Wild Stories Read online

  Delilah on the other hand had been nothing but trouble since the day she’d hatched. Within a week she had eaten all her brothers and sisters and her mother. She was as rude and vicious as she could be to everyone. If she couldn’t eat them she swore at them. Something had to be done.

  ‘Maybe we could set fire to her web while she’s asleep,’ suggested Sybil.

  ‘Only humans can do that,’ said Norma.

  ‘Maybe we could get a wasp to sting her,’ said Sybil.

  ‘Do you want to go and ask one?’ asked Norma. Sibyl didn’t. She knew that wasps were one of the spiders’ greatest enemies.

  ‘Well, we’ve got to do something,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Norma. ‘I have a plan.’

  Norma’s plan was the sort of plan that you make up as you go along. She knew what she wanted to do but she wasn’t quite sure how to do it.

  Every night under cover of darkness, all the spiders from the upstairs rooms built a huge web across the other side of the room from Delilah. Delilah could see it growing each day but she was far too important to take any interest in it. She was more concerned with her dinner. Since she had eaten the two mosquitos three days before she hadn’t caught a single thing and was beginning to feel hungry. She slid down to the floor and stole a flea from Sybil’s web and when Sybil protested she ate her.

  ‘Not only are spiders stupid,’ she said, ‘they taste rotten.’ The other spiders said nothing. Across the room they hid under their gigantic web and waited.

  In the next room there was a broken window that had been covered up with cardboard. The spiders chewed at the sticky tape until the cardboard fell away. A blast of cold air blew into the room and ten minutes later two huge flies came through the hole and flew straight into the trap the spiders had woven behind it. That night the spiders carried the two flies up into the giant web and wrapped them up just enough to stop them escaping but not to stop them buzzing loudly.

  Across the room Delilah woke up and heard the imprisoned flies. She could see them right in the middle of the web the stupid spiders had made and her mouth started watering. She scuttled round the wall and out along the silk rope towards the delicious feast. She was so hungry she felt quite dizzy and didn’t notice the other spiders hiding at the corners of the web with their teeth in the threads. She reached the flies and as she did so the whole web went crashing to the ground.

  Stupid spiders, thought Delilah as she ate the flies. Can’t even build a web properly.

  ‘Delilah, Delilah,’ called a voice softly from above.

  ‘Drop dead,’ snarled Delilah.

  ‘Are you enjoying your last meal?’ called the voice.

  ‘Last meal?’ laughed Delilah. ‘I’ll eat you next, idiot.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said the voice.

  Delilah looked round. Through the tangle of the web she could see the white walls of the room. There was something strange about them, though. They had become all shiny like glass. Suddenly, she realised where she was but by then it was too late. Round and round she ran but it was no use.

  ‘Bye, bye, Delilah,’ called the voice. It was Norma, sitting on the bath tap, looking down into Delilah’s prison.

  George the Millipede

  George the millipede had a terrible pain in one of his feet. It had been hurting him ever since he had tripped over a broken bottle in the front garden. For days he had slithered around with a peculiar wiggle. The other insects looked the other way when he went by so he wouldn’t see them smiling.

  ‘The trouble is,’ he complained to anyone who would listen, ‘I can’t tell which foot it is.’ With two hundred and forty feet to choose from it was hardly surprising. When you have toothache it doesn’t always hurt in the right place. George’s foot was the same. One minute he thought it was foot eighty-six on the left and the next it seemed to be foot one hundred and thirty-two on the right. Sometimes it was just behind his head and at others right down the far end.

  ‘I know,’ said his brother, Lionel. ‘If I kick all your legs really hard, when I kick the sore one it will hurt more than the others and then we’ll know which one it is.’

  Millipedes are not very bright. They are even more stupid than sheep, so George thought it seemed like a good idea.

  By the time Lionel had kicked a hundred of his legs George was beginning to wonder if it had been such a good idea after all. His eyes were watering and every part of him felt sore. Lionel was so exhausted he could hardly stand and was weaving about the lawn like a drunk worm.

