by Adam Frost
‘OK,’ said Tom, ‘then I’ll teach them to balance on their trunks!’
Mr Nightingale chuckled. ‘Much more sensible,’ he said.
They all went into the cafe and ordered some toast.
Chapter 7
Shaurya continued to be a brilliant student.
By the end of the Christmas holidays, he could follow Jane around the elephants’ barn.
When Tom and Sophie came back for the February half-term, he could walk backwards and turn around on command.
By the Easter holidays, he could lie on his side, lie on his stomach and climb on to a podium.
By the end of the Easter holidays, he could lift up all four feet, one at a time, and pick up branches with his trunk.
By the time Tom and Sophie came back for the May half-term, Jane had a surprise for them.
She asked Mr Nightingale to bring the children to the outdoor arena after the zoo was closed one Sunday. When they arrived, Jane was sitting in the middle of the front row. ‘Welcome to the dress rehearsal,’ she said with a smile.
‘The dress rehearsal for what?’ Sophie asked.
‘Shaurya’s first demonstration,’ said Jane.
‘You mean he’s ready?’ Tom and Sophie looked astonished.
‘He can do everything now,’ said Jane, ‘and he’s a natural show-off. See for yourselves.’
She disappeared behind a row of trees for a few minutes and then reappeared at the side of the arena. Laila, Shaurya and Frieda followed her into the arena, holding one another’s tails with their trunks.
Tom and Sophie were spellbound. Shaurya still seemed so small next to Laila and Frieda, no more than a metre and a half tall, still covered with wiry fluff, not quite in control of his legs and trunk. But Jane was right – he clearly loved being part of the demonstration.
He rolled the ball across the arena with his trunk and then trumpeted loudly, looking very pleased with himself. Then he picked up a small log and carried it across to Jane. He balanced on a podium, lay down on his side, lay on his front, lifted up his feet and even picked up a flag with his trunk and waved it.
Mr Nightingale, Tom and Sophie were clapping and cheering.
At the end of the demonstration, Jane invited Tom and Sophie out on to the arena floor, where they patted Shaurya and gave him lots and lots of carrots.
‘Tomorrow he’ll meet the public,’ said Jane.
‘He’s going to be a big star!’ cried Tom.
‘Well, he’s already got a fan club, ’ said Mr Nightingale, winking at Tom and Sophie.
The children chatted all the way home, their voices bubbling with excitement.
They barely slept that night – all they could think about was Shaurya’s big debut. In the morning, they gave up on breakfast halfway through to start looking at their Shaurya scrapbook.
In the back of the van, on their way to Whipsnade, they talked non-stop about Shaurya’s act and wondered which trick people would like the most.
Once they reached the zoo they helped their dad feed the zebras, but they barely gave the animals a glance – instead they talked about Shaurya’s diet and eating habits.
Before they knew it, it was twelve o’clock, they were in the front row and the show was about to start.
The last nine months had led up to this moment. They had been there when Shaurya was born, they had watched him grow and learn, and now here he was, starring in his own demonstration! They felt a mixture of wonder and pride.
Tom had borrowed his dad’s video camera. He was going to film everything.
Sophie had a camera and her sketchbook.
The show started.
For the first five minutes, everything went accordingly to plan. Shaurya rolled a ball across to Jane and then stood on his podium.
Then everything went wrong.
Shaurya, Frieda and Laila were about to lie down on their stomachs when Shaurya stumbled sideways. Had a noise given him a fright? Had something hit him? He started to back away, clearly distressed. Laila noticed immediately and moved to stand in front of him, flapping her ears aggressively, rolling her huge head and trumpeting loudly.
People in the audience were starting to look confused and nervous. Jane was calming Laila down while another keeper fed Frieda some hay. The situation was quickly under control, but the audience were still looking restless.
‘Is this all part of the demonstration?’ called out one middle-aged woman.
‘What’s the matter with the baby one?’ a young boy asked his parents loudly.
