Dedication

With love to Amelie, Ella, Fifi and Ted

and with special thanks to Daniela Maimone,

the world famous balloonist and photographer.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Back Ads

Also by Ian Whybrow

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

The behaviour and adventures of the characters in this book are modelled on those of certain actual meerkats still living in the Kalahari. These creatures wish to remain anonymous to protect their privacy. For this reason, their names and their language have been changed. Any similarity between these characters and any meerkat-stars of stage or screen is purely coincidental. Furthermore, any resemblance between Oolooks or Whevubins on safari, actual Click-clicks or Sir David Attenborough is purely in the eye of the beholder.

Ian Whybrow

Chapter 1

It was (as you know) a stormy darktime in the Kalahari desert. On the far side of the old kingdom of the Sharpeyes, on the edge of the salt pans, the sky was nasty with fizz-fire and sky-crash.

In one snug chamber the founder members of the Really Mad Mob had rolled together into a ball for warmth. They were the three kits, Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream; and their king and guardian, Uncle Fearless. They were never quite still. The place was jumping with ticks and fleas, so there was a lot of jerking and scratching.

Meanwhile, in another chamber a short distance away, Uncle’s new queen, Radiant, lay awake. Normally she slept well. She was not one for worrying and all that nonsense. She was as warm and hearty and cheery as the sun itself and that is why she was called Radiant. She was tucked up tight in the nursery chamber with her four babies. They were a couple of weeks old now, and tiny, clinging, squirming… and the thing was, they were shivering. Their names were Zora the Snorer, Bundle and Quickpaws. Oh, and Trouble.

This is Trouble.

It was the shivering of the babies that woke Radiant up. Soon she became aware that in spite of her own splendid coat of fur, she was cold herself. She couldn’t think exactly what the matter was, but she sensed danger. By instinct, she sprang to her paws and sounded the Snake Alert. Krrrr! Krrrr! Hi!-Hi!-Hi! Krrrooo! Krrrupp!

Uncle Fearless’s sharp ears twitched and in a split second he too sprang to attention. His one eye flew wide open and he jumped up, rousing the kits and sounding the General Alarm – “Wup-wup! Wup-wup! Action Stations, everyone!”

“Wha-what is it?” cried Mimi. “What’s happening to me, to Mimi?”

“Is it a yellow cobra?” cried Skeema, bristling for a fight. He felt in the darkness for his trusty Snap-snap. To you and me it was a plastic bath-toy crocodile that had been dropped by a small boy on a safari holiday. To Skeema, Snap-snap was the powerful friend and protector he had found on one of his first adventures in the Upworld. He nipped his lime-green tail for luck and made Snap-snap shrill in the darkness. Skweee!

“I dreamed I was up in the sk-sky, flying with the b-birds!” stammered Little Dream, his teeth chattering. “Wh-why is it so c-cold?”

None of the worried wakers could see a thing in the total darkness, but Uncle Fearless was straining his ears.

“Silence!” he ordered.

Uncle ran to the heap of sand that served as the main door to the chamber and tested it with his sensitive nose. “Soaking wet and saturated, by all that creeps and crawls!” he shouted. “The rains must have got into the burrow! Stand by, all paws and claws! Make ready to dam the flood!”

None of the kits knew what a flood was, but they knew better than to chatter. They waited for their orders.

“Quick and tricky, now!” urged Uncle. “Batten down the hatches! There’s water coming down the main tunnel. We must block off this door!”

With the skill and teamwork that comes with hard practice, the kits dug their long, sharp claws into the damp floor and passed sand and soil through their legs to Uncle.

“Good work, team!” he panted as he piled it into a sizeable dam. “It’s holding! That should keep us dry for a moment longer. Now, follow me out through the side-wall. And hurry! There’s not a moment to lose!”

The water was trickling into the burrow fast, even down some of the side-passages. As soon as the kits broke out of the chamber, they found themselves in bone-chilling water almost up to their bellies. The shock of it made Mimi cry out. “Prrrr! It’s biting me!”

“Keep close and keep moving!” ordered Uncle and he began to call “Ki-ko! Preeep!” at intervals. He wanted to let Radiant know that he was safe and not too far away.

“Do hurry, old thing!” came her faint and muffled reply. “The babies are getting awfully chilly!”

“Just as I feared, what-what!” muttered Uncle. “They’ll catch their deaths if we don’t get them to a warm place, sharpish. Stick to me like ticks, now, kits! On we go!”

It was clear to him that the rescue party would need to avoid the flooded passageways and cut a fresh side-tunnel into the nursery chamber.

He mustered his most commanding voice and cried out: “Stay together to stay alive, the Really Mads!” The mob motto blazed for the kits in the darkness like a trumpet call. It stirred their blood and lifted their tails and spirits.

