‘Yippee,’ said the twins and scampered on ahead.
They reached the fence by the field. Badger stopped and held up his paw for silence while he checked the coast was clear.
‘Shhh,’ he whispered to the twins, turning his head sideways as he listened for enemies. He could hear a faint rustling noise coming from the edge of the field where the old bracken fronds arched over. ‘Keep quiet and don’t move.’ Badger sniffed the air.
Mrs B and the twins froze.
They all waited silently for a few moments. Badger sniffed some more. Then he relaxed. ‘It’s only Fox,’ he said with relief. Almost immediately a chestnut brown head appeared through the bracken fronds.
‘Hello, badgers,’ said Fox. But as he was speaking with his mouth full of rabbit leg it sounded like ‘Ho’ bags’.
Mrs B tut-tutted quietly to herself but wisely didn’t say out loud how rude it was to talk with one’s mouth full.
Fox put the rabbit leg down on the ground. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘We’re having a snack here and then going to the beach to make a new pool for Crab,’ Badger said.
‘Oh,’ Fox sounded interested. ‘Like last year’s sprat pool, then?’
‘Yes,’ replied Badger.
‘Mmm,’ Fox’s ears twitched in an even more interested way. ‘Do you want some fox-power? Many paws make light work, don’t you think?’
Badger looked at Mrs B. She nodded.
‘Thank you, Mr Fox,’ Mrs B said. ‘We would make the pool more quickly if you were able to help us.’
‘How about I just finish my rabbit leg while you find some worms and then we can all go together?’ Fox picked up his rabbit leg again and lay down to have a good munch. Badger and Mrs B and the twins squeezed under the fence and started digging for worms.
After a few minutes Fox had finished his rabbit leg, bones and all, and the badgers had eaten about six worms each. Badger led his family away from the field and down to the beach. Fox went on ahead as his springy legs didn’t like waiting for anyone. He was nosing along the high-tide mark when the badgers arrived.
‘No dead spider crabs tonight,’ Fox shouted. He was remembering the feast they had enjoyed before.
‘Shhh,’ Badger was worried enemies would hear them. Fox grinned and carried on nosing in the seaweed.
Crab was nowhere to be seen.
Badger and Mrs B looked at the rocks at the side of the beach. They needed to decide where to make the new pool. It had to be where the tide would fill it up nicely at high tide and deep enough for sprats and small fishes to get trapped in it when the tide went out again. The twins raced down to the edge of the sea and danced in and out of the shallow water playing ‘catch me if you can’ with the waves. Their paws and legs were getting horribly wet, Mrs B noticed, and she sighed.
‘Cubs will be cubs, I suppose,’ she said to Badger.
‘I think this will do,’ Badger said. He was looking at a circle of rocks surrounding a piece of sand. ‘If we dig out more sand from the middle and make a big hollow, then fill up the sides with smaller rocks it should be just right, and it’s not too far from the high-tide mark either. What do you think?’
Mrs B put her head on one side, considering.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Come on, then, let’s get digging. You’d better call Mr Fox, I think he’s forgotten why we are here.’
Fox was zig-zagging his way across the beach with his black nose down on the ground following a most interesting scent. His bushy tail was wagging happily from side to side and it did seem as if he had forgotten the badgers altogether.
‘Fox.’ Badger called as loudly as he dared.
Fox looked up. ‘Coming,’ he barked.
‘Shhh,’ Badger tried to quieten him.
The two badgers and Fox worked hard for quite a while digging a big hole in the sand. They used the spare sand to fill in between the old rocks round the edge and then, using their noses and paws, they rolled smaller rocks into the gaps. The twins helped a bit by prancing up and down the new walls treading the sand down firmly into the cracks between the rocks. They thought it was a very good game. Mrs B had to stop them from getting too excited and dislodging the smaller stones.
‘That looks fine, don’t you think?’ Fox stood back and looked at the new, empty pond. He had a very sandy nose. ‘What’s the tide doing, Badger? Is it coming in or going out?’
Badger finished his last bit of digging. ‘I’m not sure.’ He looked down the beach to the waves. Then he looked at the sand where they were standing and saw that it was dry. ‘It must be coming in,’ he said.
