The Amazing Adventures of Freddie Whitemouse (2 page)

Eventually, in the early evening, he came across some deer who, though grazing, seemed also on the move, and he quickly guessed that they were making their way to the drinking place at the
river. So he went ahead of them and chose a really good position beside some rocks only a few yards from where the deer would have to come. His striped fur blended in with the tall yellowy grass,
so well that you or I would never have known he was there unless we happened to catch sight of his stern yellow eyes that were fixed upon the single point where, because of the rocks opposite, the
deer would have to come in a single file to reach the pool. He could hear them coming now, their feet making small crackling noises in the dry undergrowth. He let three go past him and then he
sprang.

He went straight for his victim’s throat, and almost before he brought the deer down, it stopped struggling and the others all fled. He dragged his prey to a shady spot under a tree and
settled down to a feast. His sharp claws and his very rough tongue meant that he could get at all the bits he found that as a tiger he liked most. He purred as he ate (he had the most enormous purr
that sounded almost like an engine). After an hour of feasting he could eat no more, so he dragged the remains of the carcass to a place between two rocks. He was full to the brim of deer and
extremely sleepy. He climbed onto the lowest branch of a tree, draped himself gracefully along it and fell into a deep, contented sleep.

He woke suddenly; it was a starless night, the sky was as dark and dense as black velvet and the moon was veiled in cloud. What woke him was the sounds that seemed to be coming from the rocks
where he had hidden the remains of his kill. Someone had found it – it sounded like more than one someone – and was making a series of high-pitched growls, punctuated by little yelps.
As Freddie began to lower himself out of the tree he was beset by two conflicting thoughts: the first, how dare anyone try to steal his food; the second, ah! perhaps he would at last have some
company – something that had been worrying him ever since he had arrived in the jungle, but that had been ignored because of his more urgent need for water and food. He was used to living
with company – not only immediate relations like his brothers and sisters, but quantities of cousins and friends. He remembered a time when a human inhabitant of 3, The Grove had dropped a
packet of cornflakes there had been an all-night party and how they had made so much noise that Mrs Whitemouse had given them a lecture the next morning on how there would be traps with cheese in
them ‘and you will die like your poor Uncle Herbert’.

Freddie prowled carefully towards the rocks, and when he had nearly reached them the moon suddenly came out. Two quite small animals – he could tell they were not tigers because they had
plain black fur instead of stripes – were tearing pieces of meat off his deer – not only stealing from him, but stealing from each other, with growls and slashing of claws. Their faces
and paws were streaked with blood, and they were play-fighting in between eating. He was just about to say, ‘That’s enough, you two,’ (they were only cubs, after all – far
smaller than he was) when a low, distinctly ominous snarl stopped him. Out of the shadows of the rocks – invisible until she moved – came a full-grown jaguar. Her tail was twitching and
her yellow eyes were fixed upon Freddie as she continued to snarl, baring her long, pointed teeth as she edged her way around the carcass until she was between him and her cubs. The message was
clear; if he made any move towards them, she would attack: the fact that he was larger than she made no difference to her.

The cubs had stopped their antics and their mother must have said something to them, because they left the carcass and ran away into the long grass. How long he and the jaguar mother stood
staring at one another Freddie did not know, but just when he was wondering what he should do, a small cloud raced in front of the moon, and when it had cleared, the mother had vanished. When he
was quite sure that she had gone, Freddie inspected what was left of his kill.

Precious little; a rather mangled haunch – bits of hoof and fur and dried blood, much of it smelling strongly of jaguar. Partly because of this, and partly because he was full anyway,
Freddie didn’t fancy eating any more. Sadness overwhelmed him.
I would have allowed her to have some of my deer if only she had been more friendly
, he thought. He was simply longing
to have someone to talk to, and so far all the animals he had encountered had either fled in terror, or, in the case of the jaguar, had made it clear that they were quite prepared to hurt him.
She didn’t give me a chance to say that I wouldn’t have harmed her cubs
, he thought, but then (and this was because Freddie was at heart an unusually honest tiger) he had to
admit that if he had been as hungry as he’d been before he caught the deer, he probably would have killed them.
If I could only meet another tiger
. . . he thought – rather
hopelessly – he had an uncomfortable feeling that tigers did not go in for the easy-going social life he had been used to as a mouse.

