Hide! The Tiger's Mouth is Open Wide!
Page 5
‘Yeah, course,’ said Tom. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Well, they haven’t got any teeth, have they?’ Sophie said.
Tom stopped hopping for a couple of seconds. Then he started again.
‘Yeah, but they can talk,’ said Tom. ‘There’s only one thing better than an animal with teeth and that’s an animal that can talk.’
He was skipping around the room now.
‘I’m going to teach it to say, “Tom is brilliant” and “Tom’s the best” and “There’s Smelly Sophie.”’
Sophie and Mrs Nightingale watched Tom as he kept hopping around and muttering about all the things that we was going to teach the macaw to say.
‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,’ Mrs Nightingale said to Sophie.
‘At least he’s not going on about teeth any more,’ Sophie said.
Mrs Nightingale and Sophie grinned at each other. Tom looked across and grinned too.
‘It’s funny,’ said Mrs Nightingale, ‘animals use their teeth to bite, chew, carry, dig and a hundred different other things. But that’s not the best thing you can do with them. Not in my opinion.’
‘So what is the best thing you can do with your teeth?’ Tom asked, stopping for a moment.
‘Smile,’ said Mrs Nightingale, as her grin turned into a burst of laughter.
Zoological Society of London
ZSL London Zoo is a very famous part of the
Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
For almost two hundred years, we have been
working tirelessly to provide hope and a
home to thousands of animals.
And it’s not just the animals at ZSL’s Zoos in
London and Whipsnade that we are caring for.
Our conservationists are working in more than
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But all of this wouldn’t be possible without your help.
As a charity we rely entirely on the generosity of
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By buying this book, you have made an essential
contribution to help protect animals.
Thank you.
Find out more at zsl.org
Chapter 1
Tom and Sophie Nightingale were on their way back from the cinema with their grandad. They had all been to see AstroKid v The Man-Eating Martians in 3D and were talking about the amazing special effects. They had just stepped on to the towpath that led down to the marina where they all lived, when every light in the area went out.
The lamp posts along the canal flickered and died, the houseboats in the marina were thrown into darkness and the houses along the edge of Regent’s Park were suddenly swallowed up by the night.
‘It’s the man-eating Martians!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘They must be here!’
‘Don’t be daft, Tom,’ replied his big sister, Sophie. ‘It’s just a power cut.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Tom wailed. ‘How are we going to fight the Martians when we can’t even see them?’
‘It’ll be OK, Tom,’ Grandad replied, clapping Tom on the back and making him jump. ‘We just have to use our other senses, that’s all.’
‘What do you mean, “our other senses”?’ Tom asked.
‘Our sense of hearing, our sense of touch,’ said Grandad. ‘Millions of creatures wake up at night. Bats, owls, hedgehogs, badgers . . . and they get around just fine.’
‘How’s hearing going to help?’ Tom asked. ‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘Course you can,’ said Grandad. ‘Just listen.’ He tapped on the path with his walking stick. ‘Hear that?’
‘It sounds like concrete,’ said Tom.
‘Exactly. So we know we’re on the path. You try.’
He reached for Tom’s arm in the darkness and placed his walking stick in his grandson’s hand.
Tom began to tap the path and move slowly forward.
After a few seconds, he exclaimed, ‘I can do it!’
At the same time, Sophie said, ‘My eyes are beginning to adjust. I think I can see our barge.’ She reached out with one arm. ‘Yes, I can feel the railings by our section of the towpath.’
‘That’s the idea,’ Grandad said. He took a deep breath. ‘And I can smell the ivy that grows along the bank.’
They all moved towards the side of the marina where the houseboats were moored.
Tom and Sophie lived with their parents on a barge called the Jessica Rose but generally known as The Ark. If it hadn’t been for the power cut, it would have been possible to see all the animals painted on the sides of the boat. The surrounding water had been worked into the design too, so there were hippos wallowing in it, penguins diving into it, elephants drinking from it and flamingos wading in it.
A few metres further along from The Ark, the next dark shape was Grandad’s houseboat, the Molly Magee.
Tom gave Grandad his walking stick back and said, ‘I think I can do this last bit.’ Then he felt for the edge of The Ark with his foot and launched himself into the air.
‘Tom!’ Sophie exclaimed.
‘What?’ replied the voice of Tom in the darkness. ‘It’s fine. I’m totally used to the dark now. Come on – the door’s down here.’
At that moment, the edge of the houseboat door glowed and opened. Mrs Nightingale was standing there, holding a candle.
‘Hello, you three,’ she said.
Tom and Sophie walked carefully down the steps.
‘I’m going to check on my place,’ said Grandad. ‘See you in a bit.’
‘Bye, Grandad,’ said Tom.
‘Thanks for taking us to the cinema,’ added Sophie.
As Tom and Sophie entered the living room, Rex, the family terrier, ran up to greet them, sniffing and snuffling at Tom’s shoes and trousers.
Sophie gave Rex a quick pat and then hurried to check on her ferret and her rats. She returned after a few seconds with a rat on her shoulder. ‘They’re all fine, especially Eric. I think rats must quite like the dark.’
In the meantime, Mrs Nightingale was rummaging in the cupboard under the sink, looking for more candles.
‘Where’s Dad?’ Tom asked.
