Alice's Farm

by Maryrose Wood

  “Chute!” Marie yelled, in a warning tone. Foxy’s energetic scratching had managed to undo the front strap of the yellow vest. It was short work for the dog to wriggle out of it completely. She gnawed a few holes in the vest, for fun. She gave herself a happy shake that undulated from her wet black nose to the tip of her curled-up tail.

  “Au naturel is best after all, come to think of it,” Foxy said, fluffing herself. “Much more comfortable. Anyway, a coat this attractive ought not to be concealed. The thickness! The softness! And this glorious Shiba color, ooh la la! Some call it orange, but I think it’s more of a burnt umber. Either way I’m a work of art, don’t you agree?”

  “Mom!” Carl bellowed, without getting up. “Foxy took off her yellow thing!”

  Sally couldn’t hear him, as she had the blender running. Unbeknownst to Marie, Sally was planning to mix pureed, home-cooked organic vegetables into the dinner applesauce. It was a secret plan, and it’s why she’d sent the kids out of the kitchen for a few minutes.

  Foxy seized the torn yellow vest in her mouth and ran with it, waving it like a flag. “Who wants a golden parachute?” she said, though her woofs were muffled. Marie was in stitches. “Who wants a golden parachute?”

  “Me, me!” the baby said, spreading her arms.

  Tik tik tik tik tik!

  It was a whistling, high-pitched call, coming from the sky.

  Marie and Foxy looked up. Even Carl looked up. High above, a bird circled. It was not your everyday bird. It was enormous, for one thing, although it was hard to tell exactly how big it was from the ground. It hardly moved its wings at all, just floated in the air like one of those balsa wood glider planes Carl had built from a kit once. With each lazy circle, the bird descended.

  The lower it got, the bigger it looked.

  “Tik tik tik tik tik!” the bird whistled again. It landed on the post and unfolded its wings. Carl literally fell out of his chair as he scrambled to get away, dragging Marie’s bouncy seat with him.

  From wingtip to outstretched wingtip was easily seven feet. The bird’s body and wing feathers were blackish brown, but its head and neck were snowy white, and so was its blunt-edged tail. Its feet were as yellow as the torn vest dangling from Foxy’s mouth, with black, curved claws that were each the length of Carl’s whole hand.

  Its beak was yellow, too, with a hooked tip that looked needle sharp. Its human-sized eyes were golden. Around one ankle, it wore a bracelet of white plastic, pulled very snug.

  It was the most terrifying animal Carl had ever seen outside of a zoo. Yet there was something familiar about it. Maybe he’d seen one of its kind before somewhere, maybe in a book, or at the Natural History Museum. But what was it?

  Then he figured it out.

  “Mom!” he yelled. He grabbed Marie and ran for the house, the baby kicking in his arms. “There’s a pterodactyl in the backyard! It’s going to eat Foxy! Help, help!”

  * * *

  Foxy and the newcomer watched the humans disappear into the house.

  “I apologize for the behavior of my boy,” Foxy said, gazing up at the winged visitor. “You’d think he’d never seen a bird before, although you’re quite a grand bird, if I may say so. He’s more used to pigeons. Why, I bet you eat a dozen pigeons a day, for snacks!”

  “I prefer fish, actually. I’m John,” the bird said. “John Glenn. American bald eagle, genus Haliaeetus, species leucocephalus. It’s an unusual name for a bird, I know. But I’ve had an unusual life. I was named after a famous human.”

  “Pish-posh! I think it’s a fine name. I’m Foxy, named after a fox. Not a famous fox. Just a fox in general, due to the attractive resemblance.” Foxy grinned and wagged her tail, as it always pleased her to think of how foxlike she was. “Do you resemble your famous human?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve only seen pictures. He was bald, but I’m not; that’s a misnomer.” The eagle tipped his great white head downward, to show Foxy. “I have plenty of white feathers on my head. See?”

  “I see that, yes. Abundantly feathered; quite thick.” Foxy panted with friendliness. “Well, aren’t we a pair, John Glenn! A bald eagle who’s not bald, and a dog named after a fox.”

  “You’re tied up,” John Glenn said. “Would you like to run free?”

