by Jane Yolen
It was.
He managed to grab it with his paw and hold on. Larie’s great gray wings beat slowly as she swung him away from the tree.
The Grays began to scream slurs and bad names. “You unnatural pairing! You big white-gray Rat with wings! You flipping Flying Squirrel!”
Nutley twisted about, which was a difficult maneuver, and screamed back, “They glide, you Dumbnuts. Glide!” and he almost lost hold of the stick.
“Shut your cakehole and hold tight, Nutley,” encouraged Larie. “You don’t want to fall now.”
Cake again, Nutley thought. She sure likes to talk about cake. But at the same time, he felt courage swell in his chest and he closed his left paw even more tightly around the stick. They flew away from the tree toward Trash Mountain.
This only incensed the Grays even more, and with one of them high in the tree calling instructions to the others, they tracked Larie and Nutley as they flew over the fence and onto the gray and white litter. There was a full moon overhead, and the Gull and Squirrel were easy to see.
Larie lowered Nutley down right by his box. “You’re no lightweight, kid. My legs are going to be sore for days.”
“Thank you. Thank you,” Nutley said. “I hope I didn’t put you to any trouble.”
“Trouble is what you have, I’m afraid.” Lariegestured with her head toward the Winding Road.
In the moonlight, Nutley could see the Grays dashing across the road and heading up the dirt lane, like a great gray river of doom. Soon they would be at the fence.
“Surely, they won’t come in …” Nutley said.
“You did.”
“I had no choice.”
“Maybe they have none, either,” she said. “Anger sometimes puts a body in that place.”
“What should I do?” Nutley asked. The gray river flowed through the fence holes and onto the patch of trash belonging to the Rats.
Before Larie could venture an answer, they both heard a huge caterwauling as Naw and Nawmer and five Tatters boiled up out of their holes to defend their place.
“Will the Rats hold them?”
“We can only hope.”
But hope, Nutley knew, was the one thing he had very little of.
This you should know:
Rats—especially brown Rats—love a good trash heap. Tips, junk piles, scrap heaps, garbage dumps, landfills, middens, you name it, the brown Rat will be there. How can you know they are there? Look for narrow, well-used paths. Find dark, greasy trails. Unlike Squirrels, Rats do not bury their food. Anything uneaten is left behind. This is because the Rat will devour almost anything, so they never have to worry about going hungry. Also, this you should know as well: Rats are very tolerant—of other Rats. Not so much of outsiders.
Riveted, Nutley and Larie watched as the Rats formed a battle line. Shoulder to shoulder, they stood on their hind legs, which made them tower over the invaders. They bared their teeth at the Squirrels. Big teeth. Very big teeth. And yellow.
Seeing that line’s precision, the Grays stopped, suddenly stymied in their forward motion. Their own line was ragged, disordered, tails a-quiver. Uneasily, they glanced at one another. They’d been expecting a straightforward romp over a defenseless Red Squirrel. Instead they got …
“Rats!” said one of the Grays. And the others mumbled back the same. Several clearly considered running away and glanced over their shoulders. But a low chitter from the others held them in place.
Nutley turning toward Larie. “The Rats look really Dangerous.” He meant it in an admiring way. He bared his teeth too.
“They are,” Larie told him. “And they don’t share well.”
“You sound like my Mummy.” Nutley meant that in an admiring way too.
“Well, I’m not your Mumsy,” said Larie. “Not now, not ever.” She shook out her wings. “See—gray wings, yellow beak, pink legs. Whadda you think it all means, Nut-Boy?”
Nutley turned back and faced the battle again. He didn’t want Larie to see how much he was blushing with embarrassment. Red on red, as Mummy used to say. She’d been right about Gulls. They had no manners at all.
Over on the Rats’ place, the Grays had begun to shake themselves into a kind of battle order. After all, they outnumbered the Rats twelve to seven. In the Grays counting, that meant the battle was already won. They always figured numbers gave a victory. Possibly all the other times it had.
