An Owl Called Star

by Helen Peters

  For Orlando and Noah

  H. P.

  For Clo

  E. S.

  “I can’t believe my parents won’t let us have a Halloween party,” said Jasmine to her best friend, Tom. “They promised! How can they just go back on their word like that?”

  It was a Thursday evening just before October half term, and they were taking Jasmine’s sheepdog, Sky, for a walk in the woods at the edge of Jasmine’s farm.

  “Did they definitely say no?” asked Tom.

  “Completely. Mum denied she’d even promised us. She said she didn’t remember anything about it and she’s far too busy. And then Dad started going on about how the house still hadn’t recovered from Manu’s birthday.”

  “But that’s not your fault,” said Tom.

  “Exactly! I wasn’t the one who spilled food colouring all over the carpet or set fire to the dolls’ house.”

  Tom shook his head in sympathy. “It’s so unfair.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of having it at yours?” asked Jasmine hopefully.

  Tom snorted. “No chance, sorry. Mum said she’s got enough to do without a load of marauding children all over the house.”

  Jasmine kicked at a pile of crunchy autumn leaves with her wellington boot, scattering twigs and nuts across the narrow path.

  The wood at the edge of Oak Tree Farm was Jasmine’s favourite place. It was especially lovely at this time of year, when the leaf-littered ground was scattered with shiny ripe conkers and little brown acorns. Fat purple sloes and gleaming red holly berries lent splashes of colour to the autumn hedgerows, and mysterious toadstools sprouted up among the mossy tree roots.

  Sky was enjoying the walk too. His feathery tail wagged happily as he trotted up the path ahead of the children, darting in and out of the woods to sniff at piles of leaves and investigate rabbit holes. Now he disappeared into a clump of trees away to their right.

  “Sky!” called Jasmine, when he didn’t reappear.

  Sky didn’t come. They carried on walking for a minute and then Jasmine called him again.

  They heard leaves rustling and twigs snapping. He was clearly having a lovely time.

  “He’s pretending to be deaf,” said Jasmine. “Let’s go and find him.”

  Away from the path, the woodland floor was a tangle of bracken and brambles. Jasmine and Tom gingerly stepped through the waist-high undergrowth, treading down the brambles and trying not to snag their jeans on thorns.

  They were close to the edge of the wood now, where the landscape opened out into fields that ran all the way to the South Downs. The sun was setting behind the hills in a blaze of red. In the wood, the light was becoming grey and shadowy.

  “I wonder if he’s in that old barn over there,” said Tom.

  There was a tumbledown barn in a field at the edge of the woods. It wasn’t part of Jasmine’s farm, but belonged to somebody else. It looked as though it had been abandoned for a hundred years. There were great gaps in the walls where the wooden planks had rotted away or were hanging off at crazy angles. The tiled roof sagged in the middle and some of the tiles had slipped off, leaving jagged holes. The walls were covered in ivy, and the ground around the barn was overgrown with nettles, brambles and scrubby bushes.

  Tom and Jasmine climbed over the fence at the edge of the wood and walked towards the barn.

  Suddenly, from somewhere overhead, came a loud, spooky, screeching sound.

  The children jumped in shock.

  “What was that?” whispered Tom.

  Jasmine gasped and pointed out into the field.

  “Look!”

  A barn owl was flying towards them, ghostly white in the twilight. It swooped silently over their heads and vanished into the shadowy trees.

  “Wow,” said Tom, when the owl was out of sight. “That was amazing.”

  “So cool,” said Jasmine. “I’ve never seen one before. Its wings didn’t make a sound, did they?”

  “It must be hunting,” said Tom. “Do you think it was the owl making that screeching sound?”

  “Yes,” said Jasmine. “I’ve heard it before, and Dad said it was a barn owl.”

  They had reached the old barn now.

  “Sky!” called Jasmine.

  There was a scuffling sound from inside, and then Sky bounded out, wagging his tail happily.

  “Good dog,” said Jasmine, ruffling his soft furry coat.

