the kitchen floor and a shiver ran down his back as he thought of his fellow mice coming to such a violent end.

  There were no traps in his house; at least, not the steel spring type that killed you. In his house the trap was a warm and welcoming plastic box and inside it was a piece of fabulous cheese. Every night Arnold crept into the trap and ate the cheese. And every night he tripped over the bar and the door fell shut behind him. Twenty-two times he had done it and twenty-two times at eight o’clock in the morning the man had carried the trap down to the bottom of the garden and tipped Arnold out through a gap in the hedge onto the canal bank. It was the same every day. Arnold knew the routine so well that if he ran as fast as possible he could be back in the house before the man was.

  On the twenty-third day the man said, ‘I’m sure that’s the same mouse we caught yesterday.’