Battle for the Park

by Colin Dann

  ‘Stand back,’ Bully suddenly shouted in his high-pitched rat’s voice, ‘so that we know there’s no trick.’

  Plucky moved a little distance off and Adder, bruised, angry, and with his dignity severely ruffled, emerged from the hole. His tough scaly skin had proved more of a barrier to the rats’ molars than had Toad’s soft warty hide.

  ‘I’m obliged to you, I’m sure,’ the snake had the grace to say to Plucky, who came and examined him solicitously. ‘No great harm done, except to my pride.’

  ‘That’s of little consequence in these circumstances,’ the fox remarked. ‘How many attacked you?’

  ‘Two. There were more who wanted to, though. I was able to ensure that they kept their distance.’

  ‘Get yourself under cover,’ Plucky advised. ‘I’ll deal with these scoundrels.’

  Adder saw there was no more to be done for the present and, not ungratefully, slid away. Plucky crept back to the hole. The rats still chattered inside. Bully suspected the fox hadn’t left the scene and told them to be quiet while he went and parleyed with the animal. He was clever enough to know that Plucky, as a member of the Farthing Wood group, was pledged to help the others in his community – and that all the Farthing Wood animals and their dependents had an unusual moral sense that made them susceptible to the idea of fair play.

  Plucky saw the big rat emerge from the nest. Before he could pounce, Bully pre-empted a strike. ‘Have the forbearance to listen to a rat for a few moments,’ he began subtly. ‘We’re animals, too, young fox. We have our homes and our youngsters to look after. The snake came hunting for our babies. What else could we do but try to defend them?’

  Plucky could find no argument to put forward against that. He said nothing.

  ‘Why can’t you and your friends, and me and mine,’ Bully went on, ‘come to a sort of pact?’

  ‘Are you speaking as the leader of the rat invaders?’ Plucky asked.

  Bully bristled at the term ‘invaders’ but curbed his temper. ‘I’m as much leader as anyone, I suppose,’ he answered. ‘Now listen. How would it be if we rats agree not to cross into your particular area? This is a big park: we can confine ourselves to the rest of it. We don’t want these constant clashes; they do nobody any good.’

  ‘I’m not in a position of authority to answer you,’ Plucky informed the rodent. ‘We didn’t request your company in this Reserve. We’ve been content to live with our neighbours who were born here. I can only say all of us resent your intrusion and would like nothing better than for all of you to go back to your unwholesome haunts outside the Park. But, if you won’t, we shall at least continue to defend our territories for as long as it’s necessary.’

  ‘You can’t defend the whole Reserve, there aren’t enough of you!’ Bully snapped.

  ‘I wasn’t talking about the whole Reserve. We have our own area here where we have our dens and lairs, our nests and burrows.’

  ‘Then you’re agreeable to my suggestion?’ Bully prompted. ‘We leave you and yours alone. You do the same for us.’

  Plucky had a pretty good notion that Fox and Vixen, Badger, Weasel and the others wouldn’t be happy until the rats had been driven out of White Deer Park entirely, but he didn’t want to lose the opportunity of securing, for the present at least, their own corner from the rats’ encroachment.

  ‘I’m not one of the Farthing Wood elders,’ Plucky said. ‘They make the decisions about such matters. But I can carry your message back to them and I think I can say that the idea of this kind of truce would interest them.’ He didn’t think this at all but he felt if Bully believed him, it would be to the animals’ advantage in the long run.

  ‘Take the message,’ said Bully. ‘We can all benefit from such an arrangement.’ He felt a sense of triumph which he fought hard to disguise. With the assertive Farthing Wood animals out of the reckoning, he knew the rats had their best chance of building up their strength until their numbers could contend even with these legendary and formidable campaigners. He returned to the nest as Plucky left the scene.

  Brat, Spike and the rest of the males clustered around Bully, demanding to know the details of his latest feat of cunning. With a leer as wide as it was sly, the big rat explained what he had gained.