  Tom was gazing through the barn doorway. “Look at this. Have you ever been inside?”

  “No,” she said, stroking Sky’s silky ears. “It’s probably full of rats.”

  Jasmine loved all animals, but a barn full of rats wasn’t a tempting thought.

  “Come and look,” said Tom.

  Jasmine stepped through the undergrowth to join him, followed by Sky.

  The barn was completely empty. The dirt floor was covered in animal and bird droppings. Enormous rough beams held up the roof and ran across the width of the building. In the one window, Jasmine was surprised to see the glass was still intact.

  She gazed at the dim empty space, and all at once she wasn’t just seeing the inside of a dirty old barn. In her mind’s eye, she saw glowing pumpkin lanterns; decorations strung from the beams; Halloween-themed cupcakes; biscuits in the shapes of cats and owls.

  She turned to Tom, excitement bubbling up inside her.

  “Tom!” she said. “Wouldn’t this be an amazing place for a Halloween party?”

  Tom’s eyes widened.

  “It would be perfect. But it’s not our barn.”

  “So? The owner lives in London. He doesn’t care about it.”

  “But our parents will never let us.”

  “No,” said Jasmine. “They’ll never let us. So we’ll just have to have the party in secret. Won’t we?”

  “How can we have a Halloween party without anyone finding out?” said Tom.

  “We just tell everyone not to tell their parents.”

  “But won’t their parents want to know where they’re going?”

  Jasmine thought for a second. “I know! We’ll tell them all to meet at your house to go trick-or-treating. Then we’ll just walk here instead. It will be a great spooky start to Halloween, walking from your house through the woods. We can tell ghost stories on the way.”

  “What about my parents, though, when everyone turns up at my house?”

  Jasmine screwed up her mouth in thought. “Can you get them to go out? They like going to the cinema, don’t they?”

  “I could tell them I’m going to be with you for Halloween,” said Tom. “Which won’t be a lie. So then they’ll have the evening free to go out.”

  Jasmine stepped inside the barn. “We can make paper bats and spiders and hang them from the beams. It will look so good.”

  “We’ll never reach those beams,” said Tom. “And we can’t carry a ladder all the way here.”

  Jasmine thought quickly. “So we’ll tie a decoration on to each end of a long piece of string and then throw the string over the beam. We can make loads of them. And we can have fairy lights too.”

  “There’s no electricity to plug in fairy lights,” said Tom.

  Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Honestly, are you just trying to find problems? We’ve got fairy lights with batteries. Mum puts them on the mantelpiece at Christmas. And we can make cupcakes and biscuits and popcorn. It will be amazing.”

  “It will be amazing if it works,” said Tom.

  Sky ran out of the barn and started bounding across the field.

  “He’s heading home,” said Jasmine. “Shall we go? It’s nearly dark.”

  Standing in the doorway, Jasmine glimpsed something white in the brambles outside. She tutted.

  “Look,
a plastic bag. Why are people so horrible? Don’t they know animals can die from eating litter?”

  She picked her way through the undergrowth towards it. Jasmine was constantly coming home with her pockets full of other people’s rubbish. She couldn’t bear to think of an animal suffocating inside a bag, or choking on a piece of plastic they’d mistaken for food.

  As she drew closer, though, and saw the patch of white more clearly, she realised it wasn’t plastic after all.

  “Feathers! Oh, no, it’s a dead bird.”

  “Oh, that’s so sad,” said Tom.

  Jasmine made her way to the bird and crouched down.

  She gasped. “Look!”

  Tom hurried towards her. He drew in his breath.

  “A barn owl!”

  The owl lay motionless on its side amongst the dead leaves. It had a beautiful white heart-shaped face and a white chest. Its head and wings were light brown and grey, speckled with black-and-white dots. Its eyes were closed.

  “It might still be alive,” said Tom. “Let’s check.”

  Trying to avoid the thorns, they moved the brambles out of the way. Jasmine wriggled her hand through the gap and felt through the bird’s outer feathers to the soft down beneath.