‘Your father is out on the bank, trying to get our emergency generator to work.’ She emerged from the cupboard with a pair of candles and a box of matches. ‘Last time he went near it, it caught fire twice and burnt off one of his eyebrows.’
‘Oh, OK,’ said Tom. ‘What are those?’
He was pointing at a helmet with a pair of binoculars strapped to it.
‘They’re night vision goggles,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘I found them at the back of our wardrobe. I thought they might help your father fix the generator but naturally he left them behind.’
‘Brilliant!’ exclaimed Tom. He grabbed the helmet and slid it on to his head, fiddling with the chinstrap.
‘You’d better not break them before I’ve had a go,’ Sophie said.
Tom was squinting through the binoculars.
‘You can see everything!’ he exclaimed. ‘And it turns everyone into a Martian. Rex and Eric have gone bright green. But, you know, that’s kind of cool as well.’
He swung around, narrowly avoiding whacking Sophie with the binoculars.
‘Mum, Grandad was talking about animals that wake up at night,’ Tom said. ‘Is this how they see?’
‘In some cases,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘What happens is, those goggles magnify all the available light. There’s infrared light coming from the other side of the canal out there, but it’s too dim for us to see just with our eyes. But when you put those goggles on, they take all those tiny points of light and make them much, much brighter.’
‘So that’s what nocturnal animals do?’ Tom asked.
‘Some of them,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘Take owls, for instance. Their eyes are huge – they take up most of their skull. In fact, their eyes are so big that they can’t even move them. That’s why they have to
twist their heads around.’
‘Wow,’ said Tom.
‘In those huge eyes,’ Mrs Nightingale went on, ‘they have these amazing cells that can pick up the tiniest dots of light. We have them too, but they have ten times as many – which means they can see a hundred times better than us at night.’
‘Wow,’ said Tom again. ‘And is everything green for them as well?’
‘No, that’s just those goggles,’ said his mum with a smile.
‘It must be my turn now,’ complained Sophie.
Mrs Nightingale nodded. ‘Give them to your sister, Tom.’
Tom groaned and took the helmet off.
Sophie handed Eric to her mother and fastened the helmet chinstrap. Mrs Nightingale returned the rat to his cage and then came back to the living room.
Tom had been thinking.
‘I wish I was a nocturnal animal,’ he said.
‘Hang on,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘Not all nocturnal animals have adapted like owls. Think about bats or moles. Their vision has got worse, not better. Mind you, their other senses have developed to compensate.’
‘Oh yeah, Grandad said that,’ Tom said.
‘Moles are my favourite,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘They have an amazing sense of touch. They can sense the tiniest vibration in the soil around them.’
‘Cool,’ said Tom. ‘Being a human is rubbish at night-time, that’s for sure.’
‘Mum, look, over there!’ Sophie said, pointing at the window and squinting through the goggles at the other side of the canal.
‘We can’t see anything, can we?’ Tom said, rolling his eyes.
Sophie pulled off the helmet and handed it to her mother.
‘Something’s fallen in the canal and it can’t get out,’ Sophie said. ‘It looks like a puppy.’
Mrs Nightingale looked through the binoculars. She saw a small mammal, scrabbling at the sides of the canal, desperate to find a foothold in the brickwork.
‘It’s a young fox,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘It must have misjudged a jump. Foxes are good swimmers, but it looks like this one’s struggling.’
‘We’ve got to help it,’ said Sophie.
‘Sometimes it’s best not to interfere with nature, Sophie,’ said Mrs Nightingale.
‘But that’s your job, isn’t it?’ Sophie protested. ‘Vets interfere with nature all the time.’
‘Hmm,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘You do have a point.’
‘Cool, let’s go,’ said Tom. ‘It’s got to be better than staying here in the pitch black waiting for the telly to work. Besides, we practised moving around in the dark with Grandad and I was brilliant at it.’
Sophie had already put her coat on and was standing by the door. Mrs Nightingale blew out the candles on the table. She took a pair of torches out of a kitchen drawer and put one in her pocket. She gave the other to Sophie.
Tom had picked up the night vision goggles and was strapping them on.
‘What are you doing, Tom?’ Mrs Nightingale asked.
‘They’ll help us to see the fox,’ said Tom.
Mrs Nightingale thought for a moment. ‘Well, those goggles belong to the zoo, so you have to be very careful.’
‘Course,’ said Tom, and walked out of the door, banging the top of the helmet on the frame and knocking a pot plant off a window ledge with the binoculars.
Mrs Nightingale picked up the pieces with a sigh and ordered Rex into his basket.
Then the three of them stepped on to the towpath.
By Adam Frost
Stop! There’s a Snake in Your Suitcase!
Run! The Elephant Weighs a Ton!
Catch that Bat!
Hide! The Tiger’s Mouth is Open Wide!
All of the animal facts in this story are true.
Everything else is fiction. Any connection
to any events that have taken place in
London Zoo is purely coincidental.
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in July 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
This electronic edition published in July 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Manufactured and supplied under licence from the Zoological Society of London
Copyright © Adam Frost 2013
Illustrations copyright © Mark Chambers 2013
The moral right of the author and illustrator have been asserted
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4088-2962-2 (e-book)
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