by Adam Frost
‘Hmm,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘That can work.’
‘Come on then,’ said Tom. He put his hand in the jar nearest to him and started rubbing jam on his cheeks.
‘Er . . . no way,’ said Sophie.
Tom put his other hand in the tub of Marmite and smeared it on his hands.
Then he looked through his goggles at the fox.
‘It’s starting to paddle this way!’ he announced.
Mrs Nightingale sighed. ‘I suppose it will all come out in the wash,’ she said. She wiped Marmite around her neck and dabbed jam on her nose and forehead.
Tom was zooming in again. ‘It’s definitely working! It’s speeding up!’ he whispered.
‘Wow!’ exclaimed Sophie. She pulled open a tin of baked beans and rubbed them on her hands.
‘We should make the fox noises too,’ said Tom, ‘in case it gets suspicious.’
The three of them made the harsh huffing noise – louder than ever.
At that moment, Mrs Scraggs from the houseboat next to theirs came walking along the towpath with a torch. She glanced at the three Nightingales – crouching down on the path, making strange barking noises, with a travel bag full of rats in front of them and multicoloured food on their faces. ‘Hello!’ she said cheerily, as if nothing unusual was happening.
The Nightingales kept grunting for another minute or two.
The fox placed one front leg and then the other on the bank of the canal. Then it pulled itself out, the water rushing off its fur and sloshing around its feet.
Tom and Sophie wanted to shout, ‘Hooray!’ – but knew it would scare the fox off.
Weak and trembling from the ordeal, the young fox tottered across the towpath, snout in the air.
‘Here you are,’ whispered Sophie, and nudged the pot of Marmite. The fox lowered his head and ate ravenously from the tub.
When it had finished, it looked up at the three strange faces covered in gunk and gloop that were looking back at him. Mrs Nightingale made a low growling noise and the fox cocked its head and gave her an odd look.
Then it seemed to make up its mind. It trotted off along the towpath and vanished into a bramble patch.
Tom and Sophie looked at each other. Now there was no reason to hold back. ‘Hooray! Hooray!’ they both shouted, hugging each other and jumping up and down.
Then they heard a buzzing sound from the lamp post next to them. It flickered on, as did all the other lights and lamp posts in the marina.
‘Oh,’ said Tom, sounding disappointed. ‘It was way better when everything was dark.’
‘That was rather fun, wasn’t it?’ Mrs Nightingale agreed.
‘Mum, why are some animals nocturnal?’ asked Sophie, as the three of them started to walk back along the canal.
‘Well, usually because that’s when their food is awake. Bats eat flying insects like mosquitoes and moths. And night is when mosquitoes and moths wake up. Owls eat mice and rats – and most rodents in England wake up in the evening.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Sophie, looking down at Eric and Ernie. ‘It sounds like everyone wants to eat you.’
Eric and Ernie were sticking their noses through the metal grille of the travel bag, sniffing at the food on Sophie’s hands.
‘Tom,’ Mrs Nightingale said, ‘could you not lick jam off your hands?’
‘I’m not,’ Tom insisted. Then he said, ‘I’m licking Marmite off my hands.’
Mrs Nightingale rolled her eyes. ‘You can have a snack when we get back.’
Tom smiled.
‘AFTER you’ve had a bath,’ she added.
Tom groaned.
Chapter 3
Two days later, it was the weekend. Mr and Mrs Nightingale had to go to work and, as always, Tom and Sophie went along.
‘Can we go out again tonight?’ Tom asked his mum as they walked through the zoo gates. ‘I want to see more nocturnal animals.’
‘Well, why don’t you have a look at the zoo’s nocturnal animals first?’ Mrs Nightingale suggested.
‘Good one, Mum,’ said Tom, ‘but they’ll all be asleep, won’t they?’
‘Not in the Nightzone, they won’t,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘They turn all the lights off during the day so the animals are active. You’ll see armadillos, scorpions, giant jumping rats, all sorts.’
‘I forgot about the Nightzone,’ said Tom. ‘Come on, Soph. Let’s spend all day in there. And all night!’
‘Well, there’s no point being there at night,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘That’s when they turn the lights ON. So the animals can get some sleep.’