  “It’s warm!” she said, her heart beating faster with excitement. “But we need to get it home quickly. I’ll wrap it in my coat.”

  “I wonder what happened to it,” said Tom. “Do you think it will be all right?”

  There was a rustling in the undergrowth as Sky ran back towards them, head down, sniffing the ground. He barged past Tom, heading straight for the owl. Tom grabbed his collar.

  “Oh, no, you don’t. Come away, Sky. Have you got his lead, Jasmine?”

  Jasmine took Sky’s lead out of her coat pocket and handed it to Tom. Then she took off her coat and spread it on the ground. Cautiously, she scooped up the bird.

  “It’s so light! It weighs practically nothing. I wonder how long it’s been here.”

  She wrapped the owl in her coat so that only its face was showing. Then she picked it up and held it close to her chest.

  “Be careful of its beak,” said Tom. “If it wakes up, it might peck you.”

  Jasmine turned the bundled-up owl around so it was facing outwards, and moved her hands further away from the beak.

  “I hope Mum’s at home,” she said, as they hurried across the darkening field.

  “Has she ever treated a barn owl?” asked Tom.

  “I don’t know. But she loves owls, so she knows a lot about them.”

  Jasmine’s mum, Nadia, was a vet, and she had helped Jasmine and Tom to look after other animals they had rescued. It was hard to imagine now, but Sky had once been desperately in need of emergency care. Jasmine had found him under a hedge as a puppy, abandoned and starving, and had nursed him back to health. She had also rescued a tiny runt piglet, an egg that had hatched into a duckling, a kitten, a lamb, two sparrow chicks, a baby goat and an otter cub. But she had never brought home an owl before.

  “What shall we call it?” she asked.

  “What about Barney?” said Tom. “Since it’s a barn owl?”

  “I think it should be something more mysterious. Something to do with night.”

  “Shadow?” suggested Tom. “Moonlight?”

  “Moonlight’s nice,” said Jasmine. “He’s pale like moonlight.”

  “Or Starlight?” said Tom, looking up at the night sky.

  “Star!” said Jasmine. “Just Star. That’s perfect.”

  She smiled at the owl. But Tom had a worried frown on his face.

  “Do you really think it’s alive?” he said. “It’s so still.”

  “It was warm,” said Jasmine. “I told you.”

  “I know, but… Well, if it had died recently, it might still be warm, mightn’t it?”

  Jasmine felt tense with anxiety, and the fear made her cross.

  “What’s the point of saying that? We just have to get home as fast as we can. I can’t walk any quicker and I’m not going to run in case I jolt the owl and injure it.”

  “I know,” said Tom. “Sorry. I was just worried.”

  “I’m worried too. But we’re doing all we can. We’ll just have to hope it’s not too late.”

  As they approached the farmyard, Jasmine saw her mum standing by the car boot, rummaging through her box of vets’ equipment.

  Jasmine hurried towards her. “You’re not going out, are you?”

  “Afraid so,” said Nadia. “I’ve got to go and see a cow at Foxheath Farm.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of this.”

  Jasmine held out the coat so her mum could see Star’s beautiful face.

  “Oh, my goodness,” said Nadia. “Where did you find a barn owl?”

  “Lying in some brambles by the wood. It hasn’t moved at all. And it’s so light, Mum.” Jasmine felt tears coming to her eyes. She blinked them away. “I think it must be starving.”

  “Jasmine,” said Nadia gently, putting her hand on her daughter’s arm. “Are you sure this owl is…?”

  “Alive? It was warm when I picked it up. But we need to be quick, don’t we? Can’t someone else go and look at the cow?”

  Mum nodded. “You’re right, we need to examine the owl straightaway.” She took her phone from her pocket. “I’ll ring David and see if he can go to Foxheath.”

  David was Nadia’s partner at the vet’s surgery. Jasmine and Tom waited anxiously while Nadia told him about the owl. They couldn’t make out his reply, but finally Nadia said, “Oh, thank you so much, David. You’re an absolute star.”

  She put the phone back in her pocket. “Right,” she said. “Let’s have a look at this owl.”

