Merry Meerkat Madness

by Ian Whybrow

  “I heard what you just sang, you young dung-beetles,” he chuckled, giving them each a playful jab. “Cute… but very amusing. All that howling should give the hyenas something to think about! So, come along, then. While you’re in good voice, let’s try one of my songs. It goes like this:

  Good King Fearless once walked out

  Looking for a chickie;

  Soon the sand lay about

  Cold and damp and sticky.

  “Sing with me!” said Little Dream.

  “It will help the time go—

  Till we hear a cheery chirp

  From a daring dro-ong-go!”

  They clung to the egg and sang together at the tops of their lungs. They wanted to show the lurking leopards and the caracal cats and the lions and the cheetahs and the foxy foxes—not to mention any cackling jackals who happened to be within earshot—that meerkats were proud and loud and not to be pounced on. Overhead, stars shot across the sky like sparks from a fire and the brightest one, the one to the east, seemed to pulse like a little sun.

  “I bet that’s shining right over our new burrow,” said Uncle.

  “And on the water by the Tick-tocks’ burrow,” added Skeema.

  “I bet if we followed that star it would lead us right back to where Sprintina’s lying in a heap,” said Mimi. “How I should love to be able to take this egg to her.”

  “Yes, but we should very much like to take it home with us,” came a soft, sly voice from the darkness of the dry riverbed.

  “Step away from the nest and we might not tear you to pieces,” said another, this time from the opposite direction.

  At once the Really Mads were up and bristling. “WUP-WUP! BATTLE STATIONS! STAND BY TO REPEL BOARDERS!” cried Fearless. “THE BLACK-BACKS ARE HERE!”

  Chapter 8

  Tails up, rocking backward and forward, trembling (not with terror but with rage) all the kits joined in the mob war dance and battle-cry.

  “Bouncy-bouncy

  Boom-boom call!

  Stand-up! Tail-up!

  Make yourself tall!

  Head-butt! Head-butt!

  Strike like a snake!

  Spit-spit-spit-spit!

  Shaky-shake-shake!”

  They were surrounded by a pack of at least five Black-backs, maybe more. They could tell that just from the power of the stink that came at them from all sides. Not only that, but the sunlight of Christmas morning was just beginning to melt the darkness, which meant that the defenders could just make out their slippery black shadows—now slinking closer, now flattening themselves in the cold sand. It was only a matter of time before the jackals closed in for the kill.

  The Really Mads knew exactly what to expect from these invaders. One would rush at you, and while you were trying to fight that one off, another would sneak up and attack you from another angle. The meerkats had fought off a jackal-attack before, but on that occasion they had strong support from a friendly lion-cub and his fearsome mama and aunts. This time, they were on their own and they had very little room to maneuver. They couldn’t line up and charge. They couldn’t run for higher ground. They couldn’t retreat down a bolthole. If they made any of these moves, one of the enemy warriors would rush forward and grab the egg they were guarding!

  Fearless quickly chose the only battle-plan available. “STAND FIRM AND SHOW ’EM YOUR TEETH!” he roared. And so they did, staring into the gloom, each backed up close against the egg. They puffed out their fur and tried to look as dangerous as they possibly could, running their claws along their teeth to make them rattle.

  “SKWEE-SKWEEEE!” screamed Snap-snap, in a defiant warning.

  The time had come, Fearless felt, to rally his troops with a rousing speech. “Never in the history of meerkat conflict,” he began, his voice low and steady, “have so many big stinkers been stood up to by so few small heroes. We can expect at any moment now, the fury and might of these shadowy cowards to be unleashed upon us. And for what? For an egg. For a helpless chick. A chick whose little feathers are still wet. A chick unwarmed yet by the sun.”

  “Stop,” came a mocking voice from the darkness. “You’re breaking my heart, you are.”

  “Shhush, Dad,” came a younger voice. “I want to hear the rest of it. It’s good stuff.”

  “Ignore them, Uncle,” urged Skeema. “Carry on.”

  Fearless did just that. “Let us pledge ourselves, dear kits, dear happy few, to give our all for this egg, weak mammals though we may be. And if this brave stand proves to be our last, so be it! There’s no small burrower or mighty Upworlder who, hearing of this deed, won’t praise us for our pluck and wish they had been here to see it! Together is our watchword, Really Mads. We shall fight together to the last!”