‘Oh. Right,’ said Tom.
‘Look, ask for Terry when you get inside,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘He’ll tell you everything.’
Tom and Sophie said goodbye to their parents and walked past the African hunting dogs. They reached the big glass entrance doors that led to the Nightzone and the Rainforest Lookout. They went downstairs and walked through a set of doors into a long dark tunnel. Apart from tiny strip lights on the floor, everything else was dark. They turned a corner and were suddenly surrounded by glass enclosures full of scurrying, flying, leaping, climbing and burrowing animals.
‘Now THAT is weird,’ said Tom.
He was pointing at a tiny shrew-like animal with bald wrinkled skin and four gigantic teeth.
‘It says here it’s a naked mole rat,’ said Sophie, glancing at the sign next to the enclosure. ‘It lives underground like a mole, but it doesn’t have any claws. So it digs all its tunnels with its teeth.’
Tom looked again at the naked mole rat’s face.
‘It also says its teeth are OUTSIDE its mouth,’ said Sophie, ‘not INSIDE like ours. That stops it from swallowing dirt when it’s digging.’
‘That’s amazing,’ Tom said, looking closely at the glass case.
‘They can dig tunnels that are up to four kilometres long,’ concluded Sophie.
‘Four kilometres!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘But he’s only about ten centimetres long! I’m 130 centimetres. So that’s like me digging a tunnel that’s, er, fifty-two kilometres! With my teeth!’
Tom spread his mouth wide and bared his teeth at his sister.
Sophie ignored him and then bounded over to another glass case.
‘An armadillo!’ she cried. ‘Armadillos are brilliant!’
Tom joined her and they watched the armadillo snuffling and digging at the floor of its enclosure, the armour on its back opening and closing as it moved.
‘Unlike the naked mole rat, these guys DO have claws,’ said Sophie, ‘incredible claws. Like they’ve got knives instead of fingers.’
Tom looked at his hand and said, ‘That would stop you picking your nose.’
‘It’s also the only mammal with a shell,’ said Sophie. ‘Look at that armour. It can roll into a ball and nothing can get inside.’
At that moment, they heard a voice behind them.
‘You must be Tom and Sophie.’
They turned around and saw a man in his late thirties, with blue eyes and sandy-coloured hair. ‘Sounds like you know more about nocturnal animals than I do!’
Sophie blushed.
‘I’m Terry,’ he said, ‘your mum and dad said you want to know more about the Nightzone.’
‘Definitely!’ said Tom. ‘We rescued a fox the other night. We’re basically nocturnal ourselves.’
Sophie gave Tom an embarrassed nudge.
‘Me too!’ Terry replied. ‘Daytime is seriously boring. All the best animals sleep through the day and wake up when it gets dark. Lions, tigers, leopards, possums, wombats, raccoons, koalas, coyotes, badgers, hedgehogs . . . the list goes on and on. Let me show you some more.’
‘Cool!’ said Tom.
‘Thanks,’ said Sophie.
Terry led them both over to a glass enclosure with two large black creepy-crawlies inside.
‘Let’s start with one of the smallest,’ said Terry. ‘The emperor scorpion!’
Tom and Sophie pressed their faces a
gainst the glass.
‘Nocturnal animals are some of the most successful on the planet,’ said Terry. ‘Scorpions have been around for 300 million years. They saw the dinosaurs come and go. And you know what? They looked exactly the same then as they do now. They haven’t needed to change or evolve because they’re perfect the way they are.’
‘Wow,’ said Tom. ‘You mean they’ve always been good at everything?’
‘Exactly,’ said Terry, ‘they’ve got large claws to catch their food. And if their food struggles, look at that stinger at the end of their tail. They jab with that and their prey is paralysed. Plus if anything catches them, that armour on their back is tough as nails. Literally. It’s got iron and zinc in it. They can be frozen solid, they can eat nothing for a year, they can be held underwater for three days, and they still wouldn’t be dead. They can survive a nuclear-bomb blast. In fact, the most likely cause of death for a scorpion is . . .’
‘Er . . .’ stammered Tom. ‘Zombies? Vampires?’