Tom and Sophie didn’t know what to do. They could see that Laila had calmed down, but they understood why people were confused. Because they didn’t know what was happening either.
Jane was now leading the elephants out of the arena. She was talking into her radio quietly.
Shaurya lolloped along behind his mother as if nothing had happened. Laila seemed unflustered too, flinging dust on her back with her trunk and whisking away flies with her tail.
One of the other keepers made an announcement over the tannoy system: ‘Sorry about the interruption, folks. One of our elephants is feeling under the weather. We’ll restart the demonstration in an hour’s time. See you then!’
People groaned and started to get to their feet.
‘Well, this is most inconvenient!’ huffed a woman with five children in tow.
‘What shall we do?’ Tom whispered to his sister. ‘Shall we go too?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sophie said.
‘Shall we follow Jane and Shaurya?’ Tom asked.
‘No, Jane will have things to sort out,’ said Sophie.
So they stayed where they were, sitting in the front row of the arena, staring at where Laila and Frieda and Shaurya had been just a few minutes before. The props for the demonstration – the balls and logs and branches and poles – were still lying on the ground.
Within a few minutes they were the only people left sitting in the arena. Sophie looked down at the sketch she had made of Shaurya at the start of the demonstration. Tom realised that the video camera was still running and pressed ‘Stop’.
It started to rain.
Chapter 8
That evening, Tom and Sophie were still reeling from the shock. What had happened to Shaurya? They just didn’t get it.
They sat in the living room, with the TV on, not watching it, just staring blankly with their Shaurya scrapbook open between them.
‘Snap out of it, you two,’ Mr Nightingale said. ‘It will be OK.’
‘I checked out Laila and Shaurya,’ said Mrs Nightingale, ‘and they’re both fine. No shock. No stress.’
But Tom and Sophie just grunted and nodded and continued to stare at nothing.
Eventually Sophie said, ‘Jane said Shaurya won’t be able to do another demonstration until they’ve worked out what went wrong.’
Tom added, ‘She also said that they might wait a year before trying him out again. A year!’
Mr and Mrs Nightingale looked at each other and sighed.
‘How about you come and help me feed the lions tomorrow?’ Mr Nightingale suggested.
‘Lions are rubbish,’ said Tom. ‘They don’t do anything. They just lie around.’
‘I’m giving the chimps their jabs in the morning,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘You could watch.’
‘Chimps are silly,’ said Sophie. ‘They just swing on tyres. And throw fruit at each other.’
Mrs Nightingale shrugged. Mr Nightingale switched the TV over to the news. Tom and Sophie didn’t even notice.
The children remained gloomy for a couple of days. They deliberately stayed away from the elephants. They didn’t want to admit that they were annoyed with Shaurya or that they blamed him for what had happened. They wanted to remember him as the perfect elephant, the best elephant in the world, the elephant that could do anything.
Three days after the show, they bumped into Jane outside the cafe.
‘How’s Shaurya?’ Tom and Sophie said at the same
time.
‘He’s fine,’ said Jane. ‘We’re getting no nearer to working out what spooked him though. It’s a mystery.’
‘What have you been doing?’ asked Sophie.
‘Making loud noises to see if they make him jump,’ said Jane. ‘Scouring the arena for things he might have trodden on. You name it, we’ve tried it.’
Tom had an idea. ‘You could watch the show again,’ he said. ‘That might make it easier to work out what upset him.’
‘We would if we could, Tom,’ said Jane. ‘Only we weren’t expecting any problems, you see, and none of us recorded it.’
‘I did,’ said Tom, ‘on video. And Soph took pictures.’
‘Really?’ exclaimed Jane. ‘What a stroke of luck! Blimey, you two are good!’
‘We could look at the footage if you like,’ said Tom.
‘That would be great!’ replied Jane.
‘We’ll solve the mystery in no time!’ Sophie chipped in. ‘You can count on us.’
Tom and Sophie raced off to the entrance gates, happy for the first time in days.
Jane watched them go and thought to herself, And I thought I was crazy about elephants!