  ‘It’s faultless,’ he summed up. ‘We can do as we please. The other hunters in this Reserve are a half-hearted lot compared to such adversaries as those.’ He referred to Plucky and his friends. ‘When we’ve reached our position of dominance, which is only a matter of time, we’ll put my plan into operation to dispose of the last of the Old Guard.’ This was how he designated the Farthing Wood compatriots. ‘And, in the meantime, we’ll see that the snake, for a start, is out of the way. We know where he lurks. If an ambush wasn’t the best form of strategy, a hunting party of our own can’t fail to do the deed. We’ll lose no more of our new-born to a reptile’s stomach.’

  14

  Another Victim

  Plucky’s barks now brought answering calls from Fox, who had been alerted by Dash and was running with the young hare towards the scene of Adder’s ambush. Plucky gave them a hasty run-down on the outcome, and then went on to describe how Bully had phrased his offer.

  ‘He was a very big rat and definitely a sort of leader,’ Plucky explained. ‘He was directing events, I’m sure.’

  ‘You handled the situation well,’ Fox complimented him. ‘It’s useful to have a sort of truce for a while, because it gives a breathing space to those of us rearing young at this time of year to do the job properly. However, I’m not so naive as to believe that it isn’t to the rats’ advantage too. They’re playing for time from some motive of their own.’

  ‘The big rat mentioned babies,’ said Plucky.

  ‘Exactly. It’s the same for them as for any. And I tell you, Plucky, once they’re ready to move again, they’ll be back to challenge us. They won’t be content until we no longer stand in the way of their colonizing the entire Park.’

  ‘How shall we stop them? We’re so few.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Fox said. ‘It entails collecting together as many rat carcasses as we can find. Although I’m prepared to fight to the last drop of my blood to save White Deer Park and my friends, there are other measures which shouldn’t be overlooked.’

  Tawny Owl knew where a good number of rat carcasses were lying. This was because he and his family just hadn’t been able to devour all of the prey he had caught. The owlets were almost fully fledged. They were greedy, healthy and strong. The youngest had gained on its siblings to some extent and now held its own. Holly flew on some hunting sorties herself. There was a distance between herself and her mate these days. Whereas she had once admired Tawny Owl’s look of plump well-being, every time she saw him now he seemed to be a little fatter. She had no comment to make regarding his suitability as a provider. He had more than fulfilled his duty in that role, yet it seemed as if at the same time he himself had developed what she regarded as a gross appetite. Holly decided that, once the youngsters were out of the nest and fending for themselves, her connection with Tawny Owl need not continue.

  Tawny Owl, for his part, had long ago ceased to regard Holly with anything more than mere tolerance, and his stock of that commodity was beginning to run low. He viewed her as a demanding, bossy sort of bird who, more by untoward circumstances than by his own choice, had become his consort. He forgot how she had nursed and pandered to him when he had been unable to fly, following a bad accident. He would never allow himself to recall that, at that time, Holly alone had kept him alive.

  When Fox came to him for help Owl showed him the way to his dump of unused carrion. ‘Magpies and crows have been picking at them,’ he said. ‘They’re inedible now, as far as I’m concerned.’

  Fox was amused. ‘You certainly look as though you don’t need to eat for quite a while,’ he observed.

  Tawny Owl scowled. ‘Always the same cracks from everyone,’ he grumbled. ‘Weasel had the gall to call me rotund.’

&n
bsp; ‘He could have said worse, I suppose. Flying is difficult for you now, it seems?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Owl said. ‘I don’t need to travel far, do I?’

  ‘You seem short of breath.’

  ‘I am short of breath, dodging in and out of these trees to keep close to your level. I don’t usually fly like this, you know that.’ Owl was excusing himself. The plain fact was, he was enormously fat and heavy. ‘Anyway,’ he mumbled, ‘that’s quite enough about my problems, real or otherwise. What do you want these carcasses for?’

  ‘I thought the Warden might be interested in them.’ Fox looked at the bird with a meaningful expression.

  ‘But where is the Warden?’

  ‘In his den, I should think, fast asleep. Unless he’s taken to nocturnal prowling like us.’

  ‘I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for ages,’ Tawny Owl remarked.

  ‘No, but we must assume that he still lives in the same place.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And so, my stout old friend, we’ll see what he thinks about a collection of dead rats littering the entrance to his home.’

