Paw Prints in the Snow (5 page)

‘I wish I was staying too,’ Binti said. ‘This looks really cosy.’

‘Ah, the trials of being a highly sought-after wildlife vet,’ sighed Peter dramatically. ‘You miss out on so much.’

As soon as they were all set up, Binti and Iona departed for the park headquarters.

‘And now the wicked father has been left to terrorise his poor children!’ Peter adopted a witch’s cackle.

‘What are we supposed to do all evening?’ Aesha pouted.

‘You’re going to sweep and clean and wash and cook and pander to your wicked father’s every need. In between we’ll eat a delicious meal and watch the sun go down.’

‘It’s nearly gone now, Dad,’ said Joe, peering out through the window.

‘We’d better go out and catch it quickly then,’ said Peter. ‘Wrap up warm.’ He grabbed his coat and camera and headed for the door. Joe followed suit, with Aesha a little way behind.

The beach was made up of tiny pebbles. The sea was calm and reflected the red rays from the fading sun. All that could be heard were the gentle lapping of waves and a few strains of birdsong from the forest behind.

‘Ah, peace!’ Peter whispered, raising his camera to film the dusky sky and the reddening sea.

Joe faced in the opposite direction to take a shot of the moon hovering over the tops of the trees. As he lowered his camera, Aesha suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

‘Shhh!’ she said. ‘Don’t move. Look, Dad – over there!’

She was pointing towards a group of rocks a little distance away near the water’s edge. A small fat animal with short legs and a round face was dipping its snout into a rock pool.

‘What is it?’ asked Joe. ‘It looks like a sort of dog.’

Peter peered through the zoom lens of his camera. ‘I know exactly what that is,’ he said. ‘It’s a raccoon dog. Funny wee thing – it looks as if it’s been put together out of the scraps left over from other creatures.’

‘Is it dangerous?’ asked Aesha.

‘Only if you’re a rodent or a fish,’ her father replied. He took several photographs of the raccoon dog, before something frightened it and it scuttled away.

Joe was happy that they’d ended the day seeing an animal he hadn’t even heard of before. It had been a great day, he decided, and Peter brought it to a close by dishing up a tasty dinner, which they ate by candlelight when the electricity cut out.

Chapter 11

‘Dad! Come quickly, Dad!’ Joe rushed back into the cabin. ‘Come and look!’

It was early the next morning. Joe had gone to fetch logs for the furnace, which was burning low. It had snowed during the night and a light covering clung to the beach.

‘What is it, Joe?’ Peter appeared from his bedroom, yawning and shivering. ‘Close that door – you’re letting all the heat out.’

‘Come and see,’ Joe insisted.

‘It had better be good,’ Peter warned. ‘I was having a wonderful dream about bumping into a bear and being invited back to his den for bangers and mash.’

‘It is good. Hurry!’

As Peter put on his shoes, Aesha came out of the bedroom. She was bleary-eyed and decidedly grumpy.

‘It’s still dark,’ she said. ‘What’s all the fuss about?’

‘There’s been a tiger!’ said Joe. ‘Come and look at the tracks.’

Peter followed him out of the cabin. A trail of prints ran from left to right, a sign that the animal that made them had stopped close to the cabin, perhaps to scratch itself, or to sit and rest. Peter bent down to study the prints, measuring one against the palm of his hand.

‘Well!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’d say these were made by quite a large pussy cat.’

‘Come inside and shut the door then!’ cried Aesha. ‘He might be waiting, ready to pounce!’

‘Don’t worry, my princess,’ said Peter. ‘The prints go off into the distance. That tiger has gone somewhere else for breakfast.’

‘I can’t believe a tiger passed that close to us and we didn’t see it,’ said Joe. He was thrilled at his find, but cross that he hadn’t been looking out of the window at the right time.

‘We’ll ask it to wear a bell around its neck next time, shall we?’ joked his father.

‘How can you stand there so calmly?’ Aesha demanded.

