A Deer Called Dotty

by Helen Peters

  “Because Jasmine’s fawn has disappeared,” said Tom, “and dogs attack fawns.”

  “That’s not my problem,” said Bella. “She should look after her fawn better.”

  “Just call him, will you?” said Tom, his voice rising in anger. “You don’t want him to kill Dotty, do you?”

  Jasmine heard a swishing in the grass. Rupert raced past her, barking with excitement. Her stomach clenched in horror. She was about to storm over and shout at Bella when she saw a flash of black and white. Sky was streaking up the field towards the wood.

  “Sky!” called Ella. “Come back!”

  “Sky!” called Jasmine. “Come here!”

  But Sky, who was normally so obedient to Jasmine, totally ignored her. Reaching the top of the meadow, he leapt over the fence into the wood. Jasmine heard the crackling of undergrowth and a volley of sharp barks. What was he doing?

  “Rupert!” called Bella. Finally!

  Tom sprinted back across the meadow. Ella came running through the gateway from the field below, her eyes wide with panic.

  Sky ran up to Jasmine and sat at her feet, licking her hand adoringly.

  “Oh, there you are,” panted Ella. “Naughty dog. Why did you run off like that?”

  She bent down and clipped his lead on. When she straightened up again, she looked at Tom and Jasmine and frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” Then she looked down at Jasmine’s feet. “Where’s Dotty?”

  “She’s disappeared,” said Jasmine despairingly. “She just … disappeared. One minute she was there and the next she just wasn’t.”

  “She can’t have gone far,” said Ella. “I’ll help you look.”

  “No,” said Jasmine. “You need to take Sky home. Dotty won’t come out if there are dogs nearby.”

  “Wait,” said Ella, looking alarmed. “You don’t think… Sky wouldn’t have chased Dotty, would he?”

  “Of course he wouldn’t,” said Jasmine hotly. “Sky wouldn’t do anything like that. But Dotty’s instinct is to avoid dogs, so she’ll hide until she knows she’s safe to come out.”

  “OK,” said Ella, but she still looked worried. “I hope you find her soon. Come on, Sky. We’re going home.”

  Jasmine’s stomach was a mass of knots. She looked across the field and saw Bella heading back towards the lane, with Rupert on his lead again.

  “Phew,” said Tom. “Both dogs gone. Dotty should come when we call her now.”

  “Unless that horrible dog attacked her,” said Jasmine. “Or frightened her so much she’s run for miles. Or scared her to death,” she added with a shudder.

  “I bet she’s just been lying still in the long grass, waiting for the dogs to leave,” said Tom. “Come on. I’ll search this side of the field and you do that side.”

  They set off, both of them whistling to Dotty as they walked. Jasmine strained her ears for the sound of Dotty’s answering call. Her heart leapt at every high-pitched squeak she heard, only to sink when she heard it again and realised it was a bird.

  By the time she and Tom met at the hedge on the other side of the meadow, Jasmine was close to tears. Tom looked really worried too.

  “I don’t think she’s in this field,” he said. “She’d definitely have come back by now.”

  “Unless she’s…” began Jasmine. But she couldn’t bear to finish the sentence.

  “The dogs both came from that direction,” Tom said, pointing towards the farmyard. “So maybe Dotty ran into the wood to get away from them.”

  Jasmine’s heart sank even further. “How will we ever find her in there?”

  “We’ll just have to keep walking and calling and looking,” said Tom. “At least it will be light for another couple of hours.”

  And then what? thought Jasmine. But she kept her gloomy thoughts to herself and followed Tom into the wood.

  The woodland floor was covered in bracken and brambles. Jasmine and Tom were wearing shorts, so their legs were soon criss-crossed with scratches and dotted with stings. Doggedly they walked deeper into the wood, several metres apart, their eyes constantly scanning the undergrowth as they whistled.

  And then Jasmine heard something. A little high-pitched squeak.

  She froze, hardly daring to believe her ears. Could that be Dotty, or was it just a bird again?

  Tom was rustling through the undergrowth. Jasmine called to him as quietly as she could. He turned and she put her finger to her lips. He stood completely still. Jasmine whistled.