  “SKWEEE-SKWEEE!” came Snap-snap’s death-defying cry once more.

  Then, wonder of wonders, the sound found an echo in the air. “SKWEEE-SKWEEE!”

  All heads went up toward it.

  The voice from the air came again, this time with: “BOMBS AWAY!”

  “AYEEE!” howled the leader of the Black-backs.

  There was a sound of thundering feet, then a booming shout: “Good shot, Fledgie! You splatted that one right in his yellow eye! I’ll take this next one.”

  There was a loud sound, not a thump exactly, but the satisfying whack of a three-toed foot connecting with a cowering backside. There were more such beautiful sounds to come, as one by one the big bullies were boffed and booted. The attack was so surprising, so furious, so deadly accurate, that in three or four blinks of an eyelid, the whole pack of jackals was sent… well… packing! Yi! Yi! Yi!

  And every time they heard that flying foot making contact with an enemy’s bottom, a cheer roared from the Really Mads—“Hooray! Bravo!”—because they all knew exactly the right word for the sound it made: BIFF.

  Yes, it was BIFF to the rescue, just in the nick of time… BIFF! BIFF! BIFF!

  Game over.

  Chapter 9

  After the battle, the feathered allies of our furry heroes were forced to take a breather. Fledgie had been nonstop on the wing for almost two days. As soon as the Black-backs had fled, he dropped out of the sky, landed on the branch of a well-grazed fever tree, and immediately drifted off to the land of drongo-dreams.

  Biff had been on the run for just as long (mostly in circles, as Uncle had guessed) when Fledgie had found him and led him in a straight dash back to the nest.

  All this and a lot of biffing had tired him out completely. His chest pumped in and out like a giant bullfrog’s throat. His head was spinning and his knees began to buckle. Suddenly, he was towering over the Really Mads. As they stood together, still faithfully on guard and at their post, they looked up nervously. There he was, with one enormous scaly leg plonked firmly on either side of them. They saw his whacking, blue-gray thighs begin to shiver and shake high above them.

  “Tim-berrrr!” cried Uncle. “He’s coming down!” The kits took that as the order to retreat… and scattered. They were not a moment too soon! The giant bird folded up like an accordion and nearly sat on all of them. Even as he collapsed, Biff’s ostrich-instinct led him to lay his body down to protect his last-remaining egg. With a sigh like a burst tire, he closed the lids over eyes the size of tsamma melons and dozed peacefully.

  “Phew!” breathed Uncle, dusting himself down. “Typical ostrich! Very sudden they are, you know, and bad-tempered. Not like me at all, what-what! Anyway, it looks as if the chickie’s safe and sound again.”

  “Let’s hope so,” said Skeema doubtfully.

  “Well, I wouldn’t like to be under that!” said Mimi, looking at Biff’s mountain of a body.

  “Brrrr!” said Little Dream, yawning and shaking. “I’m freezing. What shall we do now, Uncle? It’s going to be ages before daytime and Warm-up time. Shall we sniff around for a bolthole?”

  “No need for that, Dreamie,” said Fearless with a shiver. Now that the heat and excitement of the battle had died down, he himself was feelin
g the Upworld-cold. “We’ll slip in here!” And very gently, so as not to disturb Biff, he lifted up the sleeping ostrich’s wing. “Easy, now. Don’t wake him,” he whispered and, quiet as bats, he and the kits tucked themselves under it and at last they got some well-deserved rest themselves.

  Not surprisingly, being so cozy under their unusual blanket, the meerkats were not exactly eager to crawl out into the chilly Upworld when the warm rays of the sun pushed at the dark. Still, in this strange and dangerous place it was comforting to go through a regular warm-up routine.

  Tiptoeing out of Biff’s long shadow, Skeema, Mimi, and Little Dream stood in line beside Uncle and had their usual scratch and stretch. In a trance, Uncle lowered his arms and placed his paws under his portly tummy. Absent-mindedly, he hoisted his tummy toward the rising sun with a “One-two-three… HUP!”