  ‘We can’t give up now,’ he said and stupid George agreed.

  ‘Ow, ouch, ow, ouch,’ he cried as Lionel worked his way down his side. And then at last he cried: ‘OWWW!’

  ‘That’s it,’ cried Lionel. ‘That’s the one.’ He ran off to get a piece of dock leaf, but when he got back he had lost his place and had to kick George another twenty times until he found it again.

  ‘Ohh, that feels good,’ sighed George as he wriggled his bad foot into the dock leaf and limped home.

  ‘Why didn’t you just rub all your feet into the leaf?’ said George’s mother, who wasn’t as stupid as her two sons. ‘That would’ve cured it.’

  George went bright red and spun round to catch his brother, but Lionel had slipped away across the dandelions.

  Barry the Hedgehog

  Across the lawn behind the old apple trees stood a wooden shed full of lawnmowers and broken deckchairs. Inside the shed there were cobwebs and dust and the air smelt of oily rags and dried grass. There was a wooden floor that groaned and creaked when anyone walked on it, and under the floor, snuggled into the warm dry earth, lived a family of hedgehogs.

  For as long as anyone could remember they had lived there, sheltered from the wind and rain in soft dark nests of grass and newspapers.

  Every spring, as the days grew brighter and warmer, they woke from their long sleep. They yawned and stretched and staggered out into the twilight to spend the summer out in the garden.

  But now it was winter and time to rest. The leaves had fallen in golden piles and the shady corners where the hedgehogs had lived all summer were now open to the sky. Their hearts began to beat more slowly and their eyelids grew heavy. All round the garden they stopped what they were doing and lifted their faces to the chilly air. One by one they made their way back to the warm nest below the shed, where they curled up and fell into a deep sleep full of dreams of sunshine and soft slugs.

  ‘Come on, Barry,’ said a mother hedgehog to her young son. ‘Time for bed.’

  ‘Shan’t,’ said Barry.

  ‘Come on now, there’s a good boy.’ But he just ignored her.

  Barry had been nothing but trouble since the day he’d been born. His brothers and sisters had always behaved like hedgehogs should. They snuffled noisily round the garden eating slugs and earwigs and knocking milk bottles over. Barry kept squeezing through the hedge and stealing next door’s cat food. And while everyone else slept the afternoons away under the rhubarb Barry rolled around collecting squashed plums on his prickles.

  ‘I’m not tired,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said his mother. ‘It’s half-past October. You must be tired.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ said Barry, jumping in a puddle. ‘Anyway, I think hibernating’s really silly.’

  Barry’s mother decided to leave him to it. When Barry got obstinate the best thing to do was to ignore him. She crawled under the shed and nuzzled into the nest. The air was filled with the smell of damp hedgehogs and a chorus of gentle snoring.

  I’ll fetch him later, she thought to herself, but in no time at all she was fast asleep.

  ‘I’m staying awake, me,’ said Barry to a sparrow, ‘all winter.’

  ‘Idiot,’ said the sparrow and flew off.

  Round the back of the shed was an overgrown p
ile of rubbish. At the bottom of the pile under brambles and old prams was a rusty kettle and it was there that Barry decided to live.

  ‘I’m not going back under the shed with them,’ he said, ‘not ever.’

  He collected some leaves and grass and pushed them into the kettle. He chewed up the fat worms that had been hiding under the leaves and climbed into his new home.

  ‘This is great,’ he said to himself, ‘better than that rotten shed.’

  A crowd of starlings was gathering in the trees. Hundreds of them sat in long lines on the branches and across the roof of the house getting ready to go on holiday. The air was muddled up with their endless chattering.

  ‘Oi,’ shouted Barry, sticking his head out of his new home, ‘come and see my house.’

  ‘It’s just an old kettle,’ laughed the starlings.

  ‘I’m staying awake all winter, me,’ he shouted.