Sophie sighed. ‘Another scorpion?’ she suggested.
‘Exactly,’ said Terry with a grin. ‘And best of all, they have adapted perfectly to life at night.’
‘How?’ asked Tom.
‘Can you see their eyes?’ Terry asked. ‘They’ve got eight of them. That means they can see incredibly well, even when it’s dark. They can also see 360 degrees – quite handy when something’s creeping up on you. And, most amazingly of all, they’ve got a pigment in their eyes that kicks in when the sun comes out. It makes their eyes ten thousand times less light sensitive.’
‘That IS clever,’ Sophie said.
‘Yep,’ said Terry. ‘It’s like they’ve got built-in sunglasses. And watch this.’
He pressed a button next to the case. A purple light came on and the two scorpions glowed white.
‘Their shells are sensitive to ultraviolet light,’ said Terry. ‘Now, WE can’t see ultraviolet light, but they can. Which means they can see each other. Even when it’s a moonless desert night.’
‘Insects aren’t exactly my favourite things,’ said Sophie, ‘but that is pretty impressive.’
‘Insects aren’t my favourite things either,’ said Terry, ‘but scorpions are arachnids. They’ve got eight legs. Like spiders.’
‘Oh,’ said Sophie.
Tom couldn’t help smiling. He couldn’t remember the last time his sister had got anything wrong, particularly about animals.
Terry showed them all the other animals in the Nightzone and explained how they’d adapted to life in the dark.
There was a loris, with gigantic eyes that could see insects even when it was pitch black, and cave crickets, with gigantic antennae that helped them to feel their way through dark, murky crevices.
‘And here’s the most famous of all nocturnal animals!’ announced Terry.
He was standing in front of a wide glass case that was full of small brown bats.
‘These are Seba’s Short-tailed Bats,’ said Terry. ‘They’re originally from South America.’
‘There are so many of them in there,’ said Tom.
‘Well, bats are used to living in large colonies,’ said Terry. ‘Take Bracken Cave in Texas, for example. Twenty million bats live in it. Can you imagine? One cave – twenty million bats.’
‘I wouldn’t want to wander in there by mistake,’ said Tom.
‘I know,’ said Terry. ‘No other mammal in the world lives in such large huddled groups. In fact, there are lots of things that bats do that other mammals don’t. Largely because they’re nocturnal.’
‘Like what?’ Tom asked.
‘Tom!’ Sophie exclaimed. ‘Look at them!’
‘I am looking at them,’ said Tom. ‘It’s dark in there, OK?’
‘Haven’t you noticed they’re flying?’ Sophie said.
Terry chuckled. ‘That’s right, Sophie. There are thousands and thousands of types of mammals in the world. From dogs to dolphins, from wallabies to whales. But bats are the only mammals that can fly.’
‘Wow,’ Tom said, staring through the glass. ‘How come though?’
‘Well, if they couldn’t fly,’ explained Terry, ‘they wouldn’t be able to reach their food. Flying insects like mosquitoes and moths. Fruit hanging on high branches.’
‘So do they just flap their wings like birds?’ Sophie asked.
‘No, they sort of rotate them,’ said Terry, ‘like they’re doing the breaststroke in mid-air.’
‘And how come we can’t fly?’ Tom asked, looking at his arms and flapping them tentatively.
Terry smiled. ‘You’d need to be a very different shape. Bats’ wings have the same basic structure as your hand. Only the fingers have got longer and longer. And the skin between the fingers has got wider and wider. And the finger bones have got lighter and lighter. Until eventually the hand has turned into a wing. If you were a bat, each of your fingers would need to be half a metre long – as long as your legs!’
‘They’d just drag on the floor,’ said Sophie, looking at her fingers.
‘Who cares though?!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘You could fly! You’d never be on the floor!’
There was a crackly noise and Terry looked down at the walkie-talkie on his belt. He picked it up and said: ‘Hello, Nightzone.’ The crackling continued for a few seconds and then Terry said, ‘On my way.’
He clipped the walkie-talkie back on to his belt. ‘I’m needed over at the fruit bat enclosure. Want to come?’ he said.
‘Yes!’ Tom and Sophie both exclaimed.