‘Good,’ said Fox. ‘How long will it take before it fills the pool?’
Badger looked up at the sky. ‘It won’t fill the pool till daylight now, I’m afraid. We shall have to come back tomorrow night to see if there are any fish.’
‘Can’t we have a fish supper tonight, then?’ wailed the twins.
‘Don’t be silly, dears,’ Mrs B said. ‘It’s nearly your bedtime now. We can’t wait that long. We should hurry home before it’s light.’ She turned to Badger, ‘I’ll take them back now. Are you going to see if you can find Crab before you come home?’ She looked at him sternly.
‘I don’t think he’s on this part of the beach tonight. It might be better if he has a surprise in the morning.’ Badger knew he was making excuses for not looking for Crab and saying sorry. But he didn’t think Crab wanted to be friends anymore. If he had wanted to be friends he would have come and helped them, Badger thought. Crab was probably avoiding them on purpose.
‘Well, I’m off now,’ said Fox cheerfully. He brushed his sandy nose with his right paw, but didn’t make a very good job of it. ‘Bye, everyone,’ he called loudly as he trotted towards the wood. ‘See you for a fish supper tomorrow night, then?’
‘Shhh,’ Badger said again. ‘We don’t want everyone to know there might be a fish supper.’ But Fox didn’t hear him. He’d gone.
They all went home for a good sleep.
* * *
Crab had spent the day with some of his crabby friends in another bay and hadn’t yet returned to his favourite pool. He had decided that being friends with Badger wasn’t important and that he didn’t think he minded if he never saw him again, ever. The beach belonged to beach people and the wood belonged to wood people and it was best kept that way. He didn’t see why he should help badgers: they were rude, ungrateful creatures and he didn’t like them anymore.
Crab hadn’t seen the badgers and Fox when they arrived on the beach as he had stopped on his way home to have a chat with a very nice lady crab. It was quite a bit later, after dark, that he heard this strange grunting noise and then some squeaking sounds coming from the top of his beach near the high-water mark.
‘Is it Moonfaces out at night?’ he wondered and scuttled sideways into the shelter of a pile of brown seaweed. Carefully he stood on his back legs and peered over the seaweed to get a better view. He hoped it wasn’t Moonfaces. If it was they would probably be doing something stupid like digging for lug-worms or trying to knock limpets off the rocks, upsetting seaside people and making a mess of the beach. But they didn’t usually come at night. But who else could it be?
Crab balanced on tip claw for some time trying to work out what was going on. He could see three biggish shapes and two smaller shapes scurrying about and making quite a lot of noise. The smaller shapes were doing the squeaking and one of the bigger shapes had a long bushy tail and seemed to be making barking noises. Carefully Crab edged closer to the activity, still keeping out of sight.
‘Oh,’ he said to himself after he had had another good peek. ‘Oh, it’s Badger and Fox. What are they doing on MY beach? I told Badger to go away and not come back. How dare he come back. Why is he here? What are they doing? And he’s brought his family with him.’ Crab frowned. He was not pleased. He d
id a little war dance round a nearby boulder while he decided what to do next.
He was badly outnumbered. If he confronted Badger and Fox and they got cross he wouldn’t be able to run away fast enough. Fox had very long legs and Badger was very strong. He, Crab, would lose the battle. He would be crabmeat in no time.
Perhaps he should go home and come back in the daytime when they would have gone. Then he could see what they had been up to. ‘Yes,’ Crab decided. ‘That’s what I’ll do.’ He sidled down the beach keeping out of sight and not making even the smallest of sounds. The tide had just reached his favourite pool, so he slid neatly under a rock in the deepest part of the pool and waited for daybreak.
* * *
Much later, when, for the first time in many days, Sun had bothered to get up and shine on the beach, Crab eased out of his pool and ran as fast as he could across the sand to where he had seen the badgers and Fox working in the dark. His eyes took a little while to adjust to the brightness. He was nearly there when he saw ahead of him a very big black cormorant perched on a large rock looking down at something. Cormorant had his back to Crab. Crab stopped. If Cormorant turned and saw him he would be dead crab. This cormorant had a long yellow hooked beak, just the thing for catching fish. But good for catching crabs too. Crab was now too far from the seaweed to be able to hide quickly and there was no other cover anywhere near. There was only one thing to do.
