Bear in the woods, p.7
Bear in the Woods, page 7
‘I’ve brought you your intern,’ said Constable Pike, calling through the screen door as he kept a firm grip on Fin’s collar.
‘About time,’ grumbled the Cat Lady from somewhere at the back of the small farmhouse. The building was even more run down than Dad’s place, and much smaller. Through the wire mesh of the screen door, all Fin could see was a mess of clutter. There were old magazines, faded posters and lots of books littered about. They heard the Cat Lady approaching on her crutches. ‘Expected you here two hours ago, young man.’
‘No one told me that,’ complained Fin. He didn’t have April’s naked audacity. He didn’t like letting people down. And to let an old lady with a broken leg down, made him feel particularly ashamed. Even though logically he was in no way to blame because no one told him about the appointment, he felt ashamed nonetheless.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Constable Pike, grinning. He was clearly delighted to have finally got the better of one of the Peski kids. ‘Officer Odinsson has got the other three kids on a bear hunt down by the creek, so I’d better check up on them.
‘What?’ snapped the Cat Lady. ‘They’re wasting their time, there are no bears in this country.’
‘I know, but I’d better keep an eye on them,’ said Constable Pike. ‘In case they see a platypus and think they’re being attacked by an inland dolphin.’ The constable chuckled to himself as he walked away.
‘That man is nothing but a lummox,’ muttered the Cat Lady.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Fin.
The Cat Lady whipped round, surprisingly nimbly considering she was on crutches, and glared hard at Fin. ‘Don’t speak that way about adults in a position of authority. You should show respect.’
‘I was just agreeing with you!’ argued Fin.
‘No excuses!’ snapped the Cat Lady. ‘You’ve got work to get on with.’
‘I thought you were meant to be training me up,’ said Fin. ‘So I could fulfil your cat lady responsibilities for generations to come.’
The Cat Lady just snorted. It wasn’t clear what she meant by this, but Fin took it to mean contempt so great it couldn’t be expressed in words.
‘I can’t start training you until the jobs are done,’ said the Cat Lady. ‘And I can’t do them myself because you broke my leg.’
‘I did not break your leg,’ argued Fin.
‘There were dozens of witnesses who say otherwise,’ snarled the Cat Lady.
‘That’s just because they all hate my family,’ said Fin.
‘Not my problem,’ said the Cat Lady. ‘Are you going to get on with this, or do I have to call Constable Nitwit back so you can pay him that $1000 fine.’
Fin sighed. ‘What do you want me to do?’ He was expecting her to say ‘make me a cup of tea’ or ‘do the dishes’, but the Cat Lady had other things in mind.
‘First up, clean the gutters,’ said the Cat Lady.
‘Of the house?!’ exclaimed Fin disbelievingly.
‘What other type of gutters are there?’ asked the Cat Lady. ‘Go on, the quicker you get it done, the quicker we can get on with your training.’
‘Fine,’ said Fin. ‘Where do you keep your ladder?’
‘I don’t have a ladder,’ said the Cat Lady. ‘Just climb up the balustrade of the verandah.’
‘You’re kidding,’ said Fin. ‘That doesn’t sound very safe.’
‘What makes you think a ladder is safe?’ asked the Cat Lady. ‘Ladders give a false sense of security. Two slippery feet resting on uneven ground. A ladder is nothing but a death-trap. Do you know how many domestic accidents are caused by idiots on ladders?’
‘A lot?’ guessed Fin.
‘That’s right,’ said the Cat Lady. ‘People feel safe on ladders so they do stupid things. But if you climb up the balustrade, you know what you’re doing is dangerous so you’re more careful. Which is why it’s much safer not to use a ladder.’
Fin squinted as he thought about this. He was pretty sure it made no sense, but he decided it would be quicker and easier just to clean the gutters rather than continue his argument with the Cat Lady.
Getting up on the roof was, as the Cat Lady predicted, difficult and dangerous. But Fin found that by hugging the vertical post of the verandah with his legs and grabbing hold of the television aerial on the corner of the roof, he was able to pull himself up eventually. Once up on the roof things were not any safer. The corrugated iron was rusty and caked in lichen as well as slippery black stuff that looked like mould. It was very hard to keep a sure footing. Fin slipped a couple of times, but by throwing himself facedown on the corrugated iron and splaying his arms out wide he was able to create enough surface resistance to avoid sliding off entirely.