  ‘Idiot,’ chorused two thousand three hundred and forty-seven starlings and flew off to warm African gardens.

  ‘Come back here and say that,’ shouted Barry when they were out of sight.

  The next few weeks were great. With all his family asleep, there was no one to tell him what to do. There was no one to tell him when to get up, no one to tell him when to sleep and no one to tell him to be quiet. He rolled on his back in the mud, spat in the pond and shouted swear words he’d heard the rabbits use.

  Fat and wicked, he sat in the little clearing in front of his house surrounded by young squirrels.

  ‘Say another one,’ squeaked the squirrels.

  ‘BOTTOMS!’ shouted Barry. All the squirrels sniggered and nudged each other.

  ‘More, more,’ they demanded. ‘Show us how far you can spit.’

  ‘Children!’ shouted the adult squirrels from the trees above.

  ‘Skinny rats!’ Barry shouted after them as they all ran giggling after their parents.

  The long grass was full of rotten apples that drew slugs from all over the garden. Barry got so fat he could hardly get into his kettle. The last of the golden leaves fell from the trees and the days grew shorter and darker. The other birds left the garden until there were only the sparrows and blackbirds left. Even the bluetits had gone next door to eat peanuts.

  Through October the air held on to the last warmth of summer but in November it grew colder with mornings crisp and frosty. Barry was too excited with his adventures to notice the weather. When his breath came out in little clouds he climbed into his kettle and blew up the spout.

  ‘Tea’s ready,’ he shouted.

  ‘Idiot,’ said a sparrow.

  ‘You’ve got no sense of humour,’ said Barry. ‘That’s your trouble.’

  It wasn’t until January that the adventure began to wear thin. The frost stayed all day now. Up at the empty house with no one to light the fire the windows were covered with ice like lace curtains. In the cellar the rats shivered and thought about moving to another home. The worms went deep into the ground and next door’s cat was being fed in the house.

  Barry shuffled around in the leaves finding fewer and fewer slugs. He began to lose weight and as he got thinner he lost his protection against the cold. At the bottom of his spines his fleas huddled together for warmth. He snuggled deep into his kettle and for the first time since autumn thought about his mother and his brothers and sisters. A lump came to his throat but his pride wouldn’t let him go and curl up next to them under the warm shed.

  ‘I’m staying awake all winter,’ he said. But it was difficult to sound convincing with chattering teeth.

  By February he was very thin and had a nasty cold that refused to go away. Every time the sun came out he thought that perhaps it was spring and that the others would soon come out from under the shed but the winter still had a long way to go and to prove it, it started to snow.

  It began as he fell asleep and it snowed all night. Barry curled up as small as he could in his kettle but the cold went right through him. It crept down his spines like sharp needles. His paws had turned blue and hurt so much he could hardly move them. He knew now why hedgehogs hibernate. His tears ran cold down his face, turning to ice in the straw and making him even colder. His teeth chattered and his brain began to slide into a deep sleep.

  With one great effort he pulled himself out of the kettle and went to look for the tunnel under the shed. But the snow had fallen so heavily that the entrance was buried and he couldn’t find it. Round and round the shed he crawled getting weaker and weaker, until the greatest idea in the whole world seemed to be to curl up and go to sleep.

  Sleep was wonderful. The snow grew warm as he faded away. He dreamt he was curled up in a nest of feathers with all his brothers and sisters. Then through the warmth, dark shapes appeared. Closer and closer they came, but Barry was so comfortable in the arms of death that he didn’t see them.

  ‘Hey, wake up,’ said a voice.

  ‘Come on,’ said another, pushing him with a soft foot.

  ‘Go away,’ Barry heard himself mumble, but the voices kept pushing and poking him until he opened his eyes and unrolled.

  Standing over him were Dave and Ernie, the two biggest rabbits in the garden. Barry suddenly felt afraid, but they were smiling down at him.