  And there it was again. That tiny high-pitched squeak. Jasmine’s heart leapt with joy and her face broke into an enormous smile. She looked at Tom and saw that he was grinning too.

  “Where’s it coming from?” he mouthed.

  Jasmine whistled again. She frowned in concentration as she listened to the answering squeak. Then she pointed back to the edge of the wood.

  “I think she’s over there,” she said.

  They made their way towards the sound, their eyes scanning every inch of the ground.

  Jasmine’s stomach flipped as she saw a patch of speckled brown and white nestled in the roots of a tree. She hurried over to it, only to find a pile of dead leaves.

  Fear gripped her heart. Why wasn’t Dotty running towards her? What had happened to her?

  She whistled again. The answering squeak was very close now. Jasmine climbed over a fallen tree trunk that lay near the fence at the edge of the wood.

  She gasped in delight. There was the little deer, curled up in a patch of brambles, her bright eyes gazing straight at Jasmine.

  “Oh, Dotty! You’re here!”

  As Jasmine ran towards her, Dotty squeaked and scrabbled about, trying to stand up.

  Why couldn’t she stand? What had happened to her?

  Jasmine knelt beside the fawn, ignoring the thorns that pierced her knees. Dotty was trembling and shivering, and her heartbeat was very fast.

  “Oh, Dotty, are you OK? What happened? It’s all right, I’m here. You’re safe now.”

  She continued to speak reassuringly, stroking Dotty and examining her anxiously. She couldn’t see anything wrong with her. But now the fawn tried to heave herself to her feet again, and again she sank back on the ground with a squeak. There was definitely something wrong. But what?

  Very gently, Jasmine took hold of the little deer around her middle and lifted her to her feet. Tom was standing on Dotty’s other side. He gasped.

  “What?” asked Jasmine.

  “Look!” said Tom.

  Jasmine turned the fawn around, and as she saw it she cried out. Blood was pouring from a gaping wound near the top of her right hind leg.

  “Oh, no!” cried Jasmine. “Oh, Dotty!”

  Gingerly, so as not to cause the fawn any more pain than necessary, Jasmine lifted her up. Tom took off his jumper and tucked it around her.

  “Let’s get her home,” said Jasmine. “Mum needs to treat her.”

  “What if she’s out?” asked Tom.

  “She’s not on call this weekend. She should be home. Can you phone and tell her what’s happened? Then she can get everything ready.”

  Mum was waiting in the scullery. She looked tense and anxious.

  “Lay her down there so I can examine her,” she said, indicating the towel spread out on the work surface.

  Tom helped Jasmine to lie the little fawn down. Dotty lay completely still and quiet, her big eyes open wide.

  Mum sucked in her breath as she saw the wound. “That’s a nasty bite,” she said.

  “A bite?” said Jasmine. “From a dog?”

  “It looks like it,” said Nadia. “I’ll give her an antibiotic shot first, and then we’ll clean it up.”

  Fury surged through Jasmine. Bella’s dog had done this!

  She was about to let out a torrent of anger, but then she stopped herself. Dotty was suffering from pain and shock. She needed Jasmine to be calm and comforting, not tense and angry.

  So Jasmine didn’t let herself think about what might
have caused the injury. Instead, she stroked the little fawn, looking into her wide-open eyes and murmuring comforting words, while Mum fetched the bottle of antibiotic, took a fresh syringe out of its packaging and injected Dotty at the top of her other hind leg, beside the tail. Dotty didn’t react as the antibiotic went in, but she was still cold and trembling and her heartbeat felt much too fast.

  “Will she be all right?” asked Jasmine, trying to stop herself from panicking. Animals could die of shock, especially small prey animals.

  “I’m sure she will be,” said Mum, but she didn’t sound convincing. “I’m going to give her a painkiller and then we’ll clean up the wound. Can you fetch my clippers, please? And can you put some antiseptic in a bowl, and get the cotton wool balls too.”

  She gave Dotty an injection of painkiller while Jasmine poured some pink antiseptic liquid into a plastic bowl. She brought it to her mum with the bag of cotton wool balls. Tom fetched the clippers and handed them to Nadia.