Uncle was right to move sharpish. The temperature in the stormy Upworld had dropped close to freezing. The babies would never survive that kind of cold, simple as that. He and the kits set to work with a will to cut a fresh tunnel, but it was painfully hard going. Much of the air had been driven out of the burrow by the gushing water and soon they were all gasping for breath.

“Heave!” urged Uncle. It was touch and go, but – with just moments to spare – they made it! They broke through the side of the nursery chamber just as the first fingers of water reached in through the main door. In a trice the rising water got them in its icy grip, squeezing out of everyone what little breath they had.

Some meerkats would have turned tail and saved themselves, but not Uncle Fearless. His orders came fast and clear. “Mind out, my dear!” he called to Radiant. “I must pull down the ceiling and get up into Number Five Escape Tunnel, if I can. Kits, stand back and do as your queen says!” With that he began to tunnel as he had never tunnelled before.

“Tally-ho! Stiffen the sinews and all that!” answered Radiant pluckily, though she was full of dread. “Kits! Help me with the wrigglers. I can only manage Zora.”

With Uncle scrabbling furiously, sand and stones splashed down like an avalanche. Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream clamped their teeth into the scruffs of the mewing babies’ necks. It was all they could do to keep their tiny heads above the rising tide.

There was no shaft of light to show that Uncle had broken through to Number Five Escape Tunnel, but suddenly there was a welcome blast of life-giving air and a shout of triumph.

“Phew! Relief! No sign of water here! Up you come, my darlings!” called Fearless as he reached down to grab Radiant and little Zora in his powerful jaws.

Having hauled his wife and one daughter to safety, he turned to the task of pulling up the older kits, each with a littl’un in their teeth. “Move along now, keep moving, quick, quick!” he urged each sodden kit as he lifted them out of the swirling water. “The whole burrow could cave in at any moment!”

Exhausted and shuddering, the Really Mads and their precious bundles staggered along Number Five Escape Tunnel as fast as they could. They moved steadily, up and up the slope towards the entrance to one of the many emergency boltholes.

“We’re n-not going to the Upworld before s-suntime, are we?” asked Little Dream nervously, his teeth chattering. He wasn’t just thinking of the terrible cold out there. He was worried about all the unseen enemies waiting to pounce in the darkness.

“Don’t worry, laddie!” called Uncle. He knew they must stay underground until the sun came out of its hiding place to warm them. His aim was to find a safe, dry hollow or chamber just under the surface where the mob could shelter from the wet. If they could only manage that, they could share the last of their body heat with the almost lifeless newborns.

They struggled on for what seemed an age. Suddenly, a shrill voice stopped them dead.

“Halt! Who goes there?”

Fearless grunted with relief. As challenges go, it was a nervous one and straight away he was sure that it came from a male ground-squirrel. Meerkats and ground-squirrels often share living quarters, but this one had never had visitors. He thought of this remote end of Far Burrow as his own private property. No wonder he was quaking with fright.

“Stand easy!” barked Uncle, gasping for breath. “No danger. Fearless here. King. Really Mads. Bit of an emergency. Flooded out. Babies. Got a soaking. Cold. Can you help?”

“Did someone say babies? Meerkat babies? In danger?” came an anxious female voice. “Of course we can help! Eeeep! Emergency drill, squirrels! Gather! Gather to Mother!”

And before the tired-out Nearly Mads could say Warm-up, they found themselves wrapped in the middle of a gloriously welcome hot and furry bundle…

…of neighbours.

Chapter 2

The welcome group-hug put life and warmth back into the Really Mads. And once the ground-squirrels were sure that their visitors were fit to move on, they led them among tangled roots and rocky soil to an empty dugout where there was no sign of any flooding. It smelled as if it might once have been a shelter for a porcupine. There, lying among crunchy bits of beetle-shell, melon skins, tubers and the chewed bones of something far from fresh, at last they managed to get a little well-earned sleep.

It was hunger that eventually woke everyone and set the babies mewing for milk.

“Yikes!” squealed Radiant as the hungriest of the babies started his breakfast. “I say, steady on, Trouble, dear! Your teeth are jolly sharp.”

“Ha ha!” chuckled Fearless proudly. “That’s my boy! We chose just the right name for him, didn’t we, my darling? I always said that one would be Trouble, eh, what! Nice to see a hearty appetite! Just like his bold papa’s. I was just the same when I was a little squirmer, wasn’t I, my Trubbly-Wubble – tickle-tickle!”

“Hey, I’m starving too!” said Skeema, feeling rather left out.

“Me too!” added Little Dream.

“And me, me! Don’t forget Mimi!” wailed their sister. As if anyone could.

Uncle roused himself. “I’d better take a peep outside, Radiant, my fluff,” he said, stretching. “You rest here while the kits and I check that the coast is clear. We’ll find you something wriggly to keep you going. Then once we’ve all had a good breakfast,” Uncle went on, with a sad note in his voice, “I think we shall have to start looking for a new home.”