Crab made an extremely fast sideways lunge and grabbed Cormorant’s left leg from behind in a very painful tackle with his own left pincer. He squeezed as hard as he could, then let go and jumped backwards.
‘Yeeeoow,’ yelled Cormorant and rose in the air with his big black wings flapping frantically. He squawked some more as he flew away as fast as he could to tell his friends that there was a huge, horrible enemy on the beach. He didn’t look back.
Crab let out his breath in relief. That had been a close thing. He should have taken more care and checked for predators before he had broken cover. That was Rule Number One. He watched Cormorant circle over the bay and fly towards Seal Pup’s rock.
‘Right,’ said Crab. ‘But I wonder what he was looking at.’ Crab climbed up the rock that Cormorant had been standing on and saw the new fishing pool below. Sun was shining on the water making it all shimmery and sparkly. The pool was almost the same size as last year’s sprat pool, but it looked quite a bit deeper. Crab peered at it intently. He could just make out the shape of a few dab spinning round on the sandy bottom, and as he watched he saw two blenny and a goby dart under an overhanging rock. It was too early in the year for sprats, he knew that, but there was quite a fishy feast in the pool none-the-less. No wonder Cormorant had been there. Crab sat back on his shell as he thought about things.
‘So this is what Badger and Fox were doing on the beach last night,’ he said slowly to himself, then he sniffed. ‘They should have asked me first. This is my beach.’ Then he thought a bit more. ‘It’s quite a good pool, I suppose. Quite well made, really. And of course Badger and Fox can only fish here at night, so I can use it in the daytime if I want to. There’ll be shrimps in it, for sure, and soon the seaweed will grow, too. It could be useful for me.’
Crab sat by the pool for a little while longer as he pondered. Maybe he would be friends with Badger again, especially if the pool had lots of shrimps in it. He knew he couldn’t have made such a good pool on his own. There were benefits all round, perhaps. He would think about it during the day and if he felt like it he would come back and wait for Badger at nightfall and maybe they could have a chat after all. He would see how he felt. Anyway, Badger was a hopeless fisherman, he would need him, Crab, to do the skilful fishing work.
* * *
Badger woke up. He remembered the pool. ‘Would there be fish? Could he catch them if there were some?’ He remembered how Crab had helped him last summer when they had had a wonderful spratty feast. ‘Could he and Mrs B and Fox be as good at fishing as Crab?’ Badger got up and went to the door of the sett. ‘Well,’ he mused, ‘we shall have to try. Nothing venture, nothing gain,’ as his Aunt May used to say. He went out.
‘Hurry up, Badger.’ Fox had been waiting for him under the beech tree.
Grey Squirrel was whizzing up and down the bole of the tree above Fox and getting very cross. ‘Don’t touch my nut store, don’t you dare touch my nut store.’ She flicked her tail from side to side.
‘Buzz off, Squirrel,’ Fox said rudely. ‘We’re busy doing important stuff tonight.’
Squirrel chucked a beech twig at Fox, which hit him on the nose.
‘I said buzz off,’ Fox said again snootily, and brushed the twig away. Squirrel did a handstand and a back flip out of the beech tree, landing on a low branch of a nearby rowan. She grabbed a handful of old berries and chucked them at Fox. ‘Go away yourself.’ She puffed herself up into a big fluffy ball and turned her back on him.
‘Come on, then, Badger.’ Fox was impatient. ‘Where’s Mrs B?’ he asked as they made their way down the path towards the beach, leaving Squirrel making cross-patch noises behind them.
‘She said she would be waiting for us at the bottom of the wood. She thought she had better feed the twins before we reach the beach in case there aren’t any fish after all.’ Badger was panting. Fox was trotting rather fast and he found it difficult to keep up. It wasn’t easy to run and talk at the same time.