  Tawny Owl let the allusion to his size pass, preferring to believe the polite Fox was using a compliment related to his steadfastness. But he saw the subtlety of his friend’s idea. ‘Oh-oh, a noble plan, Fox,’ he commented. ‘The man’s sure to follow this up.’

  ‘That’s what I’m reckoning on.’

  ‘And an investigation will ensue.’

  ‘I’m hoping so. Particularly if we can contrive to leave a sort of trail leading into the Park.’

  ‘It’s masterly,’ Owl was pleased to comment.

  ‘Well, it’s a chance of drawing attention anyway,’ Fox said modestly. ‘Just as long as the man can spare some time away from that other enclosure.’

  Fox rounded up Badger and Weasel, Friendly and Plucky to help himself and Vixen to port the rank-smelling carrion to the Warden’s Lodge. He didn’t suggest Tawny Owl put himself to the strain of carrying and Owl didn’t volunteer.

  The cottage was in darkness. Plucky leapt the low fence around the garden and placed one of the more fragrant of the long-dead bodies by a back door. The other animals left what they had carried at different points, making a sort of trail – as Fox directed them – leading along the garden and into the Reserve. They fetched a second load. Many of the carcasses were beginning to rot.

  ‘Difficult to ignore those,’ Badger said bluntly. ‘All the flies from the surrounding area will be competing for a taste at sun-up.’

  Bully lost no time in organizing a hunting party of the largest rats to dispose of Adder. Later that night, now they knew the Farthing Wood animals’ guard was down, they set off at a run for Adder’s haunt. They thought they would catch him asleep.

  ‘Scout around here,’ Bully told the others when they had reached the bank of sprouting bracken where Adder often could be found. Sinuous was woken by the scurrying rat noises. She slid from under the flat rock, thinking she had heard the pitter-patter of mice. She hadn’t seen Adder again and had no way of knowing he had escaped. She watched for a sign of the mice. She was hungry and an unexpected nocturnal meal would be very welcome.

  The rats came closer. They bunched together now so as to be able to pounce at once at the first glimpse of a snake. Brat and Spike were in front, Bully to the rear. In the next few seconds Sinuous was spotted. At the same time she realized her error. The rats rushed her, thinking she was Adder. One snake was much like another as far as they were concerned. The she-viper struck at Brat, the leading rat, and her fangs pierced him through. But while her jaws were locked into her victim, his confederates seized her. All along her body, from her neck to her tail, Sinuous felt the sharp biting teeth of eight rats. Her poison soon immobilized Brat, but she was held so tightly to the ground she could not move a fraction. The rats gnawed horribly at her body, and this time they made no mistake. They thought they had Adder at their mercy. He was not to escape again. Gradually their strong teeth bit through the snake’s body. Even in her agony Sinuous was unable to squirm, she was clamped so fast in the rats’ jaws. The life ebbed out of her. Not until the rats were quite sure she was dead did they release their grip. The snake’s mutilated body was motionless.

  ‘He’ll trouble us no more,’ Bully growled. ‘The babes are safe in their nests.’ He showed no sympathy, not even a flicker of interest in Brat’s carcass, which was now as lifeless as the poor snake’s. ‘We’ll leave this area now until we choose to return to it. Let the adder’s precious friends find him here and know now, if they never knew before, we’re not to be taken lightly.’

  The other rats mumbled and murmured amongst themselves. Some of them thought Adder’s precious friends might not be content with merely having such knowledge. They were redoubtable fighters, all of them, and the rats reckoned they might have a thing or two to say and do after discovering a second victim from their community. First the toad, then the snake . . .

  ‘What are you muttering about?’ Bully snapped irritably.

  ‘We think the Old Guard, as you call them, will swear vengeance for this,’ Spike grumbled. ‘We may pay for this night’s work.’

  ‘What can they do?’ Bully challenged him. ‘Haven’t they agreed to my pact?’

  ‘How do we know that, Bully? The young fox gave no word.’

  ‘I know it,’ Bully growled. ‘I know they need this lull, as we do. Don’t they have broods to feed and raise?’

  None of the other rats disputed any longer. They were eager to get back to their own nests and dens. They each had a store of food waiting which, in their mutual hunger, was beginning to call to them in a strident tone.

