Paw Prints in the Snow

by Sally Grindley

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to watch any camera footage that’s shot while we’re there, but you won’t be allowed to join the night patrols,’ said Binti, as if reading his mind. ‘The most you can hope for is that we spot a tiger when we’re driving around the reserve, but there are so few of them left.’

  ‘How many?’ Aesha wanted to know.

  ‘In the area we’re visiting, only about ten. In total, in Russia, around four hundred.’

  ‘No wonder there’s such a big campaign to save them,’ Aesha pondered. ‘It would be a crime if they became extinct.’

  Joe continued to scour the woodlands and fields as they progressed. Even if I don’t see a tiger, I might spot something else while everyone is dozing, he thought to himself.

  Joe must have fallen asleep, though, because the next thing he knew, someone was shaking his shoulder.

  ‘Wake up, sweet prince,’ Peter said. ‘We’ve arrived at our castle.’

  Joe struggled to open his eyes. He was disappointed to find it was nearly dark outside, and even more disappointed to discover that their ‘castle’ was a rather grim-looking hotel. His mother and Aesha were in the lobby, being welcomed by a woman dressed in a big furry hat and a deeply quilted coat, who spoke English with a heavy accent. Joe shivered. It was only a few short steps into the hotel, but he was reluctant to leave his cocoon. He pulled his own coat around him, jumped down from the minibus and looked about.

  Everywhere was covered with a thin layer of snow. Joe had hoped it would be deeper. He wanted it to be so deep that he would have to lift his feet up to his ears just to walk through it! There had been a lot more snow back home the previous winter, when everyone had talked about the snowfalls as being among the heaviest on record.

  ‘How long are we staying in this place?’ he asked as they walked through the dimly lit hotel lobby.

  ‘Only till the morning. We arranged for a stopover here because it’s so late. We, and our hosts in Lazo, felt it would be better if we set off tomorrow, refreshed and in daylight.’ Binti smiled at him. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I know two days of travelling isn’t much fun, but the adventure is about to begin!’

  Joe nodded as she squeezed his shoulder. He was overwhelmed with tiredness and right at that moment would have been happy to sleep anywhere – even standing up, there in the lobby. He allowed his eyes to close briefly. When he opened them again, he noticed the man from the plane, the Walrus, sitting on a stool in the hotel bar.

  Chapter 5

  Early the next morning, the Brooks prepared to set off on the final leg of their journey. Joe had slept well despite his sighting of the Walrus. At breakfast, an unexciting affair of a kind of bread called kleb and processed cheese, he watched for him to appear, but there was no sign of him.

  They were collected by the manager of the research centre in Lazo, a brisk, athletic-looking woman in her thirties called Iona Petrov. She shepherded them into a six-seater car and asked them to wait while she disappeared back into the hotel. A few seconds later, she came out again with the man from the plane, who loaded his luggage into the back of the car.

  ‘This is Artem Klopov,’ she introduced him. ‘He works with us as a dog handler. He’s just come back from a training course in the UK. He doesn’t speak much English, though he understands more.’

  Artem Klopov nodded to them and clambered awkwardly into the front of the car.

  Grinning broadly, Peter turned round to Joe and muttered, ‘Very fishy’.

  Joe was annoyed that he had voiced his suspicions, and a little dismayed at being deprived of his imagined role as detective. He stared out of the window and began to wonder what sort of work a dog handler would be doing at the tiger station. He even found himself wondering if dog-handling was just a cover for Artem Klopov’s activities as a smuggler, before he scolded himself for being ridiculous.

  The final part of their journey took just three hours, during which time Iona chatted to Binti about her team’s work with tigers and discussed how they were educating the local community in the importance of conservation.

  ‘This is a society that has hunting ingrained in it, so we have to change the traditional mindset. The problem is not just that tigers are being poached, but that the animals they feed on are declining in number. Tigers can’t survive if there isn’t enough food, and on top of that, all the animals are being seriously affected by illegal logging, which is destroying their habitat.’