‘Where are they though?’ Tom asked. ‘Aren’t they here with the other nocturnal animals?’
‘They’ve got a section all to themselves,’ Terry explained. ‘They’re quite big so they need more space.’
Terry set off towards the exit, followed by Tom and Sophie.
‘How big is big?’ Tom asked.
‘They have a wingspan of just under a metre,’ said Terry.
‘Is that pretty big for a bat?’ Sophie asked.
‘About in the middle,’ said Terry. ‘The world’s smallest is the bumblebee bat – it’s smaller than a jellybean. The biggest is the Bismarck flying fox. It has a wingspan of almost two metres. That’s about the same as a man holding his arms out.’
Terry held his arms out and pretended to glide along.
Tom copied him, rotating his arms as if he was doing the breaststroke.
Sophie shook her head and looked embarrassed. Then, when she realised that nobody was looking, she joined in.
Chapter 4
Tom, Sophie and Terry walked around the back of the Rainforest Lookout, glancing up at the lemurs. Terry ducked into a door underneath their enclosure and Tom and Sophie followed.
‘I didn’t even realise this was here,’ Sophie said.
They were in a long, dark corridor, looking into a dimly lit enclosure. Behind the glass dozens of large brown bats were flitting from side to side.
‘They look totally different from the ones we just saw,’ said Tom. ‘These don’t really look like bats at all.’
‘Ah, that’s because when you think of bats, you think of microbats,’ said Terry. ‘These are megabats.’
‘Megabats?’ said Tom. ‘Why haven’t I heard of megabats? They sound awesome. If I was a bat, I’d definitely be a megabat.’
‘I think microbats sound cooler,’ said Sophie. ‘They sound like they’re tiny robots. Full of microchips.’
‘Actually, that’s true,’ admitted Tom. ‘Can you be a microbat AND a megabat?’
Terry shook his head. ‘One or the other. Microbats are the ones we get in the UK. Small scrunched-up faces. Stubby noses. Big ears. Tend to eat insects. Megabats look more like squirrels or foxes with wings. That’s why sometimes they’re called flying foxes. They tend to eat fruit. And they’re generally a lot, lot bigger.’
‘Then I’ll go back to being a megabat,’ said Tom.
He stared at the fruit bats in the enclosure. A keeper was placing some pears and berrie
s on a feeding station and the bats were swooping across, ready to tuck in. The keeper was wearing sturdy-looking black gloves.
‘OK, I just need to observe Polly,’ said Terry.
‘Is she the keeper?’ Sophie asked.
‘No, Polly’s the bat over there on her own,’ said Terry. ‘She was off her food yesterday, so I need to see if she’s any better today.’
Tom and Sophie watched Polly and then watched Terry watching Polly.
‘She’s sniffing the air,’ said Terry, ‘looking awake. She wasn’t even doing that yesterday. Let’s see if she joins the others for some lunch. If she does, we can stop worrying.’
‘You mean – you’re worried now? How come?’ Sophie asked.
‘We’re continually worried about these bats,’ said Terry. ‘You see, they’re Rodrigues Fruit Bats. From Mauritius, near India. And they’re critically endangered – only a couple of hundred are left in the wild.’
‘A couple of hundred? That’s all?’ Sophie said.
‘I know,’ said Terry. ‘I sometimes wonder what that must feel like. Imagine if there were only two hundred human beings left on the whole planet. It’d be pretty lonely, eh?’
Tom and Sophie thought about this and nodded.
‘And knowing my luck,’ added Tom, ‘it would just be me and 199 girls. Or me and 199 teachers.’
‘I don’t think it works like that,’ said Sophie.
‘It flippin’ would for me,’ said Tom.
‘A lot of their natural habitat has gone,’ said Terry, gazing at the enclosure, ‘and global warming isn’t helping either. It’s lucky we got involved when we did. Hopefully we can save the species.’
‘Maybe being a megabat isn’t so good after all,’ Tom said.
‘Oh, it’s still pretty good,’ said Terry. ‘Though, I have to say, if I could choose, I’d probably be a microbat.’
‘How come?’ Sophie asked.
‘Isn’t it better to be bigger?’ Tom said.
