Catch That Bat! (2 page)

‘Wow,’ said Tom again. ‘And is everything green for them as well?’

‘No, that’s just those goggles,’ said his mum with a smile.

‘It must be my turn now,’ complained Sophie.

Mrs Nightingale nodded. ‘Give them to your sister, Tom.’

Tom groaned and took the helmet off.

Sophie handed Eric to her mother and fastened the helmet chinstrap. Mrs Nightingale returned the rat to his cage and then came back to the living room.

Tom had been thinking.

‘I wish I was a nocturnal animal,’ he said.

‘Hang on,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘Not all nocturnal animals have adapted like owls. Think about bats or moles. Their vision has got worse, not better. Mind you, their other senses have developed to compensate.’

‘Oh yeah, Grandad said that,’ Tom said.

‘Moles are my favourite,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘They have an amazing sense of touch. They can sense the tiniest vibration in the soil around them.’

‘Cool,’ said Tom. ‘Being a human is rubbish at night-time, that’s for sure.’

‘Mum, look, over there!’ Sophie said, pointing at the window and squinting through the goggles at the other side of the canal.

‘We can’t see anything, can we?’ Tom said, rolling his eyes.

Sophie pulled off the helmet and handed it to her mother.

‘Something’s fallen in the canal and it can’t get out,’ Sophie said. ‘It looks like a puppy.’

Mrs Nightingale looked through the binoculars. She saw a small mammal, scrabbling at the sides of the canal, desperate to find a foothold in the brickwork.

‘It’s a young fox,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘It must have misjudged a jump. Foxes are good swimmers, but it looks like this one’s struggling.’

‘We’ve got to help it,’ said Sophie.

‘Sometimes it’s best not to interfere with nature, Sophie,’ said Mrs Nightingale.

‘But that’s your job, isn’t it?’ Sophie protested. ‘Vets interfere with nature all the time.’

‘Hmm,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘You do have a point.’

‘Cool, let’s go,’ said Tom. ‘It’s got to be better than staying here in the pitch black waiting for the telly to work. Besides, we practised moving around in the dark with Grandad and I was brilliant at it.’

Sophie had already put her coat on and was standing by the door. Mrs Nightingale blew out the candles on the table. She took a pair of torches out of a kitchen drawer and put one in her pocket. She gave the other to Sophie.

Tom had picked up the night vision goggles and was strapping them on.

‘What are you doing, Tom?’ Mrs Nightingale asked.

‘They’ll help us to see the fox,’ said Tom.

Mrs Nightingale thought for a moment. ‘Well, those goggles belong to the zoo, so you have to be very careful.’

‘Course,’ said Tom, and walked out of the door, banging the top of the helmet on the frame and knocking a pot plant off a window ledge with the binoculars.

Mrs Nightingale picked up the pieces with a sigh and ordered Rex into his basket.

Then the three of them stepped on to the towpath.

Chapter 2

Tom, Sophie and Mrs Nightingale stood next to their houseboat getting their bearings. There was no light coming from anywhere except the torches that Sophie and Mrs Nightingale were holding.

‘Let’s tell your father what we’re doing,’ Mrs Nightingale said.

Tom squinted through the night vision goggles and peered along the bank.

‘I can’t see him,’ he said. ‘I thought you said he was fiddling with the generator.’

Then they heard someone humming. The sound was coming from further along the towpath. They found their father next to one of the marina’s power points, slotting a plug into one of the spare sockets.

There was a small explosion and a puff of black smoke floated past Mr Nightingale’s face.

‘That’s the third time it’s done that,’ he said.

Mrs Nightingale told him what they were doing.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘It should all be fixed when you get back.’

Sophie was tugging at her mum’s sleeve. ‘Come on, we don’t have much time.’

Tom, Sophie and Mrs Nightingale crossed over the bridge to the other side of the canal. Mrs Nightingale and Sophie were flashing their torches on the water.

Tom adjusted the lenses on the night vision goggles and saw the fox’s head through the binoculars, bobbing up and down in the water.

‘It’s still alive,’ he said.

Mrs Nightingale shone her torch into the undergrowth. ‘Let’s look for a branch or plank. Then it can climb up on to the bank.’

Sophie and Mrs Nightingale walked up the verge of the towpath, crunching through the grass and twigs.

‘It’s swimming the other way,’ Tom whispered, ‘I think it’s scared.’

Mrs Nightingale and Sophie tried to search more quietly, but it was no use – they kept making snapping and cracking noises.