  The dog’s tail rocked back and forth twice before she stilled it. “I would adore nothing better, but at the moment, my leash is firmly attached to this post.” She shook herself and tugged, but the collar held fast. “Funny; being on a leash never bothered me much before, but just yesterday I had a brief taste of the alternative. I must say, I rather liked it.”

  “I, too, have been tied up,” John Glenn said darkly. “It saddens me to see you suffer the same fate. May I be of assistance?”

  “You mean, unbuckle my collar? With those claws? No, thank you, I fear that’s far too much trouble…” Making friends with the giant bird was one thing, yet Foxy had no desire for that terrifying beak or those curved, brutal claws to get anywhere near her throat.

  But there was no time to object. Pushing off with his strong legs, his great wings half open, John Glenn floated off the post and landed smoothly on the ground right next to Foxy, who couldn’t help but shrink back in fear. The bird was easily twice Foxy’s height.

  “Hold still, now,” John Glenn commanded. He stretched out his thick neck and drew the razor tip of his beak across the dog’s collar. One stroke was enough. The collar fell to the ground, sliced cleanly in two.

  “My word, that is sharp!” Foxy exclaimed. “Thank heavens your aim is true.”

  “We eagles,” John Glenn said modestly, “are known for our keen eyesight.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Foxy trotted in a circle, amazed. “And look, I’m completely unfettered! No more vest or leash or collar, no more ceaseless jingle-jangle of those annoying metal tags. How marvelous! John Glenn, I can’t thank you enough. If I can ever be of service to you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  The eagle lifted onto his toes. His wings began to unfurl.

  “I won’t,” said John Glenn. “I hope you enjoy being loose. Let freedom ring! That’s what my scientists always say to me, when they set me loose.”

  The powerful wings spread wide and threw their shadow across the ground where Foxy stood.

  “Your scientists? What on earth does that mean?” Foxy’s tail drooped in confusion. “Wait, friend bird! Scientists—does that mean you’re a robot? It’s all right if you are; Carl has one in his room already and we get along fine. John Glenn! John Glenn!”

  But the eagle had already returned to the sky.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The evidence is examined.

  Farmer Thistle and Farmer Alice, as they immediately took to calling each other, zigzagged around the forest’s edge until it was dark. They did it again the next morning during the breakfast graze, announcing their new venture to every cottontail they met.

  Nearly all made the same reply that Lester had, at first: “Rabbits helping farmers! Rabbits becoming farmers? Are you out of your cottontail minds? Don’t you know that farmers and rabbits aren’t friends, have never been friends, and never will be friends?”

  But the two kits wouldn’t let their long ears hear no for an answer. Anything was better than the Mauler, they argued. Anyway, the new farmers were their neighbors, geographically speaking, and you don’t have to see perfectly eye to eye with your neighbors to act neighborly toward them. That was just plain common sense in the valley between the hills. Matters relating to the food chain and who-eats-whom aside, what was good for one species was generally good for all. “One flood washes away all burrows,” as the old rabbit proverb goes, “and one sun dries all the rain.”

  Alice and Thistle had to do a great deal of patient explaining to hop over all those nopes, can’ts, and nevers, but they had faith in the common sense of cottontails and didn’t give up. Before the morning sun had risen past the treetops, they’d managed to get not all, but a good portion of the
warren to agree that this farmer-rabbit business was maybe worth a try.

  “Good luck, then,” the other cottontails would remark as they turned back to their grazing, napping, cavorting, pellet-passing, and litter-making. “Let us know how it all turns out!” Which was their way of saying they’d gladly mind their own business about Alice and Thistle tending the farm, as long as they didn’t have to get their own paws dirty with the actual doing of it.

  This rankled Thistle, but Alice would simply reply, “Thanks, and we surely will, but there’s just one more thing”—at which point she’d ask each rabbit to solemnly swear not to raid the garden that she and Thistle would work so hard to grow. This promise wasn’t hard to obtain, since by this time everyone had heard that a drool-encrusted, tail-waggling menace of a dog now prowled those fertile premises! All the radishes in the world wouldn’t tempt them to get within snapping distance of those vicious, rabbit-hungry jaws.