  Ironically Adder himself all this time had been resting by the stream where he had first headed after his own tussle, in order to soothe his wounds underwater. His scratches and bites would soon heal and add their marks to the many others that decorated his black and white skin. Sadly the wounds inflicted on Sinuous would never heal; although Adder, coiled up by the water’s edge, innocently believed that he had saved her from the rats’ vicious attentions.

  Early next morning the Warden’s cat soon drew his master’s notice to the stinking remains left on his doorstep. The man followed the trail of bodies into the Park, scratching his head furiously over the strange collection. He could think of no solution but he made up his mind there and then to carry out a thorough search of the Reserve for further clues.

  The animals later saw him on his rounds. They were thrilled, each one of them, to see the man active once more in their Park. It didn’t take a lot of consideration for them to arrive at the reason for his sudden reappearance.

  ‘Neatly done,’ Friendly congratulated his father. ‘The man’s picked up the scent.’

  ‘There’s many another message for him littering the ground,’ said Fox, ‘thanks chiefly to our overweight Owl.’

  Vixen said, ‘The poor bird has sacrificed his own homely comforts to our campaign. Holly will have nothing to do with him, he tells me.’

  ‘Is he resentful?’ Fox asked.

  ‘No, he sounded remarkably cheerful,’ Vixen said. ‘Family life and responsibilities must come hard when you’re no longer young yourself. The foraging, fetching and carrying quite wore him out.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Fox said jokingly. ‘He can sit in a tree and doze the summer through. He has enough fat on him to last him to the end of the season!’

  15

  Frond

  The animals were quite happy for the Warden to take control of events. They knew he was bound to find other traces of the rats’ presence in White Deer Park. There were bodies sufficiently distributed around the Reserve for him to know some kind of battle had been raging. However, finding live rats was quite another matter. True to their habit of supreme caution and shyness whenever any evidence of human activity came to their notice, the rodents cleverly stayed under cover in daylight hours in the multitude of burrows and dens that they had established over the we
eks. But the Farthing Wood animals felt sure this position could not be maintained for ever. Sooner or later one or other of the less experienced amongst the rat horde would slip up. It only needed a moment’s carelessness for the Warden’s and the rats’ paths to cross.

  Badger was glad of a rest. He had overlooked his great age for a while in the heat of the skirmishes but, now that there was a lull, he was reminded of it with extra force. One wet evening, as he prepared to go foraging for worms, a tremendous weariness overcame him. He sank down at the entrance to his set. His legs trembled. He let his head sink on to his paws. ‘Oh dear,’ he muttered. ‘I feel as weak as a butterfly. This is the gallivanting catching up with me.’ He glanced around in the evening light for a sign of one of his friends. Rain pattered down through the overhead canopy of leaves but otherwise all was still. ‘I’d better rest for a while. Eating can wait,’ he told himself. ‘In fact,’ he mumbled, ‘I don’t really feel hungry now at all.’

  In the gentle evening shower Badger fell asleep, half in and half out of the entrance. Although he had slept throughout the day he simply couldn’t keep his eyes open. His striped head and grizzled shoulders grew wet. His nether half, protected by the walls of his earthen tunnel, remained dry. Worms, slugs and snails, encouraged by the refreshing dampness of the wood, moved across the leaf-litter wood floor only centimetres from the badger. If one had crawled on to the old mammal’s snout it is doubtful if Badger would have been aware of it. Soon his rhythmic snoring made a contrast to the pitter-patter of raindrops.

  The rain began to fall more heavily after a while. Badger awoke with a start. He felt chilled. His old limbs ached with tiredness. He pulled himself on to his feet and sniffed the air. He looked distinctly shaky as he tentatively moved forward a step or two. ‘I’ve certainly overdone it this time,’ he whispered. ‘What an old fool I am. And whatever did I think I was doing? It’s as if I’ve been trying to recapture my youth. Ha! I lost that a long while back,’ he told himself humourlessly. ‘So far back I can’t even recall what it felt like! Oh! I seem to have been old for so long.’ His short legs had no strength in them. ‘I just need a little more rest,’ Badger summed up.