  This never failed to make the kits giggle. They thrust out their tummies, too and lifted them up all at once with a chorus of “One-two-three… HUP!” Then they had a special treat. Fledgie fluttered down from his roosting place to join them with a drongo version of tummy-hoisting.

  “It had to happen, I suppose,” whispered Uncle with a growl. “You’ve finally turned into a meerkat, Fledgie, you young rascal! Welcome to the Really Mads! Now get that old tummy warmed up, and be quick about it! We need to start foraging and get some food inside us if we’re going to build up our strength! We’ve got some big problems to solve.”

  You don’t get solar panels on a drongo’s tummy, of course, but the ones on the rest of the Really Mads’ tummies were working well that day. In an instant, the kits were warmed up and scampering over to the base of the fever tree, where they dug away at its roots while Uncle kept a lookout. And what a Christmas-morning breakfast they had! This spot was alive with scorpions and millipedes—deee-lish! There were also plenty of colorful reptiles—a specially tender spade-snouted worm lizard for Mimi, a striped skink for Skeema, and a spotted one for Little Dream. And when it was Uncle’s turn to dig, in no time at all he uncovered one of his all-time favorites: a flap-necked chameleon.

  Fledgie took special delight in the grubs and beetles that were thrown to him and when someone disturbed a nest of six-eyed sand spiders, he thought he was back in drongo-dreamland. Gosh, those scuttlers are fast! Fledgie had to dart all over the place to catch them.

  And it was while he was flitting along, chasing one of the fattest of these leggy snacks, that he saw something dart out from a hole between some large rocks.

  He knew right away that it was the Black-backs’ den.

  He flew back as fast as he could to warn the Really Mads… and was rather surprised that Uncle didn’t sound the alarm. “After the kicking they got from Biff,” Uncle said, “my guess is that they’ve high-tailed out of this territory for a while. They’ll be licking their wounds and trying their luck somewhere far, far away.”

  “Don’t you think it would be wise to check?” asked Skeema.

  “Impudence!” cried Uncle. “Do my job for me, would you? I know what’s wise, what-what!”

  “Sorry, Uncle,” said Skeema, rolling on his back to show he meant it. “But I was rather hoping you’d let me go scouting with Fledgie and make sure the Black-backs aren’t getting ready for another attack. We’ll be ever so careful.”

  “I see. Harrrumph! Right. Apology accepted. Off you go, then—and don’t get caught,” muttered Uncle, secretly pleased by his nephew’s eagerness to keep one step ahead of the enemy.

  So Skeema and Fledgie stealthily made their way to the entrance hole and peered into the darkness. They strained their ears for any sound, but heard none. “Pooh, what a whiff!” whispered Skeema. “Now, what’s the best way to check whether there’s anybody in here?”

  “We’ll give them a howl, matey,” chirped Fledgie. “Watch my beak now and I’ll show you how it’s done. Ready?”

  Skeema crouched, ready to run for his life at the first sign of trouble, and watched as Fledgie threw back his head and made a sound exactly like a jackal calling to his friends.

  “Woooo-ee-ee-ee! Whee-ahhh!” he howled. “Go on, you try it, matey!”

  Skeema lifted his chin, opened his throat and went for it. “Wheee-uhhh, whip-whip!”

  They cocked their ears and waited, hearts pounding.

  No reply. Nothing.

  “Let’s go for it, then,” said Skeema. “You keep watch at the entrance here while I check out the den.”

  Down the well-trodden passageway he scampered, scrunching up his face at the smell. He was expecting a long tunnel, but he realized as he began stepping on eggshells that after only a few steps he had reached the wide main chamber. It was not completely dark in here, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw that there was no hope for Biff’s chicks. The jackals must have gobbled all of them.

  As he turned to leave, something glimmered beyond the shattered eggshells. He moved toward it, reaching for it with his paw. And then he knew. It was the little tin Vroom-vroom that he had last seen growing like fruit from the tree by the Tick-tocks’ burrow!

  He scrabbled around and found, tucked into corners, heaps of the sparkling climbers and creepers (what we would call tinsel and silvery ribbons and a string of lights) that they had seen dressing the Tick-tock family tree! Fledgie had told him about jackals being like crows—they enjoy collecting anything shiny—and of course that is just what this stuff was!