  Now, Foxy was undeniably prone to tail-waggling, but if anyone at Prune Street Farm was drool-encrusted, it was Marie. Still, Alice and Thistle saw no need to correct the other rabbits’ misapprehensions about Foxy. It seemed that even the idea of a dog on the farm could prove useful, once there was a vegetable garden to protect.

  Isn’t that something? Already the two young ’uns were starting to think like farmers, and they hadn’t yet planted a seed.

  * * *

  Speaking of seeds: Getting hold of good seeds is the first order of business for any farmer. Cottontails don’t gather or save seeds like some other animals do, so Alice and Thistle had to ask around. Who in the valley might have seeds to spare?

  The squirrels loved to hoard food and would have been willing to help, but by spring they’d already eaten their winter stores. Even if they hadn’t, acorns weren’t the right kind of seeds for a vegetable garden. Acorns have one job and one job only, and that’s to sprout into oak trees; no amount of tender care would persuade them to do otherwise.

  “We need radish seeds, spinach seeds, and carrot seeds, to start,” Alice explained to a blue jay. Most birds were seed eaters and experts on the subject, but they ate what they found and didn’t save any. However, telling a blue jay was the quickest way to spread any kind of news in the valley. All the small animals gossiped among themselves, but once the blue jays knew something, everyone knew, for no bird loves to chatter more than a jay.

  “And Swiss chard!” Thistle added. Lester had made them promise to find some.

  “I’ll do what I can, caw!” said the jay, and flew off.

  It wasn’t long before a small diplomatic envoy of chipmunks appeared at Split Rock, asking for Alice. Chipmunks are known for being great seed savers, so Alice and Thistle dropped what they were doing (which was napping, as they’d had a very busy morning already) and went to meet their visitors.

  There were five of them lined up in a row, very formal looking, with their neatly striped flanks and wee front paws held up entreatingly near their mouths.

  “It has come to our attention,” said the chipmunk leader, “that you need seeds.”

  “That’s right, we do,” Alice said, flattening herself to the ground. The little fellow was barely the size of her head. “Do you have any?”

  “Of course we have seeds,” he retorted, his high voice full of scorn. “What do you think we are? Rabbits?”

  “Apologies,” Alice said quickly. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

  “They’re our seeds!” another chipmunk said, his plump cheeks atremble.

  “If you need seeds now, you should have gathered and saved them in autumn, before winter came,” the leader scolded. All five chipmunks wrung their paws in agreement.

  Alice was flummoxed, but Thistle was nearer the chipmunks’ size and better understood the impulse of the tiny to act bigger than they are. “We didn’t gather any seeds in autumn,” he explained gently, “because we weren’t born yet.”

  The chipmunks laughed, a combination of high-pitched chirps and low-pitched chucks. “Chip-chuck, chip-chuck!” the leader chortled. “Since when do rabbits eat seeds, anyway? And in springtime, too! You’ve plenty of good grass and clover now.”

  “These are not eating seeds. They’re planting seeds. We’re farmer-rabbits now, and we intend to plant a vegetable garden down by the farmhouse.” Alice did her best to sound nonchalant, as if rabbits did such things every day. “We don’t need many seeds. Just enough to plant our first crops. Might you have just a few, to share?”

  “We eats our seeds! We needs our seeds,” the other chipmunks chimed in, breaking ranks and speaking over one another. “No sharing!”

  “Ch-ch-ch!” the head chipmunk scolded, before turning back to Alice. “Our seeds are our business. We heard about your deal with the other rabbits, and we came to ask you this: Does this mean that we too will be expected to leave your ‘garden’ alone?”

  “Even in autumn?” asked one chipmunk.

  “Even the seeds?” asked another, nearly frantic.

  They all looked gravely concerned. Chipmunks work to the point of obsession to fill their underground pantries in autumn. The seeds and nuts they save are what keep them alive during the cold, snow-blanketed days of winter, so you can see why the little striped creatures were so anxious about the idea of any seeds being off-limits.

  “Actually, we were hoping you wouldn’t leave the garden completely alone,” Alice said, for their worried faces had given her an idea. “By harvest-time, we’ll have so many seeds we’ll need help gathering them all up! And no one’s better at seed gathering than chipmunks.” The local sparrows might have argued otherwise, as they were great seed gatherers, too, but Alice hoped to flatter her stylish little visitors. “Of course, you can keep what you gather.”