  “That’s a deep wound,” said Nadia, as she shaved off the fur around the bite. “It’s gone right through to the bone.”

  Jasmine peered at the gaping hole and gasped when she saw the white bone beneath the flesh.

  “Will it heal?” asked Tom. “Will her leg be OK?”

  “I can’t say yet,” said Nadia. “We’ll just have to do the best we can.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Jasmine, her voice rising in alarm. “Do you mean she might lose her leg?”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Nadia.

  She dipped a cotton wool ball into the liquid and began to clean the wound, using a fresh ball for each stroke. Once the wound was completely clean, she started to feel carefully along Dotty’s leg. When she got to the thin part below the knee, she stopped and frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Jasmine.

  “I’m afraid her bone’s broken,” Mum said. “Quite badly broken, by the feel of it.”

  “Oh, no!” said Jasmine. “Oh, poor Dotty!”

  “She was next to the fence when we found her,” said Tom. “Maybe she tried to jump over it and hit her leg on a bar.”

  “She could well have done,” said Mum. She was still feeling gently round the leg, just above the hoof. Tom and Jasmine waited anxiously.

  Eventually, Mum straightened up and looked at Jasmine. “I’m going to take her into the surgery,” she said.

  Jasmine turned cold with fear. “What are you going to do?” she asked. Her voice came out squeaky with panic.

  “I need to give her an X-ray,” said Mum. “And then we’ll see what has to be done.”

  At the surgery, Jasmine carried Dotty’s cage into the treatment room, where Mum laid her carefully on the table. Linda, the head nurse, came in to assist her.

  “I need you two to leave the room while we do the X-ray,” Nadia said to the children. “It’s standard practice,” she explained to Tom. “So you’re not exposed to radiation.”

  Tom and Jasmine hovered anxiously outside the door. They didn’t speak, or even look at each other. They just waited.

  Eventually, Linda called them back in. Dotty was lying motionless on the table. Nadia was standing at her computer screen, which showed a black-and-white image. She turned to look at the children.

  “Here’s the X-ray of her leg,” she said. “You can see how badly broken it is below the knee.”

  Jasmine looked in silent misery at the picture of the shattered bone.

  “And also,” said Nadia, bringing up another image, “the force of the bite has fractured her thigh bone too.”

  Jasmine’s throat tightened painfully. She couldn’t speak.

  It was Tom who asked the question.

  “What’s going to happen to her?”

  Mum looked at them seriously before she spoke.

  “There’s only one thing we can do, I’m afraid. If we’re going to have any chance of saving her life, we need to amputate the leg.”

  Jasmine’s heart felt sick and heavy. Her head hurt with the effort of trying not to picture what Dotty was about to go through. She was furious with herself. This was all her fault. How had she lost sight of her like that? How could she have been so careless?

  Nadia insisted that Jasmine and Tom went home while she performed the surgery.

  “There’s no point in you staying,” she said when Jasmine protested. “She’ll be under general anaesthetic, so she’ll be asleep the whole time. And you’ve got school in the morning. You need to get some rest.”

  Dad came to collect them. Nobody said much on the way home, but during the journey Jasmine’s guilt and misery gradually turned to rage.

  “Do you have any idea how it happened?” Dad asked as they walked into the kitchen.

  “It was Bella Bradley and her horrible dog,” Jasmine said. “He was off the lead in the field where we were walking Dotty. Tom told her to put him on a lead and she just argued, and then I saw him running towards the wood, barking and barking, and then we found Dotty with that awful bite. You need to phone the police, Dad. Phone them right now.”

  “Did you actually see Bella’s dog attack Dotty?” asked Dad.

  “No, but it was obviously him.”

  “Did you see any other animals around?” asked Dad. “A fox, or any other dogs?”

  “Well,” said Tom, glancing nervously at Jasmine. “Ella was walking Sky, and he was off the lead too.”

  Dad frowned. “Sky was there?”

  “That’s nothing to do with it,” said Jasmine. “Sky would never hurt Dotty.”

  “What?” said a voice behind them. “What about Sky and Dotty?”