  Iona chatted with Artem too. Joe wished he could understand what they were saying. Peter asked her a question about Artem’s work, and they learnt that it involved training a team of dogs to recognise different scents.

  ‘Sniffer dogs are invaluable in helping us track tiger movements in the Lazovsky Nature Reserve,’ Iona translated. ‘It’s a new and vital part of our operation.’

  Joe was intrigued. He hoped he would get a chance to watch the sniffer dogs at work, and decided that Artem must be a decent person after all if he was involved in tiger conservation.

  ‘You’ll be spending most of your time at our park headquarters, and we’ve arranged for you to stay within the reserve for a couple of nights. How does that sound?’ Iona looked in her mirror to observe her passengers’ reactions.

  ‘Cool!’ said Joe. Staying inside the reserve sounds like the starting point of an adventure to me.

  ‘Sounds perfect to me,’ said Peter.

  ‘Our headquarters are a little bit basic, but at least by staying there you’ll feel as though you’re properly involved.’

  ‘I hope the heating works,’ Aesha said wryly.

  ‘The heating is good, very good,’ Iona replied. ‘The electricity is not so good.’

  ‘No television, then, eh, Joe?’ Peter observed.

  Joe shrugged. ‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I’m going to be out taking photos with you.’

  ‘And what sort of thing do you like to photograph?’ asked Iona.

  Joe didn’t really know yet, so he said quickly, ‘Well, anything that moves, mostly.’

  ‘He’s following in his father’s footsteps,’ Peter said with a chuckle.

  ‘This trip should give you plenty of scope for that.’ Iona laughed. ‘What about you, Aesha? Whose footsteps are you following in?’

  ‘I’m creating my own unique trail,’ Aesha replied loftily.

  ‘You can say that again,’ Binti remarked. ‘It’s comprised of hairbands, make-up, shoes and sweet papers from one end of the house to the other.’

  ‘Mum!’ Aesha protested.

  Binti smiled at her. ‘What my daughter won’t tell you herself is that she’s a very talented swimmer and hopes to swim for England one day.’

  ‘What she also won’t tell you, because she doesn’t realise it herself, is that she’s very artistic,’ Peter added. ‘And Joe, I think, will wind up working with animals like his mum, however much he pretends he dislikes getting his hands dirty, on top of being an ace photographer.’

  ‘So much talent all round!’ Iona exclaimed. ‘And here we are at last. Welcome to Lazovsky. I hope we can make this trip a very special one for you.’

  Chapter 6

  The snow hadn’t reached the coastal village of Lazo. A uniform greyness clung to the painted wooden houses that lined the road, which were interspersed with faceless apartment blocks. On one side, they drove past a ferry that was unloading two cars on to a muddy landing stage. A little further on, Joe spotted an old dilapidated bus that he assumed had been abandoned, though he later saw it trundling along full of passengers. On the other side, there were a couple of shops and a café, before Iona pointed out the Museum of Nature.

  ‘The museum’s very important to us,’ Iona said. ‘We have lots of activities there to show local people the work we’re doing, what our objectives are and how they can help us. We’re especially keen to involve children, because they’re the future. We recently ran a tiger painting competition and some of the paintings were brilliant – the best ones are still on show inside. And t
here’s a fantastic butterfly collection.’

  Joe wished he’d been able to enter the competition and resolved to do his own painting while they were in Lazo. He wondered if they might display it in the museum if it was good enough. It would be better still if he could take a photograph of a tiger! If only, he thought.

  They pulled up outside a large concrete building.

  ‘This is it,’ said Iona. ‘This is where we live and work, and where you’ll be staying for some of the time.’ She warned them again that it was rather basic. ‘The towels aren’t very fluffy, and you might need to resort to head torches, which we’ll supply you with, if the electricity is playing up.’

  Joe quite liked the idea of wearing a head torch – he could imagine he was a miner – though he could tell from Aesha’s face that she wasn’t so happy. She was even less happy when they were shown to their rooms – she and Joe were in one, their parents in the other. The walls were rough, unpainted concrete, the furniture was old and rickety, and the towels were indeed threadbare.

