Wild Stories

by Colin Thompson

  ‘What was that you were eating this morning, our Bert?’ said his mother.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea, Mother,’ said Bert. ‘It was black. I know that.’

  ‘Fur or feathers?’ asked his mother.

  ‘Fur, I think,’ said Bert. ‘I was too busy dodging the cars to pay much attention.’

  ‘True enough, lad,’ said Bert’s dad. ‘The roads were right busy this morning.’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, though,’ said Bert. ‘Whatever it was I was eating, it was right flat.’

  ‘Aye, lad,’ said his father. ‘It were dead flat.’ And they all laughed.

  ‘The flatter the better, I reckon,’ said Bert. ‘There’s nothing like a few heavy lorries rolling over it to make your dinner nice and tender.’

  ‘True enough, lad,’ said Bert’s dad. ‘The heavier the better.’

  ‘Tell us about the two-metre hedgehog, our dad,’ said Bert’s mum. ‘You know, the one the railway engine ran over.’

  ‘Nay, lass, it was a huge eighty-four-wheeler lorry with a train on the back, what did it,’ said Bert’s dad. ‘That poor hedgehog was over two metres long and it was so flat you could see daylight through it.’

  ‘Was it flatter than that squirrel we had on Sunday?’ asked Bert.

  ‘Oh aye, lad,’ said Bert’s dad. ‘That squirrel was like Mount Everest compared to the two-metre hedgehog. Why, it was so thin it rustled in the breeze.’

  ‘Eeee,’ said Bert’s mum.

  ‘Aye,’ said Bert’s dad.

  ‘What did it look like, Dad?’ said Bert. ‘Could you read a book through it?’

  ‘Well, I never actually saw it myself, lad,’ said Bert’s dad, ‘but I’m sure you could.’

  Bert’s dad didn’t actually know what a book was but he wasn’t going to let Bert know that.

  The three crows sat in the afternoon sunshine and day-dreamed. Bert’s mum dreamt about the old days when the factories across the canal had been a hive of activity. Big lorries with fat tyres had been in and out all day long and food had been plentiful and flat. Bert dreamt of finding the flattest widest meal there had ever been, a meal that was spread so thin you could hardly see it, a meal that would make the two-metre hedgehog look like a door mat. And Bert’s dad just sat with his eyes closed and hoped no one would find out that the two-metre hedgehog was just a story his father had told him when he was a little fledgling. It had been an old story then. His father had heard it from his grandfather and one day Bert’s dad supposed he would have to tell Bert that it was just a story, but not yet.

  ‘Those were the days,’ said Bert’s mum.

  ‘Aye, lass,’ said Bert’s dad. ‘The flat old days.’

  The days were really beginning to feel warm again now. There had been a time in the middle of winter when it seemed as if it would be cold forever, but now you could tell that summer was on its way. The two older crows turned their faces up to the warmth of the sunshine and soon fell fast asleep.

  Bert was bored. He didn’t want to sit around all afternoon. He kept thinking about the two-metre hedgehog. He tried to imagine how it must have tasted. To us the thought of a poor hedgehog rolled out like a table cloth is rather horrible but to Bert it seemed as delicious as a strawberry tart covered in thick cream and custard and chocolate flakes and fudge sauce and sugar.

  He flew up above the house and out across the canal to the factories on the far side. Most of them were deserted now, with broken windows and rusting steel roofs. There were weeds growing up through the split concrete where cars and lorries had once parked. Inside the old buildings the air was still and silent. The machines and desks had been taken away years before and all that was left now were rusty marks on dusty floors and faded yellow notices pinned to peeling doors. Mice and spiders were the kings and queens in this forgotten landscape. A few birds nested in broken walls. Half-starved, half-wild cats roamed the corridors hunting half-starved rats and the occasional fox passed through but there was nothing there for crows.

  There were still a few factories working. They looked almost as tired as the ones that were closed down and there were no big lorries anywhere to squash something juicy with. There were a few cars and a couple of fork lift trucks but that was about it. There was nothing moving that would squash anything really flat.