But the worst bit was the actual gutters. They were disgusting beyond imagination. Fin had expected to be cleaning out leaves, but the leaves were only a small part of the problem. The majority of the gunk in the gutters was rotten leaves, which stank and were slimy and slippery, but there were also small plants, bird poo and weird random objects like frisbees, tennis balls and for some reason cutlery that had apparently been thrown up there.
Two and a half hours after Fin had first climbed up on the roof, the job was finally done. Fin had scraped most of the skin off his knuckles and banged his shins sliding back down the verandah post, but he had survived and the gutters were now clean. He stomped over to the front door and called in through the screen. ‘All done.’
‘Took you long enough,’ said the Cat Lady, swinging towards him on her crutches. She was eating a biscuit. Fin would have dearly loved a biscuit right then. She must have seen him staring at the food in her hand because she asked, ‘Want something to eat?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Fin. It’s funny how hunger makes the most incorrigible child suddenly polite.
The Cat Lady popped the whole biscuit in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. ‘I’ll make you a sandwich while you muck out the animals.’
‘What?’ asked Fin. He was brain-addled from all the adrenaline after several near-death experiences on the roof, heat exposure from the sun reflected off the corrugated iron and now hunger. He thought he had misheard her.
‘You can have some lunch after you muck out the animals,’ said the Cat Lady. ‘Shouldn’t take long. The shovel is out by the barn.’
Fin was confused. ‘By muck you mean …’
‘Poo. Animal poo,’ explained the Cat Lady.
Fin looked about. The only animals he could see were a few sheep in the fields. Surely she didn’t want him to go around picking up their poo. ‘Where are the animals you want me to de-muck?’ he asked.
‘In the barn,’ said the Cat Lady slowly, as if Fin was a total idiot. ‘You don’t know much about farm life, do you?’
‘No,’ agreed Fin.
‘The barn is the big building around the back of the house,’ said the Cat Lady. ‘Surely you noticed it when you were up on the roof.’
‘Yes,’ said Fin. He’d noticed it and been deeply grateful it did not have gutters.
‘You need to muck out all the dirty straw in there,’ said the Cat Lady. ‘Chuck that in the slurry pit, then lay out fresh straw for them. You’ll find it up in the loft. You’d better get on with it.’ She checked her watch. ‘Otherwise it will be dinnertime before you get lunch.’
Fin trudged out to the barn, which seemed even bigger now that he was at ground level. It was twice the size of the house, and he could hear noises inside of animals moving about. He took a deep breath, reasoning that there was no way the inside of the barn was going to smell good, then swung open the door.
Fin was pleasantly surprised. Unlike the Cat Lady’s house, the barn was clean and neat. There were about ten stalls of varying sizes. He couldn’t see exactly what sort of animals were inside behind their stall doors, but it actually smelled quite nice. It was the sweet smell of warm, clean straw, stock feed and animals, but not particularly stinky ones.
The floor in the middle of the barn was pristinely clean concrete. He looked up to see a hayloft, with dozens of neatly stacked bales. All he had to do was clear out ten stalls worth of poo, and his sense of smell told him there wasn’t much of that. Fin approached the largest stall and peeked over the gate. It was entirely empty. No animals and no muck in there. Perhaps this job wouldn’t be so bad.
Fin was entirely wrong. As he soon found when he went to the next stall and discovered the occupant. He was expecting a docile cow, or perhaps a non- intimidating sheep. What he found was a camel.
Now, camels in real life are larger than you might expect. They’re bigger than horses and cows, and unlike the illustrations you may have seen of wise men in the Nativity story, camels in real life can be very bad-tempered. And when they’re bad-tempered they spit. Which is what this camel did, right in Fin’s face as soon as he stepped into the stall.
‘Ew!’ cried Fin.
The camel roared. It didn’t actually roar – camels make more of a groaning sound – but by now Fin was frightened of the giant spitting creature, so it sounded like a roar to him.
‘I just want your poo!’ cried Fin.