Tom and Sophie went round to the staff changing rooms and found their father’s locker. They knew the code off by heart. Tom took out the video camera and Sophie picked up her camera and her sketchbook. Then they went to the cafe and ordered two hot chocolates.
They started by poring over the video footage, watching it right through twice, and then in ten-second chunks. Sophie made notes in her sketchbook.
‘This time,’ she said, ‘let’s concentrate on the ground. See if there are any stones or bits of rubbish.’
Tom pressed ‘Play’ and ‘Pause’ and ‘Play’ again.
But it was no good. Neither of them could see anything that could have scared the little elephant.
‘Let’s try it one more time all the way through to see if we can spot anything we haven’t thought of,’ said Tom.
They were just at the section where Shaurya took his first step out into the arena when Sophie cried, ‘There!’
‘Where?’ said Tom.
‘There,’ she said, ‘a piece of glass.’
Tom zoomed in and they looked more closely. ‘It’s just a plastic wrapper,’ he said glumly.
They rewound the video and watched it through again. This time, they turned the sound right up, listening for any noises.
About thirty seconds before Shaurya lost it, a keeper’s van backfired just behind the arena, making a short, sharp bang like a firework.
‘That could have been it,’ said Tom.
‘I don’t know,’ said Sophie. ‘If it was just the van, then why didn’t he panic straight away? Why wait half a minute?’
‘They do do everything quite slowly,’ Tom pointed out. ‘Maybe they panic slowly too.’
‘Maybe,’ said Sophie doubtfully. They decided to note it down and tell Jane just in case. Then they watched the video one more time.
‘Now let’s look at everyone in the audience,’ said Sophie. ‘See if they did anything silly or unpredictable.’
‘Good idea,’ said Tom. He put his thumb down on ‘Rewind’. ‘I’ll go back to the bit just before the elephants came in. Remember, when I did that 360-degree panorama and filmed everyone in the crowd.’
‘I got some pictures of people watching too,’ Sophie said, fiddling with her camera, and then she let out a loud gasp.
‘There!’ she said. ‘Did you see it? That guy opened a can right next to Shaurya’s ear!’
‘Maybe it was that,’ said Tom.
‘And look at this photo,’ said Sophie. ‘Just at the same time this woman opened an umbrella. Maybe the sudden noise and the movement threw him.’
Tom found the woman on his video footage. ‘But she’s quite near the back. I think she’d be too far away for him to hear. The girl next to her though.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Sophie said. ‘What’s she doing with a party popper anyway?’
Tom was zooming in.
‘She’s wearing an “I am 6” badge. Probably her birthday,’ he said.
‘Hang on, look, she’s just let it off,’ said Sophie.
‘Before Shaurya came into the arena,’ added Tom, ‘so it’s probably not that.’
After another fifteen minutes of studying the film, they made a final list of what they’d found. As well as the van backfiring, the drinks can and the umbrella, they’d also spotted a small child exploding a crisp bag by accidentally sitting on it.
‘Let’s have one last look through the photos together,’ said Sophie.
Behind the arena, Tom spotted an apple tree with lots of apples sitting around its roots.
‘Do you think an apple could have hit him on the back?’
‘We’d have noticed that,’ said Sophie.
‘But what if it hit the roof of that hut next to it? Maybe it made a loud bang. Or maybe two fell at the same time and made an even louder bang.’
‘We’d have heard it on your video,’ said Sophie.
‘Maybe it was a hollow sound,’ said Tom. ‘You know, too deep for us to hear. Remember what Jane said about how elephants can hear sounds at low frequencies.’
Sophie nodded. ‘Let’s add it to the list.’
They read through their list again, put everything into Sophie’s rucksack and headed for the elephants’ field.
They all stood by the large barn where Shaurya slept. Jane was impressed. ‘This is fantastic stuff, you two,’ she said. ‘We’ll start working through these noises this afternoon.’
‘What do you mean, you’ll work through the noises?’ Tom asked.
