Hairy Hezekiah (2 page)

Authors: Dick King-Smith

BOOK: Hairy Hezekiah

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Camels can go a long while without drinking. When they do drink, they can gulp an awful lot of water, as much as fifteen gallons at a time.

As Hezekiah neared the public toilets, his nose told him that there were no animals inside this
building, but he could smell water and he realized that he badly needed some.

He'd been so busy earlier grumbling about his food being late that he hadn't had a drink from the trough in his paddock. Now, after what he'd had to put up with in the Lion House and the Ape House and the Aviary and the Monkey Temple, he was very thirsty.

By chance Hezekiah picked the door marked GENTS and somehow squeezed himself through it. To one side was a row of four cubicles, and inside each there stood on the floor a large white basin with a plastic seat on it and a kind of tank above it.

Hezekiah stretched out his long neck to reach one of the basins. It had water in it and he drank greedily till the basin was empty. He did this to each of the four basins in turn till all were empty, but he was still thirsty

There was a lever sticking out of the tank above each basin, and Hezekiah, out of curiosity, gripped a handle in his mouth and turned it. Immediately there was a rush of water that filled the basin again.

So Hezekiah drained it and turned the handle again and filled the basin and drained it again, on and on, till he was full of as much water as he
could manage. Then he squeezed himself out of the GENTS backwards. The wind was cold on that side of the toilet block, so Hezekiah moved around and squeezed himself into the LADIES. He lay down on the floor and went to sleep.

He woke up to a loud scream as an early morning cleaner came in and got the shock of her life when she bumped into something large and hairy.

As the cleaner dropped her mop and ran away,
Hezekiah got to his feet, gave himself a good shake, and looked about him in the growing light. Birds were beginning to sing and monkeys to chatter, and just beyond the public toilets, he could see the main gates of the zoo, still closed.

“I've escaped from my poky little paddock,” said Hezekiah (not too loudly in case there was someone about), “but I am still a prisoner. If only someone would open those gates. Oh, how I wish they would!”

Maybe there is a special deity that looks after camels, or maybe it was just sheer luck, but at that very moment one of the zookeepers came out of the lodge beside the gates, and opened
them, to be ready in good time for the first of the day's visitors. Even more fortunately, he then went back inside the lodge.

Camels, even great big clumsy Bactrian camels, can move quite fast when they want to. Hezekiah left the shelter of the LADIES and GENTS and was out through those gates in a flash. His great padded hooves made no sound, and, in a final piece of luck, there was just at that moment no passing traffic on the road outside the zoo. Hezekiah hurried across it into the shelter of some trees.

Looking ahead, he could see the green hillsides, empty of people at that early hour. Hezekiah shambled on up them, anxious to get as far as possible from the zoo!

By now the world was waking up, and the noise of cars and trucks could be heard on the roads below, and then some humans appeared,
jogging toward him. Luckily there was a large hollow in the grass nearby, and quickly Hezekiah lay down in it, his neck stretched out flat on the ground, long-lashed eyes and nostrils shut. If he'd had fingers, he would have crossed them. But his luck held and the joggers jogged past without noticing him.

When they had gone, Hezekiah got to his feet and looked about him. Not far away he saw a thick clump of trees.

“Better get in there,” he said. “Less chance of being seen and plenty of leaves to eat. I'll stay there all day and move on when it's dark again. I don't want anyone to see me.”

He chomped away at leaves throughout the day until eventually he came to the other side of the clump of trees and found himself on the edge of a garden. In the middle of the garden was a pond where a fountain spurted. Hezekiah wasn't thirsty but he was curious. There didn't seem to be anyone about, so he made his way to the pond.

Inside were a lot of goldfish and they rose to the surface at the sight of the hairy face above them. They opened their mouths in big round “O” shapes and it seemed to the camel that they were all saying, “Who? Who?”

“Actually, I'm a Bactrian camel,” said Hezekiah. “Don't suppose you've ever seen anything like me before. Can't stop, I'm afraid, in case someone else sees me.”

But someone else did see him. It was getting dark by now and in the house at the end of the garden there were two small girls looking out of their bedroom window. They were twins called Josie and Milly, and they very often said the same things at the same time. Now they suddenly saw
a large dark shape standing by the goldfish pond.

“Whatever's that?” they said.

“Look at its humps; it's a camel,” they said, as Hezekiah moved back toward the shelter of the trees.

“Only one place it could have come from,” said Josie.

“And that's the zoo,” said Milly.

“It's escaped,” they said together.

Then they heard their mother's footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Let's not tell her,” said Josie.

“She wouldn't believe us anyway,” said Milly.

Later Hezekiah continued his way across the countryside, avoiding roads and houses, and when dawn broke the following morning, he found himself in the middle of a large field. A number of strange shapes surrounded him.

They were animals, he could now see, but animals such as he had never set eyes on before. They were quite large, though much smaller than he, and all were black and white in color. They looked curiously at the camel out of their mild eyes. Hezekiah did not feel threatened by these strange beasts.

“Excuse me,” he said. “What are you?”

The animals looked at one another, shaking their heads in bemusement.

“Don't you know?” asked one.

“No.”

“We're Holsteins.”

“What's a Holstein?”