by Dave Corrick
Chapter 6
Two Years Later. The tunnel is Discussed.
Two years have passed since the day of the attack by Al Spider.
Over the summers of those two years, the insect community along the stream bank has prospered.
Virgil Blue has flown many tourists up to the hills to the waterfall and caves for day trips and overnight stays. In fact it had been so successful for Virgil that he partnered with another dragon fly named Virginia! They were married a couple of months ago and as a sideline may start up an aircraft factory!
Virgil and Virginia have both worked very hard to make their air transport service the success it is today.
Louie at the Factory has become a lot busier too. He has had to take on additional staff to cope with extra demand for his services.
The Ten Ants have taken on a more supervisory role. Ten worker bees have been employed. In effect each of the Ten Ants runs a working bee!
The worker bees have speeded up the process for Louie and the Ten Ants quite considerably. It means that after washing and cleaning, clients can now be blow dried by the beating wings of the bees. Well-done Louie!
To help Louie in the office, doing time sheets and other clerical tasks Louie has employed a bee of the bumble variety (same as Louie) named Lulu. Lulu also helps Louie with some Reserve Bank duties at times when Arnold is off sick.
Lulu came to Louie a year or so ago after she had lost her family in a scrub fire some distance up the stream towards the hills. It was all very sad. Lulu had appealed to Louie for a job because of her circumstances, and being quite an attractive bee she secretly appealed to Louie as well. Yes deep down Louie was very fond of Lulu.
However Louie, wouldn’t admit to himself that he had employed her because she was an attractive bee, goodness me no. It was purely that Lulu was good at bookkeeping and as Louie was always losing the books, it was very appropriate to employ someone who could actually keep them and not lose them.
It was about 10.00 a.m. in Louie’s office; Louie had just brought Lulu a cup of tea and some honey and dandelion seed muffins. You would think it would be the other way around that Lulu brought the tea and muffins in for Louie; however Lulu was doing some important work and Louie thought that Lulu shouldn’t be disturbed, hmmmm!
Lulu had asked if she could run over a couple of things to do with Louie’s book keeping. By the state of the books one might have thought they had been ‘run over’ already. Louie was about to sit down with Lulu when his smell phone rang, It was Pearl Baker-Moth.
‘Hi Louie’, said Pearl. ‘Do you feel like a bite to eat down at the Nest Café? I would just like to discuss an issue that we should probably address’.
This suited Louie as Lulu had eaten all the honey and dandelion seed muffins anyway.
‘Right Pearl’, said Louie ‘I will leave now and call into your place then we can go on together’.
Louie explained to Lulu that he had to go and see Pearl Baker-Moth and asked if they could leave the stuff to run over to perhaps this afternoon.
‘Oooo’ said Lulu. ‘Pearl Baker-Moth - must be important’. By the ‘oooo’ Lulu had uttered Louie wasn’t sure whether Lulu was miffed or impressed. Maybe this pretty little bee actually had a liking for Louie, who knows? Louie secretly wishing that Lulu did like him, apologised and headed off to Pearl’s place leaving Lulu and the Ten Ants in charge.
Louie headed down the stream and then up and over to Pearl’s apartment. It was a grey day, quite cool with possibly rain threatening.
Louie hoped that it wouldn’t rain as raindrops to a bee are very large and could make flying a bit of a headache (literally).
Pearl was just emerging from her front door when Louie arrived. She waved to him as he was approaching.
Louie didn’t land. Pearl joined Louie and the pair descended to the stream and headed off to the Nest Café.
The café was quiet and table twenty seven, Louie’s favourite, was available.
Pearl and Louie ordered a coffee and chocolate cake, and sat down. They watched the activities across at the supermarket and post office. It was busy.
Pearl opened the conversation, saying. ‘It really is quite busy isn’t it Louie’, Louie agreed.
Pearl continued. ‘Louie it’s mainly to do with the fact that the community has grown so much in the past two years that I wanted to talk to you and see what you think’.
‘Go ahead Pearl’, said Louie feeling important.
‘We discussed it briefly a couple of years ago, after the attack by Al Spider’.
‘We should probably consider an escape route at the back of the Reserve Bank in the event of another situation as we had with Al Spider. I think you agree with me Louie, the community has indeed grown considerably. The Reserve Bank contains a considerable amount of wealth belonging to the community and we should do everything we can to protect it’.
Louie knew Pearl was right but had procrastinated somewhat in dealing with the subject because of the dollops and scents that it would cost to construct such an escape route.