Making a loose circle around the Rats, the Grays took turns calling out nasty chatter. Nutley knew it was a way of building up their own courage while at the same time trying to soften up the enemy. Usually—as he knew only too well—it was a strategy that worked.
“Garbage eaters!” yelled one Gray, who had a streak of white down his tail.
“Rat-a-tat-tat, your Mama’s FAT!” called another. His ears stood up almost as tall as Nutley’s.
“Skinny tail.” cried a third.
“Skinned tail!” screamed a fourth. And indeed, to a Squirrel, a Rat’s tail must have looked like it had been skinned with a knife.
And so it went around the circle.
“Pot-bellied bully!”
“Dirty ratskin.”
“Tip-tipper, hit you with a slipper!”
Nutley knew that last voice. It was Groundling.
At each name, at each rhyming insult, the Rats snarled back.
A standoff, Father would have called it.
Larie poked Nutley’s shoulder with her beak. “Now’s the time for us to escape,” she told him, “while they are concentrated on the Rats. We need to get to the top of the Mountain. To the White Box. You can hide in there. It has a Dead Man’s Latch.”
Nutley shuddered. He didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t like the sound of anything with the word Dead in it.
“But Naw said …” He bit his lip hard. “Naw said Thosethatgoesindon’tcomeoutagain.”
Larie cocked her head to one side. “And you believe him? He’s only a Rat.”
Nutley’s paws wrangled together. His ear tufts quivered. “Yes, but … but he’s been nice to me, and …”
“And he’s never been in the White Box, so what does he know?”
It was what Father would have called an unanswerable argument.
“Will you fly me up there?” Nutley asked, hating that there was a pleading note in his voice.
Larie shook her head. “Once a night is more than enough for a Gull to be carrying heavy objects. But you’ll have a good head start while the Grays are fighting the Rats. Don’t worry, the bloodshed should start soon. It’ll keep them all busy. I’ll meet you up there.” And with a little leap and the pumping of her gray wings, she was away, shimmering in the light of the moon.
To the sound of the insults between the Rats and the Grays—for now the Rats were hurling names back at the Squirrels—Nutley quickly unburied the nuts he’d stored and placed them in his cheeks. He might not be able to find any other food for a while. There certainly wouldn’t be any in the White Box. The word Dead resounded in his ear. Better to be safe than … But there was nothing safe about this night at all.
Cheeks bulging, he started to turn toward the Mountain, when the sound of the name-calling behind him on the Rats’ territory changed. There was a huge audible gasp. It was like a tremor in the air.
Nutley looked over his shoulder and in horror saw that the littlest Naw-baby—Nawshus—had come up out of a burrow to investigate what all the fuss was about. Only it had popped out closer to the circle of Grays than to the pack of Rats.
The Gray with the white stripe on his tail moved quickly, taking a half leap forward. His tail waved like a banner in a small wind. With a swift paw, he scooped up little Nawshus and held the baby Rat high overhead.
“Yummers!” the Gray cried and at the same time made a chewing noise, his teeth clacketing loudly against one another, as if breaking open a particularly difficult nut.
It was a horrible sound. Nutley felt a cold shiver go down his back. Little Nawshus began to cry.
With a huge, angry yell, the Rats broke formation and Nawmer threw herself at the Gray who was holding her baby. He went over backward, and she followed, burying her large yellow teeth in his neck. Blood began to spurt.
But Nawmer was too late with her attack because even as he fell, the Gray had flung Nawshus to one side, and the Gray next to him had caught the terrified little Rat, hugging Nawshus to his chest.
One of the Tatters—a giant brown with torn ears and a crook in his tail—grabbed that Gray around the middle, biting down on his catching arm. However, just a moment before that attack, little Nawshus had been flung clear across the circle, to a female Gray whose back was to Nutley.
Nutley recognized the game. It was a favorite of the Grays—Nut Keep Away. They were good at it. Well practiced. They could continue for hours.
Now Nutley could hear the little Rat screaming in terror, “Dada! Mummy!”
