Merry Meerkat Madness. Ian Whybrow

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      “Bad luck, Dreamie!” laughed Skeema. “You’ll have to start digging all over again!”

      At that moment, Radiant trotted over, hearty and cheery as ever. “Oh, you poor, dear kits!” she cried, laughing. “Never a moment’s peace with babies, is there? Come along, Trouble! You stay with your mother!” she said with mock-firmness. “You let your cousins forage for themselves, my greedy little warthog!” With that she grabbed the little squeaker by the scruff and carried him off to join his brother and sisters in the shade some distance away.

      “Now’s your chance to tuck in, you two,” called Skeema to Mimi and Little Dream. “I’ve just had a spotted sand lizard. Yum!” He licked the juice from his lips and then hurried to the top of a Kalahari currant bush. “I can watch all round from here. Get your heads down and start digging!”

      Immediately, a shower of sand flew up below him as Little Dream and Mimi dug in and shifted twice their own weight of it in a trice. At once, two scorpions, a frill-neck, several spiders and an assassin bug were kicked out of bed.

      “I say! Well done!” cried Skeema. “You’re still clear to tuck in! Go for it!”

      Hardly had he spoken when the voice of Uncle Fearless suddenly sounded the general alarm. “WUP-WUP! ACTION STATIONS! PUFF-ADDER ON THE PROWL! TAKE COVER!”

      In a split second, the kits were deep down a bolthole. They waited, pricked up their ears, lifted their noses. As soon as they thought the coast was clear, they peeped out. There was no sign or smell of a puff-adder. Instead, they saw a sleek young fork-tailed drongo pecking away, tucking in to the last of the spiders that Little Dream and Mimi had just dug up. The little bird looked at the crestfallen kits and gave them a wink.

      “Ta very much!” he called cheekily. “Very tasty!”

      “W-where’s the snake?” asked Little Dream nervously.

      The drongo opened his beak and let out a loud HISSSSS – exactly like a striking puff-adder. Instinct made the meerkats duck for cover again, but soon, very cautiously, they could not resist looking out of the entrance of the bolthole again.

      “I did that,” said the saucy bird. “That was me! I can copy anybody. Listen…” He threw back his head and in quick succession he chattered like a frightened starling, laughed like a hyena, screamed, “Huu-eee-oh!” like a martial eagle and finally shouted, “WUP-WUP!” in a voice exactly like Uncle Fearless’s!

      “You thief! You robber!” yelled Mimi. She showed her teeth and rushed at him.

      “Hoy!” said the drongo, hopping out of the way. “Do you mind? I’m only doing what my mum and dad taught me.”

      Skeema looked at the little bird with deep admiration. What a trick! he was thinking. Just think how useful it would be to be able to do that! “He’s right. Let him be, Mimi,” said Skeema. “It’s just his nature. What’s your name, by the way?” he asked.

      “Fledgie’s me name; mimicking’s me game!” chirped the bird. “Alarm calls are my speciality! Chuck me a few more wrigglers some time and I’ll give you a lesson, mate. Uh-oh! There’s me mum calling. Sorry, got to flit. See you!” And off he flew to join his parents.

      “Brilliant!” cried Skeema.

      “It’s all right for him!” complained Mimi. “But thanks to him and those greedy babies, I’m starving and I’m thirsty! So I’m jolly well going for a drink! Goodbye!” With that, she scuttled away in a huff.

      “Hang on!” called Little Dream. “It’s not safe on your own. We’ll come with you.” Tails up, he and Skeema fell in behind her at a gallop. They knew exactly where she was going. She was heading for the farm where the Tick-tocks lived. Not that the kits actually thought of it as a farm. They had no idea what a farm was, but being naturally inquisitive they had discovered this place very shortly after the Really Mads moved into their new burrow.

      To them, the farm was the strange and thrilling territory of an interesting tribe of Blah-blahs. Other Blah-blahs lived in pointy mounds that flapped in the wind, but these seemed to have built themselves a great white lump of an upside-down burrow, bigger and harder than a giant termite-heap. There was a round fire-pit in front of the ‘burrow’ that alarmed the kits. But in spite of their fear of the smoke and flames, they were drawn to the farm by the smell of sweet, fresh water. Meerkats mostly live without needing to drink, by sucking the juice out of their prey. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t enjoy cooling their tongues and splashing about in water when the weather is particularly hot.

      The kits had already come across a fair number of Blah-blahs in their short lives. They were mostly tall, pale, harmless creatures, who sometimes wandered across Really Mad territory on two legs calling “blah-blah-blah-blah” to each other. Like meerkats, they came from different tribes. The tribe that the kits knew best, the Click-clicks, often gave them bits of boiled egg and let them stand on their heads. They held strange eye-protectors in front of their faces, and they sometimes went click-click.

      Sometimes other small mobs of visiting Blah-blahs hurried across the Really Mads’ territory, making a lot of noise. There were the Oolooks and the Hurry-ups and the Whevubins, all named by Uncle after the calls they used. They were often very frightened of the local animals and hid from them in their mobile escape tunnels that ran very fast on spinners.

      As it happened, the family on the farm were not pale like these creatures; these were Zulu people. The kits knew them as the Tick-tocks because that’s how the Zulu language sounded to them, with all its tick-tocking of tongues. Generally, the Tick-tocks were gentle and not threatening, moving about their territory calmly and gracefully on their two legs, though they did keep a mobile escape tunnel near their main burrow – a very big and noisy and smoky one that roared vroom-vroom!

      The kits loved to sneak on to the farm, partly to enjoy the water and partly to test their courage. To reach the water needed nerve and skill, for there were delicious dangers and challenges everywhere.

      One was the wire fence stretched round the place, which glittered and whistled in the wind. The clumps of fur and feathers that were caught in it warned them just how nasty it could be. But the wire didn’t put Mimi off. “I’m not scared one bit!” she had scoffed when she first set eyes on it. “I can just burrow underneath. And look! This is easy-squeezy. Somebody’s started digging here already!”

      Under she went with her brothers following close behind, passing back the dug-out sand, no problem at all. Even so, to reach the water they still had to get past some strange beasts that they hadn’t come across before. These bearded, woolly creatures trampled about everywhere inside the fence. They had mad eyes and sharp horns, but luckily, as the kits soon discovered, they were harmless. They seemed quite happy just to get their heads down and nibble and bleat, “Baaaa… Baaah!”

      There СКАЧАТЬ