Batcat and the Seven Squirrels (4 page)

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When I was about eight years old, my father and I found a starving baby squirrel at our back door. We eventually found seven squirrels, abandoned and orphaned when their mother was killed by a car. Helped by our beaten-up old tomcat named Batcat, we raised the litter until the squirrels were able to be independent. This story, as you can imagine, is near and dear to my heart.

ERIC WALTERS
is the author of over 100 novels and picture books. They have won more than 140 awards in Canada and internationally and have been translated into 13 languages. Along with his wife, Anita, they are the Canadian partners in The Creation of Hope (
www.creationofhope.com
), which provides for orphans in Kenya.

READ THE FIRST CHAPTER OF ERIC WALTERS’
SKYE ABOVE

Chapter One

Skye looked out the window of the plane. The clouds were thin and wispy. Below, she could just make out the green rainforest and brown fields. Little towns were visible, joined by black ribbons of roads. The horizon blended with the blue of the ocean. Skye had looked out the window the entire flight. She always did. She loved flying. Loved seeing the changing sky. Even when it was full of clouds, there were so many different types to look at.

Her father sat next to her, watching a movie. Skye had never understood why anybody would rather look at a screen than out the window. You could watch a movie in your living room. Of course, maybe her father had an excuse. He was a pilot and flew all the time. Her little porthole wasn’t much compared to the big cockpit windows he usually looked through.

A dinging sound announced that somebody was going to come on the pa. Skye knew who she wanted it to be.

“Good afternoon, this is your captain.”

Skye smiled. Her father gave her hand a little squeeze.

“We will be starting our descent into Costa Rica. I hope you have all enjoyed your flight. It’s a beautiful day, and we have a perfect
Skye
above.”

Skye laughed out loud.

“Your mother is talking about you again,” her father said. “Although I’m sure you’re not
completely
perfect…especially when it comes to cleaning your room.”

“I cleaned it before we left,” Skye said. Her closet, on the other hand, was a different thing completely.

Skye’s mother, like her father, was a pilot. It was on a flight that her parents had first met. It was also on a flight that they had gotten engaged.
They had flown around the world together. And that’s why they knew that when they had a baby, they would name her Skye.

Flying had been part of Skye’s life since before she could remember. She traveled with her parents often. Everybody assumed that because both of her parents were pilots, her name was Skye, and she loved to fly, she would someday become a pilot too. Skye thought being a pilot would be great, but what she
really
wanted to be when she grew up was a bird.

Of course, she knew that she couldn’t ever
really
be a bird. She’d learned that the hard way when she was five and jumped off the roof of their garage. She had flapped her “wings” as hard as she could. Not only did she not lift off, she didn’t even slow down. At least, not until she hit the ground. Her mother told her she was lucky she hadn’t broken a leg and made her promise that she wouldn’t do it again.

Since she couldn’t become a bird, Skye surrounded herself with them instead. Her room was filled with pictures of birds. Her bedspread was covered in birds. She had books about birds. She had little stuffed animal birds. Her family hung bird feeders outside the kitchen window. She had a tree house in the backyard that she called her “nest.” Sitting up there, she would sometimes be surrounded by birds that perched on the branches. Best of all, she had two canaries—Zig and Zag—who lived in a big cage in the corner of her room.

Zig and Zag loved to sing and would often wake her up in the morning with their melodies. When she closed the door to her room, they were allowed to fly all around. She liked to pretend that she, too, was a canary. She loved having them as pets, but sometimes she felt bad that Zig and Zag weren’t free to fly wherever they liked.

The plane touched down. The landing was so gentle that it felt like the wheels just kissed the runway. People in the plane started to clap. Skye was proud of her mother and clapped along with the rest of the passengers.