  ‘We’ve got more fluff on our tea towels at home!’ she exclaimed. ‘How do the people who work here live like this? Why don’t they make it nicer?’

  ‘As Iona explained, all the money they’re given goes towards efforts to save the tigers,’ Binti replied. ‘I think you’ll find that the people who work here are so dedicated they scarcely notice their surroundings. And this is far better than the tents they sometimes have to sleep in in the middle of the taiga.’

  ‘What’s the taiga?’ asked Joe.

  ‘It’s a type of forest with mostly coniferous trees, like spruce and pine.’

  ‘They wouldn’t sleep there in a tent in the winter, though, would they?’ Aesha said.

  ‘Oh yes, they would,’ Binti replied. ‘One of the experts slept in a tent in the snow for two weeks, even when the temperature went down to minus twenty-five. He said he got used to it.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’ cried Aesha. ‘He must be mad!’

  ‘You should see some of the places I’ve stayed in for the sake of the perfect photo,’ said Peter. ‘I’ve waited up trees, in caves, on roofs, in the middle of a desert. I suppose that means I’m mad too.’

  ‘Yes, Dad, you are,’ said Aesha. ‘Barking.’

  ‘Woof, woof.’ He put his arm around his daughter’s shoulder. ‘You know it’s catching, don’t you?’

  ‘What about my training?’ she interjected. ‘I can’t believe it – we’re right next to the sea but I can’t jump in the water.’

  Aesha had an important competition coming up a few weeks after their return to England and was anxious about being ready for it. She had trained really hard right up until the day before they left, and although Binti had assured her that most of the other competitors would relax a little over half-term, Aesha was not convinced.

  ‘If you were Russian you might give it a go,’ her father observed.

  ‘If I were mad I might!’

  ‘It’s catching.’ Joe chuckled.

  ‘I’ve read about the people who do,’ said Binti. ‘They call themselves “morzhi?”, or “walruses”, and they jump into freezing cold lakes to welcome in the new year.’

  ‘Ha! We’re back to walruses again, Joe.’ Peter laughed.

  Joe blushed and dug his father in the ribs.

  ‘Do you think there’ll be a pool somewhere close by?’ Aesha asked.

  Binti looked doubtful. ‘I can check, but unless there’s one in the village there won’t be any way of getting you there.’

  ‘A few dogs and a sledge?’ Peter suggested.

  ‘It’s a bit of a dump, this place, isn’t it?’ Aesha was decidedly grumpy. ‘I can’t see us having much fun here.’

  Joe had a few doubts himself. From what he had seen of the towns they had driven through and the village itself, it all looked rather bleak, but he picked up on his father’s comment.

  ‘Do you think we might be able to go on a sledge?’ he asked.

  ‘This is your mother’s trip, Joe,’ Peter replied. ‘The timetable will be set by what she needs to achieve.’

  ‘And I might have a few surprises up my sleeve,’ said Binti. ‘Wait and see what tomorrow brings.’

  Chapter 7

  Joe and Aesha needn’t have worried. Iona and her team members had arranged a full programme for them.

  ‘We thought you might be bored, and we want to make sure you leave our country with some great memories,’ she said with a big smile. ‘And of course we want you to have an understanding of the work we do. It’s important that there are youngsters eager to take over from us when we’re old and decrepit.’

  While Binti met up with members of the tiger team to discuss their latest activities and results, and while Peter made plans to photograph various aspects of their work, Joe and Aesha were collected by jeep and asked if they would like to help train a group of sniffer dogs.

  ‘Yes, please!’ said Aesha immediately.

  Joe was thrilled at the idea of training the dogs, but a little bit embarrassed. After all the suspicious thoughts he had had about Artem Klopov, was he actually going to help him, or would it be someone else? At least it’ll give me a chance to make amends, he thought.

  It was only a short ride to the kennels, which backed on to a single-storey wooden building with offices. Artem Klopov greeted them with a gruff smile and a bone-crunching handshake.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said with a very heavy accent, and indicated that they should follow him.