  Ten inflatable chipmunk cheeks puffed greedily at the thought.

  “That we can surely help you with,” the leader said.

  “The thing is,” Alice went on, “we would need just a few of your saved seeds now, to get the garden started. Otherwise there won’t be a harvest- time. Assuming you’ve got the right kinds of seeds, of course.”

  She threw Thistle a meaningful look.

  “Oh, naturally! They have to be the right kinds of seeds, or the deal’s off,” he said, full of bravado. “You don’t happen to have any vegetable seeds, do you?”

  The chipmunks consulted among themselves, for they were proud of being organized, and their storehouse was as well-ordered as a library. One of them finally spoke. “We have carrots, lettuce, basil, zucchini, spinach, three kinds of tomatoes, string beans, green peas, bell peppers, garlic chives, and radishes. And pumpkin.”

  “Wow! Where’d you get all those?” Thistle asked, impressed.

  They all laughed, chip-chuck, chip-chuck. “The lady-human with the green tractor plants a vegetable garden every year,” the chipmunk leader said. “She plants it twice, I mean! We dig it all up the first time.” He paused. “We can still raid her garden, can’t we?”

  “I don’t see why not. Her garden is no concern of ours,” Alice said (and she was mistaken in this, but she was new to farming and still had a lot to learn). “Those seeds will do. Bring us enough to plant our garden and, come fall, you’ll get back ten times as many seeds in return.”

  “A hundred times as many!” exclaimed Thistle, for rabbits are good at multiplying. The chipmunks looked confused.

  “It’ll be as much as your cheeks can carry,” Alice assured them.

  That was all the chipmunks needed to hear. After promising to deliver the seeds to the garden that very evening after dark, they bowed their neatly striped bodies all at once—they really were quite dapper looking—and took their leave.

  Alice couldn’t have been more pleased, and Thistle was already counting radishes in his mind. What tricky, clever farmer-rabbits they were, convincing those hotheaded little rodents to go into business with them! Tonight they’d make their first trip to the garden to plant the seeds the chipmunks brought. With a little bit of sun, rain, and time, the
garden would be as good as grown.

  Wouldn’t the farmer-people be surprised!

  * * *

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this, kid, don’t worry.” Farmer Janis sounded like one of those detectives on TV who talk fast and never smile. “I’ll need a pair of chopsticks.”

  That Foxy had run off for a second time would have been more of an annoyance than a catastrophe, if not for the terrible evidence found at the site of the dog’s disappearance. Carl had burst into the kitchen yelling about pterodactyls and wouldn’t stop until Sally shut off the blender and agreed to come outside and see for herself. In Carl’s mind the bird monster had grown to Godzilla-like proportions, and it got bigger and meaner each time he described it.

  “It wasn’t a pterodactyl, honey. It couldn’t have been.”

  “But it had claws! Huge claws! Bigger than Marie’s head!”

  From Sally’s hip, Marie let out a wail of displeasure.

  “It’s all right, cutie.” Sally switched the baby to the other side as she walked. “Anyway, dinosaurs are extinct, Carl.”

  “Your statement is false,” Carl retorted. They were nearly at the scene of the crime. “What about the living dinosaurs that are birds? That’s what they said in the movie.”

  “Do you mean the movie at the Natural History Museum?”

  “Yes. But don’t start talking about what’s-her-name, please.”

  The Natural History Museum’s movie about how birds were living dinosaurs was narrated by an actor named Meryl Streep, who happened to be Sally’s favorite—so much so that Sally had gushed about how great Meryl Streep was every single time Carl had seen the film. He’d seen it a lot, thanks to family outings, the school field trips Sally chaperoned, and the many visiting friends and relatives they’d taken to the museum over the years. Poor Carl had already heard more about the genius what’s-her-name than was strictly normal for a boy his age. Alas, it was about to happen again.

  “When Meryl Streep said that birds were living dinosaurs, she meant that today’s birds are descended from dinosaurs.” Sally spoke as calmly yet expressively as Meryl Streep would have. “She didn’t mean that pterodactyls are going to land in the backyard and steal your dog.”