Freddie’s mother had only to go out for afternoon crumbs and a few weeks later there would be a whole load of new arrivals in the Hat, and another uncle added to the family. He could see
now that if tigers behaved like that the whole jungle would be littered with them and there would very soon be a severe shortage of food. Still, he could not help wishing that this bit of jungle
was a bit littered – a nice female tigress that could look after him as his mother had . . . But here his imagination failed him. He distracted himself with a thorough clean-up of his claws
which still had awkward bits of deer in them.

‘Better start hunting before I actually need another meal,’ he said to himself (there was no one else to say it to). It was early morning, but it was already
getting hot.

For the next two days he hunted for deer, stalked them at every possible opportunity and failed to catch anything. He went back to the pool twice for water. The small river had been reduced to a
mere trickle, but he followed its course upstream in search of another pool. Then, late in the afternoon on the second day, he found one – larger than the first. It was surrounded by rocks,
but it had one corner where it was quite shallow, with a sandy beach that was richly imprinted with the feet of many animals. He was so hot and tired that he decided to have a swim before he worked
out a plan of attack. Evening, he knew, was when deer came down to drink.

The moment he was in the water, an idea came to him. If he stayed there, motionless, with just his nose out of the water, the deer would not notice him until it was too late. He waited . . .

But – oh dear! There was at first a vague rumbling sound – a crashing sort of noise, as if branches were being pulled off trees – and then a herd of elephants appeared. It was
not a big herd – more like a family, one gigantic, three smaller, and one very perky baby who kept trotting in and out of the others’ way as they trod ponderously towards the water.

Freddie was terrified. With their huge ears flapping, their enormous trunks swaying and their curving pointed tusks, they loomed steadily nearer and nearer until all he could see was elephant.
Just as he made up his mind to make a dash for the shore, the father elephant made a very loud shrieking sound, twice: his family all stood still while he walked ahead of them into the pool towards
Freddie.

It was now or never. ‘When in doubt, run,’ his mother had repeatedly said to him when he was young and inclined to show off about the horrible cat who lived in The Grove. Well, he
wasn’t in doubt now; he had to run for his life. He started to swim away from the huge elephant, who was so close that Freddie could see his small angry eyes. Then, as the elephant paused,
Freddie doubled back around the creature and the moment he was back in his depth, he sprang from the water and dashed past the family and away into the long grass. His fur was all bedraggled and he
was panting for breath.

When he felt at a safe distance from the elephants he started searching for a quiet place where he could rest until his fur was dry. He found what looked like a good place – a pile of
rocks around a small cave with a sandy sunlit patch at its entrance, which was so narrow that he had to squeeze to get his head and shoulders in.

It was not entirely dark inside because there was a cleft in the rocks that formed the roof, but almost before he had noticed this there was a low, most ominous hissing noise, and in the patchy
gloom there reared a large and long black snake who seemed to be wearing a hood. Her head was swaying, but her eyes – like very shiny little black berries – were fixed upon him. As she
glided nearer he could see a pile of small creamy-coloured eggs that were placed exactly where the sun came through the roof. He did not know that she was a cobra, but he knew at once that the eggs
were hers and he knew what mothers were like if they thought that their children were in any sort of danger. He was out of that cave before you could say Freddie Whitemouse.

For a long time he padded through the jungle. He felt sad as well as hungry. He even got to thinking rather longingly of a delicious bacon rind he had discovered near a dustbin once, and how his
mother had made him share it with a crowd of brothers and sisters. ‘You must learn to think of others,’ she had scolded. Here there were no others to think of, but on the other hand
there wasn’t a bacon rind in sight.
Anyway, I’d need about a hundred bacon rinds to fill me up
. This made him realise that he wouldn’t like them anyway.