Heart pounding, Nutley ran in the biggest jumps he could muster across his own territory, leaped forward, and hit the Gray right in the small of her back. No one had been expecting that. They’d forgotten all about him. Or if they thought of him at all, they assumed he’d run away long ago. But not for a minute did Nutley think of his own Danger. He only wanted to save the little Rat.
As Nutley hit the Gray, most of the nuts in his cheeks sprayed out like shots from Farmer Temple’s gun, hitting Squirrels on either side and momentarily distracting them with the tantalizing odor of hazelnuts.
Nawshus popped out of the Gray’s paw, tumbling over and over till he landed at Nawmer’s feet. She scooped him up in one paw and without taking time to see what else was happening, dove into a burrow in the trash and was gone.
And then the real war began. Six against twelve. Well, eleven. The Squirrel with the white on his tail was no longer moving. Nutley knew the battle wasn’t going to be pretty. He struggled up off the back of the female Gray and without picking up the nuts that had sprayed over the ground, raced away. He’d done all that he could, and now he knew he had to escape.
The Rats were on their own.
This you should know:
Gulls (Latin name Laridae) come in many types: Common, Glaucous, Lesser Black-Backed, and others. The different types are quite distinctive—if you know what to look for. Larie is a Herring Gull, and in her fourth year. Loud and noisy, Herring Gulls are found throughout the year in Britain, in seaside towns, in rubbish tips, on playing fields, and on farms. Would Herring Gulls fight? They often battle other birds for territory, gripping with their beaks, pushing and pulling with their legs, flailing with their hardy wings. Could a Herring Gull carry a Squirrel aloft? Well, a Herring Gull carries Mollusks and Crabs up to drop them on stones in order to break them open. How much heavier could a small Red Squirrel be?
Carefully skirting the Gulls’ trash ocean, Nutley raced along, keeping the towering Mountain in his sight, though it was far enough away to be just a large misty presence ahead of him. He knew it would be faster going straight across, but he didn’t dare. Naw had warned him, and now Nutley believed Naw.
The Gulls were already nestling down for the night. He could see them out of the corner of his eye, fluttering and shrilly trumpeting kyee-kyee yowk-yowk-yow.
Even though they would soon be asleep, he didn’t veer across their space. After all, the only Gull who was actually his friend was Larie, and she was already winging toward the Great White Box. Indeed, she was probably there. So she couldn’t speak to her family on his behalf. And without her vouching for him, it was too Dangerous.
As he circled the Gulls’ space, Nutley’s breath came in sharp, painful gasps. Now he could hear some of the Grays behind him, panting furiously, the pattering of their feet more than matching the speed of his own. And he thought he could distinguish as well some of them off to the side. He had no idea how many Grays there were, whether there were two or lots. Whether they had beaten the Rats utterly or had just escaped from the Rats’ strong teeth. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t take the time to check.
Fear made Nutley speed up. But anger was helping the Grays. And now it was clear that some of them were taking the Dangerous shortcut across the Gulls’ territory. He could see them out of the corner of one eye. In another leap or three, they would cut him off.
Terror lent him strength, but it didn’t lend him wings. And alas, thought Nutley, only wings can save me now.
But the nestling Gulls were already half asleep. Even had they been awake, Nutley wondered what—if anything—they could or would do. This wasn’t their fight, after all.
He would have called for help but remembered the Gulls hadn’t even helped Larie, their sister, their friend. And he had little time to consider any other course of action as the Grays closed in on him.
Suddenly, from the midst of the Gulls’ space, there was a huge whoshing sound, and a great gray cloud rose up. The Gulls might not want to help Nutley and they didn’t help one of their own when she was trussed up and possibly dying, but it seems they were more than ready to defend their territory. Nutley was astonished and thankful, in equal measure.
For a moment they hovered, and it was eerily silent except for Gulls. And only Nutley—now rounding the corner and heading straight for the Mountain and in a crash course toward the over-landing Grays—only Nutley noticed the cloud of birds.