  He continued searching and found a golden star covered with glass gems of many colors. More of the fruit from the tree turned up—a water gun and a pair of binoculars and a wind-up radio… all sorts of shiny little things that Blah-blah cubs like to play with… oh, and a doll in a pink, sparkly dress. Curled in one dark corner he found what he thought might be a snake. But when he grabbed it by the neck to shake the life out of it, it cried out: jing-jing-jing-a-ling! He dropped it, terrified, and sprang back, growling. He had never heard a sound like that… and yet… Could it be? Was it the sound that Uncle said he heard in this same season long ago? Hadn’t he told a tall story about a Blah-blah in a red skin being dragged along by a donkey that went jing-jing?

  He dashed back out into the sunlit Upworld to tell Fledgie what he had discovered, and then they hurried off to show his treasures to the others.

  So when Biff at last woke up, it was to the sound of Fledgie’s excited “Chip-chip! Chirro-kee-chirro-kee!”

  His big eyes flew open and his neck stretched out to see a fork-tailed drongo and a line of little meerkats gazing up at him with their arms full of strange, glittering things.

  “BREAKFAST!” Biff boomed.

  The Really Mads jumped back, thinking he might mean them, but he apparently had his eye on the lights that Uncle was holding. Biff made a sudden grab for them and only let go because Fledgie managed to mimic the warbling trill of an ostrich chick.

  That did the trick all right. Suddenly Biff was up and dancing, his great black and white wings spread. He stopped and peered closely at the egg he had been sitting on for so long. It was still just lying there, warm and snugly wrapped in feathers. But the shell was unbroken and there wasn’t a peep from inside it.

  “Oh, BLOW!” boomed Biff, miserably disappointed and obviously in a temper. “BLAST AND BLATHER! I must have been hearing things! I was hoping he would hatch in the night. But look! He hasn’t even started to break out! He’s my only hope, the last of all my promising little ones.” His proud neck drooped. “He’s getting weaker all the time. He needs a mother!” he sighed. “But what am I going to do? All my wives were chased off by cheetahs! I shall never see any of them again.”

  “I say, look here!” said Uncle. “I think we might be able to help you there.”

  “YOU? How could a tiny little guy like you possibly help?” demanded Biff, pushing his enormous beak alarmingly close to Fearless.

  “Sprintina!” announced Fearless, looking him right in the eye. “We know where she is. We could take you to her.”

  “Sprintina?” echoed Biff. “My
favorite wife! I thought I’d lost her forever! Where is she? Tell me! TELL ME!”

  “East of here,” said Little Dream softly, trying to calm him. “Did you notice that very bright star in the night? She’s over that way.”

  “ARRRGH!” exclaimed Biff and lunged forward.

  “Yikes!” squealed the kits and hopped out of the way like tree frogs. Only Uncle held his ground without so much as flinching. He watched Biff shovel up a huge beakful of pebbles. “Mmmya mmmmyooo mmmmeev mmmyegg!” he mumbled.

  “I can’t understand you if you talk with your mouth full,” said Mimi.

  It was rather foolish of her to take this attitude when she might easily be the next mouthful, but Biff apologized. “Quite right!” he agreed as he swallowed, everyone watching in horror as they saw the shape of the pebbles slide all the way down his throat. “Manners. Forgive me.

  I’M UPSET! I have to take these for my digestion you know, and I haven’t eaten properly for ages. I was trying to say that I’m in a mess. I don’t know what to do.

  My chick won’t hatch because he’s pining for his mother and I miss her, too. But we’re here, and Sprintina’s goodness knows where. Meanwhile our egg needs somebody sitting on it all the time. IT’S IMPOSSIBLE! It’s hopeless.”

  “Excuse me,” said Skeema. For a while now he had been gazing at the powdery, green bark of a bough from the fever tree with two empty bird’s nests still clinging to it. It was lying in the sand nearby, having been torn down and left by some careless hungry elephant.

  “What is it?” asked Uncle.

  “A plan,” answered Skeema. “I’ve just thought of one.”

  Chapter 10