  Bert flew on beyond the industrial estate, past the three-hundred-foot-tall chimney. There were a lot of big machines parked on some empty land but none of them were moving and beyond that there were just more houses. As it started to get dark he turned for home. His parents were still sitting on the gutter at the back of the house, still muttering away in their daydreams. Bert flew into the tall tree where they all roosted and fell asleep.

  The next morning a passing crow told them about the new roadworks that had started by the old chimney.

  ‘And we all know what that means, don’t we?’ said the visitor.

  ‘Aye, lad,’ said Bert’s dad. ‘Lots of big machines, lots of big fat heavy tyres to squash things.’

  ‘Aye, breakfast,’ said Bert’s mum.

  For the next few months there was plenty to eat and everyone grew fat and happy. Bert’s mum hatched out four new eggs and was busy all day feeding them. Bert spent every day, until it was almost too dark to see, hanging round the roadworks with a gang of other crows. Sometimes there was so much great flat stuff to eat it was too dark to get home by the time they’d finished and they’d all spend the night inside the three-hundred-foot chimney.

  But all the time Bert couldn’t get the thought of the two-metre hedgehog out of his mind. He told his mates about the two-metre hedgehog but they all seemed to know about it already.

  ‘It’s just a story,’ said Eddie. Eddie was a flash bird from the roughest part of town and all the others were a bit afraid of him. If you had any sense you didn’t argue with Eddie.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Bert. ‘My dad reckons it’s true.’

  ‘Yeah, well, so does my dad,’ said Eddie, ‘but he’s never seen it.’

  ‘No, neither has mine,’ said Bert.

  ‘I reckon it’s all made up,’ said Eddie.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Bert.

  Bert couldn’t really believe that Eddie was right. To do that would mean he’d have to say his dad had lied to him and he couldn’t imagine him ever doing that.

  Eddie’s dad probably just heard about it from someone who had told someone else about someone who had heard it from his cousin’s uncle’s friend, he thought. That’s why Eddie doesn’t believe it.

  The roadworks were coming to an end but that was the best time. That was the time they brought in the steam-rollers and then things got really flat. Not many things got squashed but when they did they were the sweetest things any of them had ever tasted. Bert’s flattest meal was pink, or rather it had started off pink but by the time Bert got it it was a dirty grey colour.

  The steam-roller driver had spat it out onto the fresh black tarmac as he had climbed up into the cab and then he’d driven over it. Bert had seen it but when the machine had passed it had vanished. At first he thought someone else had got it, but the others had gone to the station for the day to scavenge round the trains. He looked all over the road but the pink stuff had gone. He looked after the roller and there it was, stuck to the great steel front wheel and every time the machine rolled forward the pink stuff got flatter and flatter.

  Bert hopped after the steam-roller all morning watching the amazing meal get wider and thinner with every turn. When the machine stopped for lunch it had got so thin and picked up so much dirt that it was almost invisible.

  ‘Oh wow,’ said Bert. ‘It must be a million times thinner than the two-metre hedgehog.’

  And it was but when he pecked and peeled it off the wheel it was awful. It collapsed into a disgusting wriggling mess that stuck to his feathers and g
lued his beak together.

  ‘Ee look, our dad,’ said Bert’s mum. ‘Our Bert’s got his first chewing gum.’

  ‘Aye, lass, that takes me back,’ said Bert’s dad.

  ‘Flat enough for you, is it?’ said Bert’s mum and the two crows fell out of the tree from laughing.

  ‘Nnnnn ... nnnn thh,’ said Bert, scraping his beak along the branch over and over again.

  It was two days before he finally got rid of the last of it and by then he was starving. He flew back to the roadworks but everything was gone. There was one small van and a few men poking around near the three-hundred-foot chimney but all the big machines were gone.

  ‘I’m so hungry,’ Bert said to himself, ‘that I could eat something fat.’