  They all looked round. Jasmine hadn’t heard Ella come into the kitchen.

  In the awkward silence that followed, Ella said,

  “What’s happened? Where’s Dotty?” A lump came into Jasmine’s throat. Tom looked at the ground.

  “Dotty was bitten while Tom and Jasmine were walking her,” said Dad.

  Ella looked horror-stricken. “Bitten? By Sky?”

  “No!” said Jasmine. “Sky would never do that. He’s never attacked anyone.”

  “He bit you once,” said Dad.

  “When he was terrified! He wasn’t frightened today, was he? And we know Bella’s dog’s a murderer. We saw him kill a duck for no reason at all. He just likes killing. He should be put down. You need to call the police, Dad.”

  “Killing?” cried Ella. “What do you mean? Where’s Dotty?”

  “She’s at the surgery,” said Dad. “Her leg was badly damaged. Mum’s having to amputate it, I’m afraid.”

  “No!” wailed Ella. “Oh, no, poor Dotty!”

  “I’m sure she’ll be all right,” said Dad. “Mum’s a brilliant surgeon, and there are plenty of deer who’ve lost a leg and manage with three.”

  “But it’s all my fault,” said Ella. “I didn’t have Sky under control. I killed Dotty’s mother and now I’ve hurt Dotty.”

  And she burst into tears and ran from the room.

  “That’s all we need,” said Dad. “She’s only just recovering from last time.”

  “It wasn’t anything to do with her,” said Jasmine. “I don’t know why you didn’t tell her that. It was obviously Bella’s dog.”

  “Jasmine, you can’t go around accusing people’s dogs without any evidence,” said Dad.

  Jasmine stared at him in outrage. “So you’re just going to let Bella and her horrible dog get away with this? You’re going to do nothing and let him go around killing as many animals as he wants to?”

  “Jasmine, calm down,” said Dad.

  “No!” shouted Jasmine. “I won’t calm down! And if you won’t do anything about it, then I will. You wait until I see Bella Bradley in the morning. I’ll tell her exactly what her horrible dog did, and then I’ll report her to the police. And you can’t stop me.”

  Mum phoned as soon as the operation was over.

  “It all went well,” she told Jasmine. “Dotty’s still asleep fr
om the anaesthetic, so she’ll stay at the surgery overnight. We’ve moved her into a comfortable cage, and Linda’s on night duty, so she’ll be keeping watch over her.”

  Jasmine lay awake for hours that night, far too worried and angry to go to sleep. As soon as she woke on Monday morning, all the previous night’s emotions flooded back into her head. She scrambled out of bed and ran downstairs.

  Nadia looked up from her cup of tea as Jasmine walked into the kitchen. “Linda just phoned,” she said. “Dotty’s woken up, and she seems well and comfortable.”

  “Can we go and see her now?”

  “No,” said Mum. “There’s no time before school. I’ll bring her home after work. Don’t worry, she’ll be well looked after. The nurses will dote on her.”

  Jasmine could tell there was no point arguing. She went to fetch the cereal from the cupboard.

  “Oh, and, Jasmine?” said Mum.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t do anything silly at school, will you? You have no proof that it was Bella’s dog that attacked Dotty. It sounds as though it could just as easily have been Sky. So don’t go accusing Bella of anything, will you?”

  Jasmine didn’t reply. There was no way she was going to let Bella get away with this.

  You just wait, Bella Bradley, she thought. You just wait.

  Jasmine arrived in the playground just before school started. She spotted Bella immediately, chatting and laughing with a group of other girls. Jasmine strode towards her. She was vaguely aware that Tom was trying to say something, but she didn’t hear the words. Nothing existed in her world right then except her boiling rage, her injured fawn and Bella’s smug face.

  One of Bella’s friends nudged her as Jasmine drew near. Bella turned, and she and Jasmine stood face to face.

  “How dare you!” shouted Jasmine. “How dare you let your dog loose to attack my fawn?”

  “Don’t accuse my dog of stuff he didn’t do,” said Bella. “I could see him all the time. He didn’t go anywhere near your stupid fawn.”