All day he had been following the riverbed, which was mostly dried up, until suddenly it was joined by a stream that trickled in over some rocks. He stopped, because he could hear the sounds of
people ahead. All his life he had been aware that people were dangerous – certainly to mice, and most probably, he thought, to tigers. He had reached the top of a grassy slope and craned his
neck to get a better view. Part of the jungle had been cleared of shrubs and long grass and there was a cluster of little huts; people were digging earth, and a woman in a bright pink dress was
walking from the river carrying a large pot on her head. Freddie was looking so hard at all this that he didn’t notice what was happening behind him until two boys driving some goats towards
the village saw him, and shouted and ran down the hill waving sticks at the goats, who scrambled ahead of them. But the youngest goat got left behind. It froze for only a second or two, bleating
for its mother, but those seconds were enough for Freddie. He hurled himself through the air and a moment later the kid was dead and he was dragging it away from the village back into thicker
jungle.

It was only a baby goat, and he ate everything except the hoofs and the horns, which were tiny. (If you feel that this was cruel of Freddie, you have to remember that tigers kill their prey in
seconds by suffocating them; a small goat is for them the equivalent of you having sausages and eggs, and he was – as most tigers are when they kill – terrifically hungry.)

Anyway, when he had finished he felt too full and sleepy to search for a suitable tree, so he settled down on a narrow ledge of rock overlooking the dry riverbed. He licked his paws and face
clean of goat and stretched himself out so that he completely filled up the ledge with only his tail hanging down, shut his yellow eyes and slept.

. . . He was back at No. 3, The Grove. How amazed they would all be when they saw him! How they would admire his magnificent stripy coat, his long rich tail, and how he would frighten the
terrible cat that was always trying to catch any member of his family who came her way! The back door of the house was ajar and he pushed it open with his mighty paw, but alas! When he reached No.
16, Skirting Board West, with its tiny little entrance, of course he couldn’t possibly get in. He got down on the floor and put his eye to the hole, and there was his mother standing on her
hind legs staring at his large yellow eye. ‘It’s me – Freddie,’ he began to say. He thought he was talking quietly, but quiet for a tiger is loud to a mouse, and Mrs
Whitemouse gave one squeak of terror and fainted. There was a lot of squeaking and gibbering from the family, but all he could see was a bit of his mother’s pale pinky stomach that had hardly
any fur on it trembling with terror. Then she was being helped away from the entrance hole, and then he couldn’t see anything, because the hole was blocked up by what he recognised as a dog
biscuit. They did not want him – his own family; he would have to live the rest of his life without any of them . . . Just as black despair rolled over him like a dark and terrifying fog, he
woke.

You know that feeling when you wake up after a bad dream? A part of you feels awfully glad to be back in your life, safe and warm in your own bed, but also, to begin with, the dream felt so real
that you still feel frightened, until gradually it slips away into the smallest corner of your mind, where it becomes ‘only a dream’. Well, Freddie felt like that, but slowly the heat
on his fur, and the tiny ticking noises of the jungle around him, and particularly the flies that kept maddeningly trying to get into his eyes, brought him back to the present – he was one
thirsty tiger, and the nearest water was the pool where there were people.

He made himself wait until dusk before he padded quietly down to the pool. All was silent, no sign of deer, but although there was no sign of people either, he could smell a smoky, spicy odour
– a smell of cooking, which he knew was what people did with their food before they ate it (No. 3, The Grove was often full of cooking smells). There was also the distant but enticing scent
of goats, and he decided that the next meal he would have would be one of them again. He would have to wait until those boys took the goats out to find food for them to eat. After a quick uneasy
drink, (he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched) he spent much of the night prowling about trying to find a good place to ambush the goats.

All the following hot, thirsty day he waited and waited, but there was no sign of goats or boys. He was hungry again – the next goat he caught would have to be a larger one.