  He sat on top of the chimney and peered down and there far below at the foot of the tower was a tiny white speck. Bert slid off the ledge and floated down towards it. There, lying in the grass, was a big thick ham sandwich. As he got near the ground a rat crawled out from a gap in the bricks and grabbed the sandwich. It chewed and tore at it and tried to pull it into the gap but before it could and before Bert could reach it, the whole world exploded with the greatest explosion anyone had ever heard.

  Bert was thrown outwards as the whole tower came crashing down on itself. In a great cloud of bricks and dust he was hurled across the wasteland and fell in a filthy heap on the ground. Miraculously not a single piece of brick had touched him and apart from being grey instead of black and having a dreadful headache, he was completely unharmed.

  The tower was not unharmed. When the dust had cleared Bert could see the magnificent building was now nothing more than a sad pile of broken bricks. He remembered all the days he had sat on the top of the tower with his family and his mates looking out across the whole town. On clear summer days you could see right into the countryside, see the soft green hills rolling away into a distant blue haze and in the other direction the hills turned to valleys that slipped softly down to the sea. It was all so sad.

  For three weeks men with lorries cleared the broken tower away. Bert sat on a nearby factory every day and watched them. He felt that until every single brick had gone he ought to watch over the last days of the three-hundred-foot chimney. He knew that it was what he had to do.

  When the last lorry left Bert flew up into the sky above the tower’s ghost and when he reached the place where the top had been he looked down at the ground. And there below him was the sandwich and still holding on to it was the rat. Only now the sandwich was no longer a white speck, it was as wide as a double bed and the rat was as long as a carpet and compared to them the two-metre hedgehog, true or not, seemed as thick as Eddie.

  Bert drifted slowly down on the warm air taking in the wonderful sight of the flattest meal there had ever been in the whole history of any universe. For nearly an hour he floated round and round until at last he landed in the middle of the most perfect meal he had ever seen, a meal so thin that to anyone else it would have been invisible. He flew around its edge in both directions. He flew back up into the sky for one last look and then when the afternoon sun had warmed it all to perfection he came down to eat.

  Venus the Caterpillar

  Venus the caterpillar crawled out from under the tomato plant leaf in the greenhouse and looked up at the stars. Low in the evening sky was a thin silver crescent, too small to cast a shadow but as delicate as a piece of fine jewellery. Venus had never seen the moon before and she couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ she said, but no one seemed very interested.

  ‘Oh yes?’ sneered Gilbert the cockroach. ‘And what other beautiful things have you seen?’

  ‘Leaves,’ said Venus, ‘and stalks and other things.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Gilbert.

  ‘A flowerpot,’ said Venus. ‘I’ve seen a flowerpot.’

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ said Gilbert and scuttled off to eat some compost.

  The next night the moon had grown and the night after that it grew more. In fact, it kept growing for days and days until it was as big and round as the sun. And as it grew it began to cast a cool blue light over the world. When it was full, its beams poured down through the trees and sent long dark shadows across the lawn, bathing the whole world in peaceful silence. Everything looked frozen in its cool glow. Even the tomatoes above Venus’s head shone blue like little moons themselves. She looked up through the leaves and knew that no matter what she did she had to go to the moon. She didn’t know that one day she would have wings and be able to fly. Nor did she know that when she could fly she would then find out just how incredibly far away the moon was. She just knew she had to go there.

  ‘If I went outside,’ she said, ‘and climbed to the top of the tallest tree, right to the very end of the highest leaf, do you think I could reach it?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ scoffed Gilbert, ‘if you waited like a million years for the tree to grow until it was thousand million miles tall.’

  ‘Really? That’s great,’ said Venus. ‘How long’s a million years?’

  ‘Give me strength,’ cried Gilbert, banging his head against a sleeping slug and getting his feelers all sticky.

  ‘Well, how long is a million years?’ said Venus. ‘Is it longer than tomorrow and today all put together?’

