Catch That Bat! (3 page)

‘OK,’ said Mrs Nightingale, ‘let’s stand at the top of that slope over there. If the fox gets to that point, it should be able to climb out.’

They positioned themselves next to a dip in the towpath that kayakers used to drop their boats into the canal.

Sophie put the rats down at her feet. Mrs Nightingale opened a jam jar and a tub of Marmite.

‘OK, he should find those smells pretty interesting,’ she said.

Tom was peering through the goggles.

‘It’s definitely sniffing the air,’ he said.

Eric and Ernie were making excited squeaking noises.

Tom fiddled with the goggles and zoomed right in on the fox’s face.

‘It looks curious,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think it’s moving.’

Mrs Nightingale started making the gruff mother-fox noise. Sophie and Tom joined in.

The fox continued to sniff the air and look interested.

‘It must be able to smell us too,’ said Mrs Nightingale.

‘Do we need to hide?’ Tom asked.

‘I’m not leaving Eric and Ernie out here on their own,’ said Sophie.

‘I saw this film about gamekeepers in Africa,’ said Tom. ‘They can get really close to the lions and zebras by removing their human smell.’

‘Hmm,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘That can work.’

‘Come on then,’ said Tom. He put his hand in the jar nearest to him and started rubbing jam on his cheeks.

‘Er . . . no way,’ said Sophie.

Tom put his other hand in the tub of Marmite and smeared it on his hands.

Then he looked through his goggles at the fox.

‘It’s starting to paddle this way!’ he announced.

Mrs Nightingale sighed. ‘I suppose it will all come out in the wash,’ she said. She wiped Marmite around her neck and dabbed jam on her nose and forehead.

Tom was zooming in again. ‘It’s definitely working! It’s speeding up!’ he whispered.

‘Wow!’ exclaimed Sophie. She pulled open a tin of baked beans and rubbed them on her hands.

‘We should make the fox noises too,’ said Tom, ‘in case it gets suspicious.’

The three of them made the harsh huffing noise – louder than ever.

At that moment, Mrs Scraggs from the houseboat next to theirs came walking along the towpath with a torch. She glanced at the three Nightingales – crouching down on the path, making strange barking noises, with a travel bag full of rats in front of them and multicoloured food on their faces. ‘Hello!’ she said cheerily, as if nothing unusual was happening.

The Nightingales kept grunting for another minute or two.

The fox placed one front leg and then the other on the bank of the canal. Then it pulled itself out, the water rushing off its fur and sloshing around its feet.

Tom and Sophie wanted to shout, ‘Hooray!’ – but knew it would scare the fox off.

Weak and trembling from the ordeal, the young fox tottered across the towpath, snout in the air.

‘Here you are,’ whispered Sophie, and nudged the pot of Marmite. The fox lowered his head and ate ravenously from the tub.

When it had finished, it looked up at the three strange faces covered in gunk and gloop that were looking back at him. Mrs Nightingale made a low growling noise and the fox cocked its head and gave her an odd look.

Then it seemed to make up its mind. It trotted off along the towpath and vanished into a bramble patch.

Tom and Sophie looked at each other. Now there was no reason to hold back. ‘Hooray! Hooray!’ they both shouted, hugging each other and jumping up and down.

Then they heard a buzzing sound from the lamp post next to them. It flickered on, as did all the other lights and lamp posts in the marina.

‘Oh,’ said Tom, sounding disappointed. ‘It was way better when everything was dark.’

‘That was rather fun, wasn’t it?’ Mrs Nightingale agreed.

‘Mum, why
are
some animals nocturnal?’ asked Sophie, as the three of them started to walk back along the canal.

‘Well, usually because that’s when their food is awake. Bats eat flying insects like mosquitoes and moths. And night is when mosquitoes and moths wake up. Owls eat mice and rats – and most rodents in England wake up in the evening.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Sophie, looking down at Eric and Ernie. ‘It sounds like everyone wants to eat you.’

Eric and Ernie were sticking their noses through the metal grille of the travel bag, sniffing at the food on Sophie’s hands.

‘Tom,’ Mrs Nightingale said, ‘could you not lick jam off your hands?’

‘I’m not,’ Tom insisted. Then he said, ‘I’m licking Marmite off my hands.’

Mrs Nightingale rolled her eyes. ‘You can have a snack when we get back.’

Tom smiled.

‘AFTER you’ve had a bath,’ she added.

Tom groaned.

Chapter 3

Two days later, it was the weekend. Mr and Mrs Nightingale had to go to work and, as always, Tom and Sophie went along.

‘Can we go out again tonight?’ Tom asked his mum as they walked through the zoo gates. ‘I want to see more nocturnal animals.’

‘Well, why don’t you have a look at the zoo’s nocturnal animals first?’ Mrs Nightingale suggested.

‘Good one, Mum,’ said Tom, ‘but they’ll all be asleep, won’t they?’

‘Not in the Nightzone, they won’t,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘They turn all the lights off during the day so the animals are active. You’ll see armadillos, scorpions, giant jumping rats, all sorts.’

‘I forgot about the Nightzone,’ said Tom. ‘Come on, Soph. Let’s spend all day in there. And all night!’

‘Well, there’s no point being there at night,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘That’s when they turn the lights ON. So the animals can get some sleep.’

‘Oh. Right,’ said Tom.

‘Look, ask for Terry when you get inside,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘He’ll tell you everything.’

Tom and Sophie said goodbye to their parents and walked past the African hunting dogs. They reached the big glass entrance doors that led to the Nightzone and the Rainforest Lookout. They went downstairs and walked through a set of doors into a long dark tunnel. Apart from tiny strip lights on the floor, everything else was dark. They turned a corner and were suddenly surrounded by glass enclosures full of scurrying, flying, leaping, climbing and burrowing animals.

‘Now THAT is weird,’ said Tom.

He was pointing at a tiny shrew-like animal with bald wrinkled skin and four gigantic teeth.

‘It says here it’s a naked mole rat,’ said Sophie, glancing at the sign next to the enclosure. ‘It lives underground like a mole, but it doesn’t have any claws. So it digs all its tunnels with its teeth.’

Tom looked again at the naked mole rat’s face.

‘It also says its teeth are OUTSIDE its mouth,’ said Sophie, ‘not INSIDE like ours. That stops it from swallowing dirt when it’s digging.’

‘That’s amazing,’ Tom said, looking closely at the glass case.

‘They can dig tunnels that are up to four kilometres long,’ concluded Sophie.

‘Four kilometres!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘But he’s only about ten centimetres long! I’m 130 centimetres. So that’s like me digging a tunnel that’s, er, fifty-two kilometres! With my teeth!’

Tom spread his mouth wide and bared his teeth at his sister.

Sophie ignored him and then bounded over to another glass case.

‘An armadillo!’ she cried. ‘Armadillos are brilliant!’

Tom joined her and they watched the armadillo snuffling and digging at the floor of its enclosure, the armour on its back opening and closing as it moved.

‘Unlike the naked mole rat, these guys DO have claws,’ said Sophie, ‘incredible claws. Like they’ve got knives instead of fingers.’

Tom looked at his hand and said, ‘That would stop you picking your nose.’

‘It’s also the only mammal with a shell,’ said Sophie. ‘Look at that armour. It can roll into a ball and nothing can get inside.’

At that moment, they heard a voice behind them.

‘You must be Tom and Sophie.’

They turned around and saw a man in his late thirties, with blue eyes and sandy-coloured hair. ‘Sounds like you know more about nocturnal animals than I do!’

Sophie blushed.