‘Well, let’s take the first thing here,’ Jane explained. ‘An umbrella opening. We’ll find the noisiest umbrella in the zoo shop and open it when Shaurya least expects it. If he jumps or takes fright, then that’s our culprit. Then we’ll open it again and again, every morning. Till he’s used to it. Till we know that it will never frighten him again.’
‘Wow, can we come and watch?’ asked Sophie.
‘Only if you’re very quiet,’ said Jane, ‘just in case it was YOU he was frightened of.’
Tom and Sophie smiled.
They met their parents and Grandad for lunch and told them what they’d discovered on the video and how Shaurya might have been startled by a loud noise.
‘Good work, kids,’ said Mr Nightingale. ‘It sounds like you might be on to something. And with friends like you, Shaurya will be in a demonstration again in no time.’
‘Do you mean to say you’ve got a whole film in that thing?’ Grandad asked, pointing at the video camera. ‘Why, it’s the size of a pygmy shrew!’
After lunch, Tom and Sophie met Jane back at the elephant house. The children waited by the door while Jane went inside. They could see Laila and Shaurya standing inside on a layer of fresh straw while Jane and another keeper walked across to a bale of hay. On top of the hay, there was a banger, an umbrella, a crisp bag, a drink can, a cricket ball and a sheet of corrugated iron.
Tom and Sophie watched anxiously as Jane picked up the crisp bag, turned away from Shaurya and blew air into it. Holding it behind her, she went up close to the elephant, whispering his name and stroking his bristly back.
Shaurya picked up some straw from the ground with his trunk and put it in his mouth.
Jane raised the bag in the air, brought her hands together and exploded it.
Tom and Sophie jumped.
Shaurya calmly picked up another clump of straw, placed it on his tongue and slowly chewed. He hadn’t reacted at all.
Then Jane tried the banger. This was meant to sound like a car backfiring.
Shaurya gave Jane a strange look and calmly chewed his straw.
He had the same reaction to the cricket ball bouncing on the iron sheet and the umbrella popping open.
‘Just the drink can left to go,’ said Sophie.
Jane shook the can and opened the ring pull, releasing a squi
rt of fizzy liquid.
This time, Shaurya and Laila turned round. Shaurya put his trunk out and sniffed the can. The finger at the end of his trunk started to grasp it.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ said Jane. ‘This stuff rots your teeth.’
When Jane came out, she could tell that Tom and Sophie were disappointed.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Jane. ‘What you did really helped us.’
Tom said, ‘No, it didn’t. None of it scared Shaurya. We’re back to square one.’
‘But we’ve just crossed five things off our list,’ said Jane. ‘That’s great progress.’
‘I was CERTAIN it was going to be the drink can,’ said Sophie.
‘And I was SURE it was going to be the crisp bag,’ said Tom.
‘I thought it was going to be the car backfiring,’ said Jane.
‘But look, doesn’t that mean that Shaurya’s OK again? He’s not scared of anything? He can do another demonstration. After all, we tried so many things,’ said Tom.
Jane shook her head sadly. ‘Sorry, Tom, but we couldn’t risk it,’ she said. ‘We can’t put any animal in a demonstration unless we know they’re one hundred per cent happy with it. We don’t want a repeat of what happened last time, do we? Until we’ve cracked this, Shaurya will have to wait in the wings.’
Tom and Sophie peered into the elephant house again and watched as Shaurya nuzzled his mother’s side.
‘Don’t give up, kids,’ said Jane.
‘What else can we do?’ Sophie asked.
‘You’ll think of something,’ said Jane. ‘I just know it.’
Chapter 9
Back on the barge that evening, Tom and Sophie were down in the dumps again. Their mum and dad had gone out to see a film, so Grandad was babysitting.
‘Any luck with your baby elephant?’ Grandad asked, as they tucked into takeaway pizza in front of the TV.
‘No,’ said Tom, ‘we still can’t work out what made him upset.’
‘Well, elephants don’t spook easily in my experience,’ said Grandad. ‘He must have seen something pretty scary. Or remembered something.’