And then the Gulls dived down on the invading Grays, screaming, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” Their yellow bills glowed in the moonlight like light sabers. Nutley knew about light sabers. It was one of the stories Mummy had heard on the porch when Farmer Temple’s wife read to her grandchildren. Nutley liked that story better than the ones about Trolls.
The Gulls speared the Gray Squirrels with their sharp beaks. And the larger Gulls managed to grab up five of the smaller, lighter Squirrels by their tails, flying them over the fence and dropping them onto the Winding Road as if they were merely clamshells they were trying to open.
What the Rats had begun, it seemed as if the Gulls would finish.
“Mine! Mine! Mine!” the gray cloud squawked as it flew back down to its bed in the trash. Then with a last fluttering of wings, they settled in for the night.
Only four of the Grays had been smart enough to come the long way around, following Nutley. Maybe three or four of them. Nutley couldn’t tell. He kept running as fast as he could until finally he had to stop to catch his breath. His legs trembled, and there was a searing pain along his right side. Taking in great gulps of air, he was surprised to find he still had two nuts left in his cheeks. But he didn’t have time to eat them, and besides now—suddenly—he had a plan. Turning, he spit the two nuts out behind him, then began running again.
The first of the Grays on his trail found his spit-out stash and shouted, “Nuts!” The lure of free food overcame him, and he squatted right down to eat. But the three remaining Grays paid no attention and kept running after their prey.
Nuts! Nutley thought. He’d hoped the nuts would have slowed them down. That they would stop and fight over the little stash. But there were three still after him, Grays bigger and stronger and faster. Now he was sure he wouldn’t make it; he simply could not take another leap. At least, he thought, at least I will be with Mummy and Father. He stopped, turned, closed his eyes, and waited for the teeth in his throat.
And then something grabbed him by the tail.
How could that be? He wondered if some Gray had sneaked behind him. And then he began a chittering scream. He screamed and screamed until he realized he was being lifted. He twisted around and looked up at the glowing gray wings beating above him.
“Larie,” he cried, “I’m too heavy. You said so. Drop me. Save yourself.”
“Stop wingeing, Nut-Boy,” came the reply.
He stopped wingeing, whatever that was, but he closed his eyes, crossed his front paws, and didn’t dare open his eyes again until Larie said, “Landing now.”
Nutley didn’t worry about the landing. The bottom of his tail, where it attached to his rear, hur
t too badly to worry about anything.
“Ow,” he said, once all four of his feet were again on the ground. “Ow.” If he hoped for sympathy from the Gull, he was mistaken.
Larie was too busy looking around to offer any. “All clear,” she said at last. “Now hurry.”
Nutley opened his eyes in surprise.
This you should know:
Dumping old washers and dryers in landfills is environmentally unsafe. Thousands of such machines sit like death traps in these places, and it takes them hundreds of years before they begin to degrade. Yet sometimes magic happens there. Or power. Think of all that energy lying about untapped in those appliance graveyards, waiting to spark to life. Scattered about Trash Mountain are half-used batteries, undischarged capacitors, tangled wires, standing pools of water. Lightning may not strike the same place twice, but for Nutley, once may be enough.
The two of them were now up at the very top of Trash Mountain. From that height, Nutley sensed the moon almost touching his shoulder. He looked up. It was an enormous presence, big and round and orange. He had only seen it once before. Harvest Moon, Mummy called it.
Though the only thing it seemed to be harvesting at the moment were clouds. Dark gray clouds, racing toward it. He thought there might be a storm coming, which could complicate things even more.
But as he looked around, he realized that he and Larie were alone at the top. Very alone.
“We’re safe!” he cried. “Safe.” He ignored his stinging bottom, his still-pounding heart, and he even ignored the first rumble of faraway thunder.
“Safe for the moment,” Larie told him.
In front of them stood the Great White Box. Or rather, in front of them teetered the Great White Box. Its door, with the round window, swung open invitingly. There was something eerie about it.