They reached the edge of the wood and paused to sniff for enemies and to wait for Mrs B and the twins. Badger sat down under the oak tree to catch his breath while Fox paced impatiently up and down the path. After a few moments Mrs B appeared with the twins scampering behind her.
‘Sorry we’re late,’ she said. ‘There were cows in the field, so we had to go right round the outside and it took longer. Quieten down, you two,’ she frowned at the twins, who were arguing over a piece of smelly rabbit skin.
Badger got up and everyone moved cautiously to the edge of the wood.
‘W-h-e-r-e are you all going?’ Tawny Owl hooted from above. He had sailed silently over them, unseen and unheard because of his special feathers.
‘Oh, Owl, you startled us,’ Badger said, looking up. ‘We’re going to the beach. We made a new fishing pool last night and we’re hoping for a fish supper.’
Owl landed neatly on a sycamore tree branch and tucked his wings tidily down by his side. ‘Does Crab know?’ he asked, putting his head on one side and blinking hard.
‘Not sure,’ Badger replied a bit uncomfortably.
‘Only asked because it’s his beach, you know. We might not like it if he built a nest in a tree or dug a sett in the wood and didn’t ask us first.’ Owl was apt to be a bit bossy.
‘Mmm,’ Badger glanced at Fox but he was already skidding and sliding over the big slippery boulders at the top of the beach, and hadn’t heard. Mrs B and the twins were following Fox and were also out of earshot, to Badger’s relief.
‘I’d better come, too, then.’ Owl said firmly. ‘Just to act as umpire if there’s trouble.’
Badger hurried to catch up the others and Owl swooped above them all. They reached the pool and stood looking down into the water. Owl perched above them on Cormorant’s rock.
Moon was shining into the pool and all they could see was her smiling face reflecting at them from the water. They couldn’t see any fish.
‘Oh dear,’ Badger said in a disappointed voice, ‘I don’t think there’re any fish after all.’
Everyone looked very sad.
‘Ah, well,’ said Fox. ‘I’m off then.’ He jumped down from the edge of the pool and began to trot across the beach towards the wood.
‘We’re hungry,’ moaned the twins.
‘Can’t be helped,’ said Mrs B, ‘Home we go,’ and she and the twins began to follow Fox.
Tawny Owl hopped closer to the water and looked carefully into the pool. His beak was almost touching the water. There
were ripples on the surface of the pool.
‘There’s something in there, I think,’ he said. The ripples on the pool got bigger and bigger and suddenly Crab put his head out of the water.
‘Hello, Owl. Hello, Badger,’ he said a bit smugly. ‘Actually, there are quite a lot of fish in here. You might like to call the others back.’ He paused for a moment, then swivelled both eyes to look at Badger, ‘I could help you catch them, if you want.’
‘Thank you, Crab,’ Badger said humbly.
Owl rose into the air and flew across the beach to tell Fox and Mrs B to come back.
‘Crab,’ Badger said very quietly while the others were out of earshot, ‘we made the pool for you, too, and I’m really sorry I was rude to you. It was so kind of you to rescue me. I’m really very grateful.’ He looked sideways at Crab to see if it was going to be all right.
‘My pleasure,’ Crab said graciously. He was already quite full of shrimps that he had caught in the new pool. He could afford to be generous. ‘Think no more of it.’ He turned on his back legs towards the pool again. ‘Now, let’s get fishing.’
Crab organised everyone, and even Fox, who didn’t like to be bossed around, did as he was told. The only one who didn’t fish was Owl, but Mrs B made sure he had a fair share of the supper. The twins thought fishing was their new best thing and said they wanted to come to the beach every night from now on.
There were enough fish for everyone to have a good supper, and plenty more shrimps for Crab.
All the animals sat round the pool when it was finally empty of fish and cleaned their faces and their paws, except Owl, who preened his feathers with his beak, and Crab who didn’t bother to clean himself at all. Mrs B supervised the twins and gave them a helping paw to remove the last of the fish scales from their noses.
It was quiet for a few minutes and Moon shone down happily.
After a little while Badger got slowly to his feet.
Badger and Crab and the Flood Page 3