‘It’s heading down the canal,’ said Tom, twisting the end of the binoculars to zoom in on the fox’s location.

The three of them began to walk quickly and quietly along the towpath, following the fox as it swam towards Camden.

‘It’s going to end up at the lock,’ Sophie whispered, ‘and then what will it do?’

They crossed back over the bridge.

‘I’ve lost it,’ Tom said.

‘Give me that helmet,’ Sophie hissed.

‘No, there it is,’ Tom said, pointing at a fork in the canal.

Sophie shone her torch on to the water and picked out a small sleek head.

‘It doesn’t know what it’s doing any more,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘It’s exhausted.’

‘Mum, can it see us? Does it have eyesight like an owl?’ Tom asked.

‘No, no,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘A fox’s vision is pretty average. It’s all about hearing.’

‘Then we’ve got to stop chasing it,’ said Tom. ‘It probably thinks we’re trying to eat it. All it can hear is Sophie clumping around in the dark.’

‘I do NOT clump!’ Sophie said.

‘We should imagine we’re the fox,’ Tom said, ‘If you were him, what would it take to get you out of the water?’

Sophie thought for a moment. ‘It needs to hear something reassuring,’ she said.

‘Hey,’ said Tom, ‘remember when we were walking down the towpath and we heard Dad humming?’

‘Yes,’ said Sophie, nodding slowly. ‘It told us it was him.’

‘Hmm, yes,’ Mrs Nightingale chipped in. ‘People often sing in the dark to let others know that they are there. They sometimes don’t even know they’re doing it.’

‘So we need to make fox noises,’ said Tom, ‘so he knows we’re friendly.’

‘OK, but what do foxes sound like?’ Sophie asked.

‘That’s easy,’ said Mrs Nightingale, and she started making a sound like a dog barking.

Then she thought for a moment. ‘Actually, that probably sounds like an older fox warning him off. A mother greeting her kit would be more like this.’ She made a low huffing noise, like an old lady getting out of breath.

Tom and Sophie copied her.

After a minute or so, they stopped to get their breath back.

Mrs Nightingale shone her torch on the canal. Tom looked through his goggles.

‘It’s sort of treading water,’ said Tom.

They starting huffing and grunting again.

‘It’s no use,’ said Tom. ‘It’s not moving any closer. And it looks like it’s getting tired.’

‘Let’s try appealing to its sense of smell,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘That’s pretty powerful too.’

‘Well, what do foxes eat, Mum?’ Sophie asked. ‘I thought it was anything and everything.’

‘It is,’ said Mrs Nightingale, ‘but they do have favourite things.’

‘Like what?’ asked Tom.

‘Small rodents,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘Mice and rats.’

‘Rats!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘Well, we’re all right then.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Mrs Nightingale.

‘Well, Sophie’s got rats, hasn’t she,’ Tom said.

‘Hang on, what are you saying?’ Sophie asked.

‘Yes, I suppose their smell would attract him,’ Mrs Nightingale agreed.

‘Wait a minute!’ Sophie exclaimed. ‘We are NOT using Eric and Ernie as BAIT.’

‘I’m not suggesting the fox actually scoffs them,’ Tom said.

‘Well, what are you saying then?’ Sophie said, with her hands on her hips.

‘I dunno,’ said Tom. ‘Maybe you could put them in the cat’s travel bag. They’d be safe and have lots of space.’

‘They’d probably quite like being out at night-time,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘Rats are nocturnal too. But it’s up to you, Sophie.’

Tom was looking at the water. ‘It’s hardly moving now. Look, you’d better decide fast. Come on, it was you that wanted to rescue it in the first place.’

‘Give me those,’ Sophie said.

She clipped on the goggles and watched the fox paddling weakly. She tried making the gruff barking noise again. The fox didn’t seem to notice.

‘OK, fine,’ said Sophie.

She ran off along the towpath.

‘Bring other food too,’ her mother called out. ‘Jam, Marmite, anything you find in the cupboard.’

‘OK!’ Sophie shouted back.

‘Is the Marmite for us?’ Tom asked. ‘All this saving animals is making me hungry.’

Mrs Nightingale kept her torch trained on Sophie’s outline on the opposite bank. She knew that Sophie would be perfectly safe in the marina, but still felt better when she could see her.

A couple of minutes later, Sophie was back. In her left hand, she held Eric and Ernie in a large carry case with a metal grille at the front. In her right, she was carrying a plastic bag full of chinking glass jars, tins and plastic tubs.