  Gilbert muttered something under his breath about wishing he was carnivorous and vanished. Venus couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. It all seemed quite simple. By the time she got out of the greenhouse, the tree would have already grown quite a lot and by the time she climbed to the end of the very highest leaf, it probably would be a million years old.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said to anyone who would listen, ‘there’s always the possibility that the tree will grow faster than I can climb it and I suppose it could take so long to get there that by the time I do, the tree could be taller than the moon and I’d have to come down a bit.’

  Gilbert was swearing underneath the table but Venus couldn’t make out what he was saying. It didn’t matter anyway. She didn’t know that cockroaches were nasty sarcastic creatures. She just thought Gilbert was being helpful.

  Venus said goodbye to all her brothers and sisters and set off straight away. She crawled down the tomato plant stalk, down the outside of the flowerpot and wriggled to the edge of the table. She stopped and looked back at her home, wondering if she’d ever see it or her family again. As she turned to go on, she glanced up at the beautiful moon and almost fainted.

  It was shrinking. All down one side it had vanished. Venus couldn’t believe it. Her great big beautiful moon was dying and it was dying so fast that it would be gone before she could get there.

  ‘If only I could reach it in time,’ she said, ‘I might be able to make it well again.’

  ‘You are the most stupid caterpillar I’ve ever met,’ said Gilbert. ‘No, wait a minute. That’s not true. Every caterpillar I’ve ever met, and I’ve met hundreds, has been just as stupid as you are.’

  ‘But the moon is dying,’ said Venus.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Gilbert. ‘It does that every month. It gets bigger and then it gets smaller and then it gets bigger again.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Venus.

  ‘Are caterpillars horrid little creatures that look like the outsides of their bodies are missing? Of course I’m sure,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘So if I climb the tree it will come back again and I’ll be able to go there?’ said Venus.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, sure,’ said Gilbert and scuttled off again.

  ‘Why do I keep doing this?’ he said as he hurried across the greenhouse floor. ‘Why do I keep having all these conversations with these idiots? Why don’t I stay at home and do something I’d enjoy more like hitting my head against the wall?’

  Venus slipped over the edge and began to crawl towards the floor, but when she reached
the underneath of the table a strange feeling began to come over her. It was a feeling that she had never felt before, a sort of weird feeling that something incredible was going to happen.

  Isn’t it lovely under here? she thought, even though she couldn’t see her beloved moon. I think I’d like to have a little sleep right where I am.

  Part of her thought she should go on. After all, it was quite a long way to the moon so she shouldn’t waste any time. But a stronger feeling seemed to be overtaking her and that told her it was time for bed. The more she tried to sort out her thoughts, the more tired she became until she just had to go to sleep. She spun a tiny silk thread, fixed it to the underneath of the table and soon fell fast asleep. And as she slept, strange and incredible things happened to her.

  Venus the moth yawned and stretched. Inside her head she was still Venus the caterpillar but on the outside she was now Venus the moth. Of course, she didn’t know this yet. She still thought she was a caterpillar and than she had just nodded of to sleep for a bit. It had been dark when she had gone to sleep and it was still dark, so she thought it was the same day. In fact, a whole winter had passed. She had gone to sleep in the autumn and now it was early spring.

  Better get on, I suppose, she thought to herself and stretched to her full length. Got to get to the moon.

  Suddenly there was a loud splitting noise and Venus felt a blast of cool air. She felt blood moving through places she didn’t remember having. There were hairs all over her body where she had been smooth and shiny.

  ‘I’m sure they weren’t there when I went to sleep,’ she said, peering back at a pair of pale wings. ‘I’d have noticed them.’

  She waved the new wings and found she was hovering in mid air.

  Oh wow, she thought. This is incredible.

  And she realised that she wouldn’t have to climb all the way up the tree to reach the moon. She could just fly there. It was brilliant.

  ‘I won’t have to wait a million years any more,’ she said. ‘I’ll just be able to fly there in half an hour.’