The camel spat again. But Fin was prepared this time. He ducked as the spittle left the camel’s mouth. As he did so, he spotted a large dark pile on the floor behind the camel. That had to be the poo. Fin thrust his spade forward, scooped the poo up then broke the backwards land-speed record for a thirteen-year-old boy carrying a shovelful of dung.
The camel bellowed again and Fin slammed the stall door shut, collapsing back against it.
Two stalls down. Eight to go.
‘Here we are,’ said Officer Odinsson, pulling off the sealed road and onto the dirt track that led to the creek. ‘I can drive you down to the spot where you were swept by the flood.’
‘It’s not the spot where I was swept,’ argued April. ‘It was the spot where I pulled myself out. I’m not some inert victim of circumstance. I was a proactive player in rescuing myself, and I’d prefer your use of semantics to reflect that.’
‘I don’t know what semantics are,’ said Officer Odinsson.
‘They’re something people complain about when they don’t have anything actual to complain about,’ explained Loretta.
Officer Odinsson parked the truck and they all made their way down to the creek bank. It was not an elegant process. They had to push through dense undergrowth and edge their way down a steep, crumbling rock face to get to the edge of the creek. The water was much lower and the creek was unrecognisable from the previous day. Although evidence of the flood was everywhere. Broken branches and debris were strewn about at head height through all the trees and bushes.
‘Over there,’ said Joe. ‘That’s where we f-f-found you.’ Joe waded through the shallow water to the opposite bank. They knew it was the right spot because they could see the scrapes in the mud where April had scrambled her way out of the water.
‘So where exactly was this bear?’ asked Officer Odinsson, looking about.
April lay down in the spot she’d been in the previous day and closed her eyes. ‘I was lying here and the first thing I noticed was the smell. It was disgusting. I opened my eyes and it was there.’ She pointed directly above her.
‘It was floating above you in the sky?’ asked Loretta.
‘No, nincompoop,’ said April. ‘It was standing over me like this.’ April got to her feet, held up her arms and mimicked a bear. ‘Raaaagggghhhh!’
‘Did it actually say “raaaggghhhh”?’ asked Loretta. ‘I thought bears had underdeveloped vocal cords that left them unable to clearly vocalise.’
‘It was hard to tell,’ said April. ‘I was screaming so loudly, I couldn’t hear much else.’
‘Then what direction did the bear leave in?’ asked Officer Odinsson.
‘That way,’ said April, pointing to a thick clump of bushes and scrub.
Officer Odinsson went over to inspect them. To the untrained eye, they just looked like regular bushes. And apparently that’s what they looked like to the trained eye too. ‘I don’t see anything,’ said Officer Odinsson.
‘Those bushes were under half a metre of water,’ said April. ‘He leapt straight over them and ran off up the hill!’
‘He just leapt over them?’ asked Officer Odinsson sceptically.
‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’ asked April. ‘Are you hard of hearing?’
‘No, I just find it difficult to believe,’ said Officer Odinsson. ‘It’s one thing to claim you saw a non-native bear species here in the middle of nowhere. But now you’re claiming it was leaping about like a ballerina.’
‘Not like a ballerina,’ said April. ‘Like a bear. They’re quite athletic, you know. Just ask anyone who’s tried and failed to outrun one.’
Joe pushed through the bushes. ‘Maybe we’ll find something b-b-back here.’
The others followed.
‘The bushes do seem to have been damaged,’ said Loretta. There was a lot of crushed foliage and broken branches.
‘It was probably caused by the flood waters,’ said Officer Odinsson.
‘Look!’ exclaimed Loretta. ‘A clump of fur.’ She had found a tuft of black animal fur stuck on a branch.’
Officer Odinsson snorted. ‘Looks like possum fur to me. You’ll find a lot of that around here.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Loretta as she tucked the tuft in her pocket.
‘Hey! I c-c-can see something!’ shouted Joe. He clambered up onto a fallen log to get a better view. ‘Yes, over there!’
‘Is it the bear?’ asked April. She clambered up next to him, but wasn’t tall enough to see over the bushes.
‘I’m going to t-take a look,’ said Joe, leaping down and running forward into the scrub.