Pearl sensed that Louie was a bit hesitant in committing to the large amount of expenditure that would be required and went on to say. ‘As you know Louie, Sir Cada and Lady Bird have considerable wealth tied up in the Reserve Bank. I was talking to them last week and I believe they would be interested in investing in a tunnel in return for a shareholding in the bank’.
Louie thought as he had often thought in the past, what a clever Moth! Yes of course this could be the answer.
Louie had his governor of the Reserve Bank thinking-cap on and could see that Sir Cada would draw out the dollops and scents to pay for the tunnel, then whoever built the tunnel would receive the dollops and scents as payment and put it back in the Reserve Bank!
Secretly these things were very complicated to Louie and frightened him a little. However he now had Lulu who could do bookkeeping and thus look after all the complicated stuff that he didn’t really understand.
Louie feeling confident responded to Pearl. ‘You are right Pearl, we do need to build this tunnel, how do we go about approaching Sir Cada?’
‘Thanks Louie’, said Pearl. ‘I believe Sir Cada and Lady Bird may want to involve another couple of investors on this one and that they will probably want to meet with you and me at his Country Club’.
‘Wow’, said Louie feeling very important that he might be invited to Sir Cada and Lady Bird’s Country Club.
‘What I will do now that I know you feel happy with the idea’, said Pearl. ‘Is talk to Sir Cada and Lady Bird and come back to you about a possible meeting’.
Louie was quite happy about all this together with the possibility that other investors may be coming onboard as well. This would make his position of being governor of the Reserve Bank even more important. Yes the insect community was growing and Louie was part of it.
While Louie and Pearl are sitting enjoying the remainder of their morning tea we can perhaps enlighten you as to what and where exactly Sir Cada and Lady Bird’s Country Club is.
Well, through the village runs a railway line.
A considerable distance away in insect terms and out in the country along this line is a railway station where there is a restaurant.
The Country Club we are talking about has been set up in the ceiling of this railway station, firstly because it is out in the country and you can’t have a country club without being out in the country, and secondly the restaurant below has a marvellous supply of good things such as red wine, chocolate cake and other goodies.
As with the owners of the cake shop in the village, the owners of the restaurant at the country railway station couldn’t understand how bits of chocolate cake and other selected items of food disappeared at times. However being of relatively small quantities they didn’t really mind.
In the ceiling of the country railway station, the members of the Country Club had set up really quite marvellous premises, with bars, lounges and meeting rooms. There were
extensive views out across a rural scene. Members of the Club could relax and look out across to the pavilion at the Club’s cricket ground. Cricket wasn’t actually played here it was rather where crickets played.
Sir Cada was the president of the Club and being relatively wealthy and not having much to do, spent quite a bit of time relaxing here.
How, you may well ask did the insects and others get to the Club when it is so far away?
For Sir Cada and Lady Bird it was quite simple. They both flew down to the village railway station and ‘caught’ a train. Yes all that they had to do was to wait for a train to come along and then off to the Club they went.
Most of the flying insects used the train service, at one time or another.
The idea was to either find a near empty carriage and fly in when the doors were open or get into the engine driver’s cab where it was nice and warm.
To most insects the engine drivers cab was the best option. This was because while the engine driver was driving the train there was always the possibility of getting into his or her cut lunch and having a snack. Oh to be an insect!
Back to Louie and Pearl at the Nest Cafe, they have now finished morning tea and discussing issues at hand.
‘Right’, said Pearl. ‘Good to see you Louie I must get back and make a list of what needs to be done. Give me a couple of days to organise things with Sir Cada and Lady Bird and I will get back to you’.
Pearl headed back to her apartment and Louie headed down stream to the Reserve Bank. He had a good look at the area where the escape tunnel might go. Louie felt a little apprehensive about the pending meeting and felt he needed to be as knowledgeable a bee about the whole issue as possible.
To Louie there were two options, run the tunnel under the scrub and bush of the reserve to a clear area to the west or run the tunnel along the stream to the area beside the Nest Café and supermarket. The first option would cost less because it was shorter. The second option would be more expensive and would also have the problem of where to dispose of the tunnel excavations without drawing too much attention to what was going on.
‘A lot to think about’, said Louie to himself.
Louie turned and headed back in the direction of the Factory and descended to the stream.
Louie changed his mind about going back to the factory and instead called in at his home. He relaxed on his deck and thought more about the tunnel before later having some lunch and a snooze. About mid afternoon he headed back to the Factory.