  ‘Come on, young fellow. You can’t sleep there. You’ll be dead in no time at all,’ said Dave.

  ‘I can’t find the way in,’ said Barry, beginning to cry again.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Ernie. ‘You come home with us.’

  ‘But,’ started Barry, remembering all the warnings his mother had given him about the rabbits.

  ‘You’ll die if you stay out here,’ said Dave.

  The two rabbits led the little hedgehog through the snowdrifts towards the warmth and safety of their underground home. Barry’s feet were chapped and split from the cold and left little spots of blood on the snow. It seemed to take forever to reach the bottom of the garden.

  As they dived down the tunnel into the rabbits’ home the smell of fresh summer grass rose up to greet them. Deeper and deeper they went into the warren. On all sides of them there were more tunnels leading off into snug rooms where groups of rabbits peered out as they passed.

  ‘Watcha got there, Ernie?’ shouted a laughing voice. ‘A pin-cushion?’

  ‘Nah, he’s brought Hilda a bag of nails,’ called another.

  At last they took a sharp turn left and came to a stop. Barry was so out of breath from keeping up with the long-legged rabbits that he couldn’t speak. He certainly wasn’t cold any more.

  Ernie’s wife Hilda and six young rabbits sat in the corner eating grass.

  ‘Look what we found out in the snow,’ said Ernie.

  ‘Poor little mite,’ said Hilda. ‘He looks half-starved.’

  Barry had been too cold and frightened to think about it but he realised that he hadn’t eaten anything for three days.

  ‘Here, help yourself,’ said the young rabbits, offering Barry their grass.

  ‘I’ve never eaten grass,’ said Barry. ‘I don’t think hedgehogs do.’

  ‘Well, what do they eat?’ asked Ernie.

  ‘Slugs and worms and things like that.’

  ‘Slugs?’ chorused the young rabbits. ‘How revolting.’

  ‘Well yes, children,’ said Hilda, ‘it may seem revolting to us but it just so happens we’re up to here with slugs and they’re eating us out of house and home.’

  ‘My goodness, you’re right,’ said Ernie. ‘Wayne, Elvis, take our guest down to the larder.’

  The two rabbits led Barry down deeper into the warren until they were far out under the river bed. They came to a huge cave piled high with grass and roots and leaves. Wherever he looked Barry could see thousands upon thousands of slugs. It was like a hundred Christmas dinners and three supermarkets rolled into one.

  There were slugs of
every size and colour from the tiny Mauve Mouthful to the wonderful succulent Brown Breakfast. There were slugs that Barry had heard about only in stories, like the Golden Gumdrop and the shining Great White Pudding. There were slugs that he had thought existed only in fairytales, like the exquisite Scarlet Slimebag that hedgehogs were supposed to have fought wars over. And lurking in the shadows like a vast beached whale was the gigantically massively hugely enormous legendary Black Banquet. It rolled across the grass swallowing half a lawn a day and blowing out clouds of foul smelling steam. There seemed to be an endless variety of slugs and they were all for Barry.

  The rabbits couldn’t bear to watch as he dived into a pile of grass and began to eat. One by one they turned green and left the room.

  I don’t know what they’re so disgusted about, thought Barry. At least I don’t eat my food twice like they do.

  For the next three weeks Barry hardly left the larder. He ate and slept then ate some more and slept again. At first the young rabbits would hide in the tunnel giggling and daring each other to go and watch him eating but they all got used to it and he soon became friends with everyone.

  ‘My mum and all the other animals say you’re all crooks and dead common,’ he said, ‘but she’s wrong.’

  ‘We don’t care,’ said Ernie. ‘Stops them bothering us.’

  ‘She says you shout and swear all the time, but I think you’re all great.’

  ‘Well, we like to have a good time,’ said Hilda.

  ‘Rock and roll,’ said Wayne.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Elvis.

  March came and went and in early April Barry felt a breath of air from above ground tickle the back of his nose. Spring had arrived and was calling him.