‘Wait! If it’s a bear, I need to load the dart gun!’ said Officer Odinsson, hurrying to follow Joe and trying to organise his weapon at the same time.
April and Loretta pushed past him and went after Joe. They scrambled through thorny bushes and over loose rocks, stumbling a few times, but eventually pushing out into a clearing where Joe stood still.
‘What is it?’ asked April, she couldn’t see round her muscly brother.
‘See for yours-s-self,’ said Joe. He stepped to one side so April and Loretta could see what he’d been staring at.
‘Agnes Dalrymple!’ exclaimed Loretta. The statue of the burly, former mayor’s wife brandishing her umbrella was standing in the middle of the clearing. Here in the forest, away from the civilising location of the town gardens, it did look like a statue of a bear.
‘There’s your b-bear,’ said Joe.
‘What?’ cried April. ‘No way! How did that even get here?’
‘Get down!’ cried Officer Odinsson.
They turned towards his voice and found themselves staring down the barrel of his dart gun.
‘Down!’ cried Joe, grabbing Loretta and April and pushing them facedown on the dirt with him, just as Officer Odinsson pulled the trigger. A dart shot out at super high speed and made a tinny ping sound as it hit the bronze statue of Agnes Dalrymple right in the neck.
‘Hang about,’ said Officer Odinsson. ‘That’s not a bear, it’s just a statue.’
‘Well done, Officer,’ said Loretta. ‘Your animal identification training was clearly extensive.’
‘You mistook that for a bear?’ Officer Odinsson asked April.
‘No, I did not!’ protested April. ‘I can tell the difference between a bear and a lump of metal.’
‘It’s an easy mistake to make,’ said Joe, looking up at the statue. ‘She does look like a great big terrifying bear.’
‘That’s not what I saw,’ said April.
‘You did have a lot of blood all over your face at the time,’ said Loretta. ‘That would have obscured your vision.’
‘But still, I could recognise a bear,’ April insisted.
‘You also had a severe h-h-head injury,’ said Joe. ‘And you nearly d-drowned. You weren’t thinking straight. All that adrenaline, it’s no wonder you panicked.’
‘How dare you!’ exclaimed April. It’s not that she was proud of her bravery, but she was proud of her total illogical lack of cowardice. ‘I do not panic!’ She turned to her dog. ‘Pumpkin, bite Joe!’
Pumpkin leapt at Officer Odinsson, sinking his little razor-sharp teeth into the grown man’s shin.
‘Ooowww!’ cried the animal control officer.
‘Not him,’ said April. ‘Joe, bite Joe! Although it’s good work biting the officer too. He’s way too trigger happy with that dart gun.’
‘Get off me, you dumb dog!’ cried Officer Odinsson, but Pumpkin had a tenacious grip on his trouser cuff. Officer Odinsson tried to yank his leg free, but to no avail. Pumpkin thought this was a fantastic game, flying through the air as the man waved his leg around.
‘Get off!’ screamed Officer Odinsson, totally losing his temper. He lifted his other foot and kicked Pumpkin. The little dog howled and flew off.
Then the kids all started yelling at once.
‘How dare you!’ cried April.
‘You can’t kick a dog!’ yelled Joe.
‘Wicked man,’ denounced Loretta.
Pumpkin ignored the shouting. As soon as he hit the ground, he leapt back up on his little feet and charged at Officer Odinsson again, yapping fiercely.
Officer Odinsson screamed. Now, I don’t want to be sexist and say he screamed like a little girl, but to be strictly accurate, that’s exactly what he did. He released a terrified high-pitched squeal as Pumpkin leapt up and sank his teeth into his inner thigh. Officer Odinsson turned his dart gun on the tiny dog.
‘Noooo!’ cried April, Joe and Loretta.
A tranquilliser dart designed to fell a bear at a distance would certainly kill a small dog at point-blank range.
‘Drop your weapon!’ an authoritative male voice boomed.
The kids turned to see Constable Pike standing on the edge of the clearing. His own taser gun was raised and trained on Officer Odinsson.
‘Put it down, Todd,’ warned the constable. ‘You’ve lost control of yourself. Don’t do something you’ll regret.’