  He led them along a narrow corridor towards a heavy door at the far end. They could hear the odd muffled bark coming from beyond it. Joe was reminded of Foggy and hoped he was being well looked after. Once they were through the door, the barking became a cacophony of excitement with each dog vying for attention. There were five of them, all black, individually penned in brick-walled kennels with wire-mesh fronts and a high gate in the middle. Artem called out something in Russian and as one they stopped barking and sat. Joe and Aesha looked at each other in amazement. Artem grinned.

  ‘Better!’ he said, in English this time.

  Joe nodded. ‘Much better,’ he agreed.

  Artem pointed to each of the dogs in turn and called out their names – Ivan, Ilya, Nika, Boris and Tanya – before producing a packet of biscuits for Joe and Aesha to feed them with.

  ‘Not Ivan,’ he said. ‘Ivan work now.’

  He opened the door to Ivan’s enclosure and ordered him out. Ivan looked up appealingly at the packet of biscuits. Aesha laughed at his eager face and fondled his ears, until Artem ordered the dog to follow him as he strode off along a further stretch of corridor. They went through another door, which opened into a big room that was empty apart from a table against one of the walls. A few seconds later, a young woman carrying several boxes and a pile of plastic cones came into the room. She put the boxes on the table and introduced herself as Nadia.

  ‘I’m a student and I’m working on the Tiger Project. I’m pleased to meet with the children of an eminent vet like Doctor Binti Brook.’

  Joe felt a tingle of pride at hearing what she thought of his mother.

  ‘We begin,’ said Artem. ‘Cones, Nadia.’ He called Ivan to heel.

  Nadia gave ten cones to Joe and asked him to put them in a large circle. Joe placed them very carefully, keen to please.

  ‘Now scat,’ said Artem.

  Joe and Aesha looked at each other in surprise. Is that it? Is that all we’re going to be allowed to do? Have we somehow upset Artem? Joe wondered.

  He began to move towards the door. Aesha was rooted to the spot, looking puzzled.

  ‘Where you go?’ Artem asked.

  Joe stopped, confused.

  ‘Here scat.’ Artem held a box out to Joe and pointed to one of the cones. ‘Put under.’ He held a second box out to Aesha and indicated another of the cones. Joe took his box and hurried to the cone. He bent down and was about to place it underneath when Nadia interrupted him.

  ‘No, Joe, the scat is in the
box,’ she said. ‘Take the lid off the box.’

  ‘What’s scat?’ Aesha asked.

  ‘Ah, you don’t know? Scat is tiger faecal matter.’ Nadia smiled, watching their blank faces. ‘Otherwise known as tiger poop.’

  Aesha promptly held the box she had been given as far away from herself as possible. ‘Yuck!’ she exclaimed.

  Joe was more curious. He slowly took the lid off his box and stared at the contents. Artem gave a deep belly laugh.

  ‘Much fur,’ he said.

  It was true. The piece of scat was hairy and quite dry. Joe quickly placed the box under the cone and asked Aesha if she wanted him to take hers. She shook her head vehemently.

  ‘I’m not a baby,’ she muttered, before opening her box distastefully and placing the scat under the designated cone.

  ‘Good,’ said Artem. ‘These now.’

  He handed out more boxes to Joe, Aesha and Nadia to position the scat wherever they wished under the remaining cones.

  ‘Is good,’ he said when they had finished. ‘Now Ivan turn.’

  He held an open box containing a scat sample under Ivan’s nose, then withdrew it, replaced the lid and put it on the table. Next he led Ivan to the middle of the circle and told him to sit. Ivan obeyed and waited there patiently while Artem walked back to the edge of the room.

  ‘Your sample the same,’ he said to Joe and Aesha, pointing to the box on the table.

  ‘The first samples you were given to place under the cones are both from the same tiger, and so is the one Ivan has just sniffed,’ Nadia helped to explain. ‘He has to find the two that are the same among the ones that come from different tigers.’

  ‘Can he really do that?’ Joe asked incredulously.

  ‘Very good nose,’ said Artem, pointing to his own nose. He called out an instruction to Ivan.