Meerkat Madness Flying High

“Good thinking, my boy!” said Uncle. “Where the great herds go, the pouncers follow, eh? Quiet, now!”

He twitched his sensitive ears in another direction. He heard parrot squawks and bird calls, the clap of storks’ bills, the chattering of monkeys in the branches overhead. A low, rasping laugh – “Herrr-harrr-ha-hah-harrrr!” – made him duck for cover. “Brown hyenas, by all that’s bullying!” he said. The kits clung to him until they felt the tension go out of him. Only then did they start to breathe again. Uncle shook himself free and – ever so cautiously – lifted his head once more and looked about him.

It isn’t easy to look around with just one eye. Fearless had to swivel his neck like an owl. An owl. Inwardly, he cursed The Silent Enemy, the eagle owl, that long ago had caught him off-guard and swept him up into the sky. Before Fearless had been able to struggle from its grip, the bird had half blinded him. Now, far off, Fearless spied a bateleur eagle circling. Another deadly foe! He muttered a low Wup! Wup! but then added softly for the benefit of the others, “As you were. It’s a long way away. Good. Stand by to surface.”

“Have the rains gone?” came impatient Mimi’s voice. “Oh, let Mimi come up and see, me, me!”

“Just keep your fur on while I run through my check list!” barked Uncle. “Now then. Sun’s up? Check! Skies blue and clear? Check. No danger up? Check. No enemies close, no runners, no creepers, no sidewinders or crawlers? Check. But dear-oh-dear!”

“What’s the matter?” called Skeema.

“You’d better come up and see for yourselves,” said Uncle with another sigh.

One by one Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream pulled themselves out of the bolthole entrance, lined up beside him and looked about. They found themselves among the roots of a clump of fever trees that rose from a high patch of rocky ground. Without a word, Skeema took sentry duty at the top of one of them. Horrified, the kits saw at once that streams were running fast into the main entrances to the burrow. A muddy lake had formed in the shallow valley where the yellow foraging-grounds once stretched out. The scrubby bushes and low thorn trees that they knew so well had disappeared under deep water that stretched as far as Shepherd Tree Clump.

“Gone,” muttered Uncle. “Far Burrow and all our best hunting-grounds!”

“Take cover!” Skeema called suddenly and Uncle and Mimi and Little Dream threw themselves flat on the damp and still chilly sand. The cloudless blue sky had turned pink and now began to gabble and honk.

“What’s happening, Uncle?” squeaked Little Dream. “Is it an attack?”

“Nothing of the sort,” snorted Uncle. “Just a bunch of flamingos, that’s all. Quite a sight, eh? They’re heading for The Great Salt Pan to feed. They won’t harm us. Come along now, let’s get on with Warm-up.”

Uncle stood tall, placed his paws under his (rather fat) belly and heaved his warming-pad up towards the rising sun. “One-two-three… HUP!” he cried, as he did first thing every suntime. Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream copied him, pretending that their own tummies were as big and round as Uncle’s and echoed his “One-two-three… HUP!” as, grinning round at each other, they hoisted them high. Sharing a joke always helps when things get tough.

They stood quietly like that, watching the thousands of rosy flamingos flapping busily onward above them, stretching their long necks towards their feeding-grounds.

“I wish I could fly,” said Little Dream, pretty much to himself. “Last night I dreamed about flying. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to lift yourself up and up… higher than the highest tree in the Upworld?”

“And what would you do then?” asked Uncle affectionately. In the early morning sunlight, he felt some of his customary vim and vigour swelling in him, like the sweet juice that plumps up a wild tomato.

“I would look for Mama,” said Little Dream softly. “And when I found her, I would fly down and lead her home.”

Uncle was so touched, he had to clear his throat. “Hurrumph! Lead her home, you say?”

He didn’t really see how his sister, Fragrant, the kits’ mother, could possibly be alive. The night she had gone missing, there had been wild dogs on the loose. No one could seriously believe that a lone meerkat could survive a pack of hungry Painted Ones on the prowl. However, he felt sure that this was not the time to say so. The Really Mad Mob had come very close to losing everything dear to them, so his duty as king at the moment was, as he saw it, to keep everyone’s spirits up.