‘Don’t worry – it’s extremely rare for a tiger to attack a human,’ said Peter. ‘When it does happen, it’s usually because the tiger has been provoked, or because injury or illness have affected its normal behaviour. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought there was any danger.’

He ushered Joe back indoors and helped him to stoke the furnace, while Aesha went back to bed.

‘Has that made your day?’ he asked Joe.

Joe nodded. ‘Mum and Iona will be amazed when they find out. I hope the snow doesn’t melt before they get here.’

‘As soon as it’s properly light, we’ll take some photos as proof,’ Peter promised. ‘Something arty, I think. I shall do a series called “Tiger Dawn”. If I’m lucky, the trees behind us will throw stripy shadows among the paw prints when the sun breaks through.’

‘I’ll call mine “Paw Prints in the Snow”,’ said Joe. ‘And I’m going to stay up all night tonight in case the tiger comes back. This might be one of his favourite routes.’

Peter set to work making breakfast, a hearty affair of a sort of porridge followed by cold meats, boiled eggs, cheese and black bread. Tempted by the smells, Aesha reappeared, still grumpy from being woken too early and still anxious about their close encounter with a tiger.

‘It’s what we came here for, isn’t it?’ said Joe.

‘I’m not fetching the logs tonight,’ she stated firmly.

‘You’re scarier than the tiger.’ Joe grinned at her, but she wasn’t to be placated.

By the time Binti and Iona arrived in the middle of the morning, Joe and Peter had spent an hour or more wandering up and down the beach, following the trail of paw prints and taking photographs. Drawn by curiosity, Aesha had eventually joined them, though never straying too far from the cabin.

‘You can even see where the claws are,’ Joe said, delighted with his photographs.

Iona confirmed that the prints had been made by a male tiger and she was as excited as Joe at seeing them. ‘If only he’d left some scat, we might have been able to identify him, but I suspect it was Misha. We’ve found evidence of him in this area before.’

Iona took a number of photographs herself and measured some of the paw prints, then announced that on the way back to Lazo Village they would drive to two of the camera traps to check they were functioning properly.

‘More snow is forecast,’ she explained, ‘so I think it will be better for you to be in the village tonight rather than out here.’

Joe couldn’t help but show his disappointment.

‘I think we’ve been incredibly lucky so far,’ Peter said, putting his arm around his shoulders. ‘We’ve seen more than anyone could have expected.’

‘I agree,’ added Iona, ‘and you never know what the camera traps might reveal.’

Chapter 12

They drove a long way that day, skirting the perimeter of part of the Lazovsky Nature Reserve and stopping occasionally for Iona to point out landmarks, or for Peter and Joe to take photographs. Joe was happy that they saw several deer and the tracks of a sable.

‘A sable is like a pine marten,’ Binti told him, ‘or a large ferret.’

‘There are lots in this part of the world,’ said Iona. ‘They used to be hunted in the wild for their fur, but now they’re farmed for it instead.’

Aesha pulled a face. ‘They shouldn’t be farmed for their fur, either,’ she objected. ‘It’s sick.’

‘At least it protects the species that way,’ said Iona. ‘They might have died out otherwise.’

At last, they came to the first camera trap. Iona was pleased that it was still securely tied to a tree. She sniffed one of the trees close by, which made Joe giggle.

‘Have a sniff if you want to know what tiger spray smells like.’ She grinned at him.

‘I can smell it from here,’ said Aesha.

Joe bent down and inhaled. ‘Pwah!’ he cried. ‘It stinks! Will there be photos of the tiger that did that?’

‘Maybe,’ said Iona. ‘It all depends on which direction it passed by, although the ground around the camera tree looks quite disturbed. That means it may have stayed here for a while.’

‘How does the camera work?’ asked Aesha.

‘It’s got an infrared sensor which detects body heat close by and which activates it,’ said Peter. He held his hand in front of the camera and it whirred into action.