  Inside the farmhouse, Jasmine’s seventeen-year-old sister, Ella, was doing her homework at the kitchen table. As usual, she had spread her books and papers over the entire surface. Jasmine’s ginger cat, Toffee, was sitting on Ella’s lap. Her black cat, Marmite, was curled up on a chair. Manu, Jasmine’s seven-year-old brother, was sprawled on the tiled floor, taking a toy car to pieces with a screwdriver.

  Manu looked up as Jasmine, Tom and Nadia walked into the room. His eyes widened as he saw the bird wrapped in Jasmine’s coat.

  “An owl! Cool! Where did you find it?” He scrambled to his feet and peered at Star’s face. “Is it dead?”

  Jasmine turned away from him and held the owl closer. “No, but it needs peace and quiet, so don’t come near. It’s called Star.”

  “It’s so beautiful,” said Ella. “What happened to it?”

  “We don’t know yet,” said Nadia. “We’re going to examine it.”

  “I thought you were going out,” said Manu.

  “David’s going instead,” said Jasmine, as they walked into the scullery. “Make sure the cats don’t come in here.”

  Nadia shut the door behind them. Then she took Jasmine’s coat with the owl wrapped up inside it. She laid it on the worktop and opened out the coat.

  “There’s no smell,” she said, “which is a good sign. That should mean he doesn’t have an infected injury. And he’s not bleeding.”

  “How do you know it’s a boy?” asked Jasmine.

  “See how his throat and chest are pure white? Females have a pale brown throat, and their chests are spotted. Jasmine, can you hold him while I examine him?”

  “Yes, please,” said Jasmine.

  “Sorry, Tom,” said Mum, “but barn owls can do a lot of damage with their feet in particular, and if he does scratch or peck, I’d rather he injured Jasmine than you.”

  “Wow, thanks,” said Jasmine.

  Nadia smiled. “Not that you will get injured if you hold him properly. The main thing is to keep control of his feet. And put a pair of gloves on.”

  Jasmine took her gloves from her coat pockets.

  “Hold him close to your chest,” said Nadia, “with your left arm around his body, so you’re keeping his wings under cont
rol, and hold his legs with your right hand. Make sure you’ve got his feet pointing away from you, then he won’t be able to hurt you if he does start to struggle.”

  She picked up the owl and handed him to Jasmine.

  “He weighs nothing, doesn’t he?” said Jasmine. “Do you think he’s starving?”

  “We’ll check now,” said Mum. “Even healthy barn owls are surprisingly light, though. They’re mostly feathers. That’s one reason why they can fly so silently. Tom, can you grab a cloth from that drawer? If he opens his eyes and starts to struggle, lay the cloth gently over his face, and it will calm him down. Owls are calmer in the dark.”

  She ran her fingers down the centre of the bird’s chest feathers. “OK,” she said. “This bone in the middle of his chest is called the keel. It shouldn’t stick up more than a couple of millimetres from the chest muscles on either side of it. If it sticks up more than about five millimetres, it means the bird doesn’t have much chest muscle left.”

  She felt on both sides of the owl’s chest. Then she ran her finger down to the stomach.

  “The breastbone is sticking up,” she said, “and his stomach is hollow. He hasn’t eaten very recently.”

  “Poor Star,” said Tom. “What do you think happened to him?”

  “Maybe a broken bone,” said Mum. “The most common injury in owls is broken wing bones, especially if they’re young and have just left the nest.”

  “Do you think he’s young?” asked Jasmine.

  “It’s likely, but impossible to tell. He’s fully grown, which means he might be any age from twelve weeks upwards. Barn owls are fully grown at about twelve weeks, and then they leave the nest to find their own territory. That’s when most of them get injured. Often they fly low across roads and get hit by cars.”

  “It can’t have been a car,” said Jasmine, “because he wasn’t near a road.”

  “Sometimes they fly into overhead wires,” said Mum, “or into windows. They don’t realise there’s glass there, so they just fly straight into it and break a bone or knock themselves out.”