“In that case,” he added gently, “we shall just have to make sure we build a splendid new one, shan’t we? Meanwhile, we all know what we must do at this present moment, which is…?”

“Get some food inside us and Crack On!” came the resounding reply.

Crack On is the Meerkat Way.

Chapter 3 (#u90e703f9-4a83-5909-86d1-d8d9e668fd3c)

And even as the meerkat breakfast-party cracked on, some miles away, a two-legged creature had decided that soon he would crack on, too.

A boy, we would call him. And let’s call him Shadow because his apricot skin blended with the colours of the shady grove of trees in the centre of which he stooped, gathering up his things.

For some weeks he had wandered alone across the vast, scorching centre of the Kalahari Desert.It was a test of how strong he was in body and in spirit. Like all the boys of his tribe, he had to go by himself and face sandstorms and hunger and thirst and treacherous paths and mirages. He had been stalked by wildcats and mobbed by packs of dancing jackals. He had leaped over lunging snakes and felt the sting of porcupine quills.So far, he had come through every test bravely and confidently. And without a map or a companion or any sort of help, he had found his way to an ancient oasis. The Really Mads called the place Green Island.

On his walkabout, Shadow had witnessed some strange and wonderful things and in his head he was already turning them into stories to tell round the fire when he returned home to his family. His favourites were about the bravery of three little meerkat kits. They were so small that they could have stood altogether in the palms of his hands. Yet by working together, they had saved a lion cub who was helpless, lost and starving. And when the cub was captured by hunters, they had set him free.

That was the story he most wanted to tell.

“Soon,” he told himself. “I must go home soon.”

Chapter 4 (#u90e703f9-4a83-5909-86d1-d8d9e668fd3c)

Radiant thoroughly enjoyed the snacks they brought back to the Whiffy Old Scrape for her and they all sat together, happily munching in the sunshine.

“If you haven’t sucked the juice out of a frill-necked lizard, you haven’t lived!” said Skeema with a satisfied sigh as he smacked his lips.

Uncle would have agreed, only he had just bitten the head off a barking gecko and he thought it would set a bad example if he talked with his mouth full.

“A feast, for me, for Mimi!” cried his niece. Her sharp claws had swept aside a mound of damp sand to reveal a clutch of wiggling white larvae. She gobbled them up like sweets.

“Oh, do hurry up, Mimi!” squeaked Little Dream, who was on top of a drie doring bush taking his turn as look-out. “It’s way past time for you to take over from me!” He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his tired eyes, but only for a moment. Unlike most meerkats, he had been born without the dark eye-patches that protect the sky-watcher from the dazzling rays of the desert sun. Many a suntime ago, he had dug a Safari-man action-doll out of the sand near the pointy mounds where the Blah-blahs camped – far away in the kingdom of the Sharpeyes. He simply could not have managed without Safari-man’s cool-looking eye-wear. And Uncle felt the same about Safari-man’s stylish pith helmet and safari scarf: he never went anywhere without them.

“Skeema!” said Uncle. “You’re pretty good at the scorpion dance these days! Show the babies how it’s done.”

“Skeema dance, Skeema dance,” chirped the babies, clambering over each other to get a front-row seat.

Skeema gave a very nice demonstration of sniffing, listening, turning stones, rapidly moving the sand and… turning up… a scorpion!

“Nice work, Skeema. Now, babies, watch how he dances him. That’s it, Skeema, dart and dodge. Quick and tricky or he’ll sting your nose!

Forward-forward – JUMP!

In-in – and – BACK!

You see, Zora? Watch Skeema, Quickpaws. Up comes the sting and WHOOPS! – mind-yer-nose! And

Up comes the sting and WHOOPS! – missed-again! And

Up comes the sting andBITE-it-right-off! Hooray! Well danced, Skeema! Now give Bundle a taste of what you caught. Nice, Bundle? Yum-yum-scrummy, eh? Just wait your turn, Trouble. Trouble! Don’t throw sand on Bundle. TROUBLE! Now look. You’ve buried him! You’ve made him cough. That’s not nice, is it? No, and it’s not funny!”