‘This one is quite old and only takes still shots,’ said Iona. ‘Some of the newer ones take video footage.’ She opened up the camera and replaced the film.

‘Will we be able to watch you play it back?’ Joe asked.

‘We’ll be doing that tomorrow, so if you’ve got nothing better to do . . .’

‘Cool!’ said Joe.

They piled back into the jeep and proceeded to the next trap, stopping on the way for a picnic lunch by a river. Once again, there were scent markings on trees surrounding the camera, but Iona discovered that it had been knocked and wasn’t working properly. She took it down and checked it over.

‘This happens sometimes,’ she said. ‘Animals can be quite aggressive with the strange boxes they find in their environment. We’ve got films where you can see a tiger butting the camera with its head or swiping it with its paw. I wonder how much we’ll find has been shot on this film before the damage was done.’

It was already growing dark and the first snowflakes of the day were falling, so they returned to the jeep to begin the long drive back to the village.

‘Tonight we’ll eat in the café with some of the other workers, if that’s all right with you,’ Iona suggested. ‘They’d love to meet two English children and have lots of questions to ask.’

Joe settled into his seat and watched the snowflakes dancing in the headlights. They were mesmerising, and as the evening closed in he found it difficult to stay awake. His mind played back the events of the day . . .

A trail of paw prints led him through a deep dark forest, where countless eyes followed his every move and where there was nowhere to hide. A tiger loomed in the distance, walking slowly, inexorably towards him, a gentle swagger disguising its fearsome power. Joe was terrified and bewitched at the same time. He wanted to flee, but he was rooted to the spot. And then the tiger strode straight through him as though he didn’t exist.

Chapter 13

Joe really enjoyed the evening with the young vets and Nadia and the other fieldworkers. They wanted to know all about life in Britain; the weather, the food, football, school and, especially, the wildlife. They had heard that it rained all the time, that rich people lived in castles and that everybody kept cats and dogs. Joe and Aesha tried to put them right about a few things, but weren’t convinced they always made themselves understood – much to everyone’s amusement – even with Iona interpreting. Binti spoke about her local work in England as well as her international assignments, while Peter talked to them about some of the photographic projects he’d been involved in.

Joe was fascinated to hear more about the vets’ work, and quickly realised that most of the time it involved sheer hard graft. It took hours of painstaking application and concentration to collect and analyse the data required to allow reasonable assumptions to be made both about the health of the tiger population and about the reserve as a whole.

‘Once we’ve drawn conclusions from one set of results, we start the whole process again,’ said Iona. ‘Nothing stands still because the next set of data might produce different results. And all the time what we’re looking for is evidence that tiger numbers and prey numbers are stable – if not growing.’

The young vets were impressed that, in the short time Joe and Aesha had been in Russia, they had already seen tiger tracks. It made Joe feel important, and he began to hope more and more that the film they had brought back from the camera trap would contain some good shots of tigers. He went to bed that night convinced that his tiger adventure had only just begun.

The following afternoon, when they headed into the viewing room, Joe just couldn’t wait for the film to be downloaded.

‘It’s going to be so cool if there’s a tiger on there,’ he said to his mother, ‘especially if there are cubs as well.’

Binti laughed. ‘If there are, I think we’d better leave you out here as a lucky mascot!’

‘What a good idea!’ said Peter. ‘No more smelly socks at home!’

The first two images came up on-screen. They were frustratingly blank. Iona explained that the camera was deliberately aimed at the mid-chest height of an average tiger, but could be triggered by the body heat of a smaller animal that wouldn’t necessarily be within the camera’s photographic range.

The next image was an indecipherable blur of dark brown.

‘I think that might have been a wild boar in a hurry!’ Iona chuckled.

Three more blank shots were followed by a very clear side view of another wild boar – or the same one on its way back, Iona suggested. Next came pristine images of the boar’s snout, poised as though it were about to kiss the lens.

‘Yuck!’ said Aesha. ‘It looks all wet and slobbery.’