“Oh, no!” cried Little Dream. “Do we have to leave dear old Far Burrow?”

“I’m afraid so. I know how much it means to you kits, and it breaks my heart to have to leave. Still, I’m afraid it’s just not safe any more – especially for the littl’ies. A lot of the escape tunnels will have collapsed already, I’m certain. And what’s the most important thing for a meerkat home?”

“If danger’s about, you need to get out!” chorused the kits.

“Which means…?” prompted Uncle Fearless.

“Boltholes, boltholes and more boltholes!”

“Right answer!” declared Uncle. “Always be ready for anything! That’s the ticket, my clever kits! We’re all right for a short while in this rather Whiffy Old Scrape, but it won’t do in the long run, what-what! Now, are we all set for a look-about?”

“Not half! I could eat a hippopotamus,” declared Skeema.

“Then Upworld, here we come, by all that does and dares!” cried Uncle, and upwards they scurried.

It took only a few moments before they saw the first glimmer of light at the entrance to the tunnel they were in and their hearts began to beat faster. “Steady as we go,” said Uncle. Little Dream waited for orders, but Skeema and Mimi were not so patient. They pushed and shoved in a race to be the first to squeeze out of the bolthole and into the sunshine.

“Wait!” said Uncle firmly.

Cautiously, he lifted his nose and sniffed, picking out traces of all manner of creatures: kudu, zebra, wildebeest, springbok, antelope, giraffe and elephant. “Hmm, the Big Ones are gathering in numbers,” he muttered. “They’re after the new shoots. No matter. By the smell of it, I’d say they passed this way a while ago in the darktime, but you never know.”

“Any sign of lions or leopards?” whispered Skeema. “Any cheetahs?”

“Good thinking, my boy!” said Uncle. “Where the great herds go, the pouncers follow, eh? Quiet, now!”

He twitched his sensitive ears in another direction. He heard parrot squawks and bird calls, the clap of storks’ bills, the chattering of monkeys in the branches overhead. A low, rasping laugh – “Herrr-harrr-ha-hah-harrrr!” – made him duck for cover. “Brown hyenas, by all that’s bullying!” he said. The kits clung to him until they felt the tension go out of him. Only then did they start to breathe again. Uncle shook himself free and – ever so cautiously – lifted his head once more and looked about him.

It isn’t easy to look around with just one eye. Fearless had to swivel his neck like an owl. An owl. Inwardly, he cursed The Silent Enemy, the eagle owl, that long ago had caught him off-guard and swept him up into the sky. Before Fearless had been able to struggle from its grip, the bird had half blinded him. Now, far off, Fearless spied a bateleur eagle circling. Another deadly foe! He muttered a low Wup! Wup! but then added softly for the benefit of the others, “As you were. It’s a long way away. Good. Stand by to surface.”

“Have the rains gone?” came impatient Mimi’s voice. “Oh, let Mimi come up and see, me, me!”

“Just keep your fur on while I run through my check list!” barked Uncle. “Now then. Sun’s up? Check! Skies blue and clear? Check. No danger up? Check. No enemies close, no runners, no creepers, no sidewinders or crawlers? Check. But dear-oh-dear!”

“What’s the matter?” called Skeema.

“You’d better come up and see for yourselves,” said Uncle with another sigh.

One by one Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream pulled themselves out of the bolthole entrance, lined up beside him and looked about. They found themselves among the roots of a clump of fever trees that rose from a high patch of rocky ground. Without a word, Skeema took sentry duty at the top of one of them. Horrified, the kits saw at once that streams were running fast into the main entrances to the burrow. A muddy lake had formed in the shallow valley where the yellow foraging-grounds once stretched out. The scrubby bushes and low thorn trees that they knew so well had disappeared under deep water that stretched as far as Shepherd Tree Clump.

“Gone,” muttered Uncle. “Far Burrow and all our best hunting-grounds!”

“Take cover!” Skeema called suddenly and Uncle and Mimi and Little Dream threw themselves flat on the damp and still chilly sand. The cloudless blue sky had turned pink and now began to gabble and honk.

“What’s happening, Uncle?” squeaked Little Dream. “Is it an attack?”

“Nothing of the sort,” snorted Uncle. “Just a bunch of flamingos, that’s all. Quite a sight, eh? They’re heading for The Great Salt Pan to feed. They won’t harm us. Come along now, let’s get on with Warm-up.”

Uncle stood tall, placed his paws under his (rather fat) belly and heaved his warming-pad up towards the rising sun. “One-two-three… HUP!” he cried, as he did first thing every suntime. Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream copied him, pretending that their own tummies were as big and round as Uncle’s and echoed his “One-two-three… HUP!” as, grinning round at each other, they hoisted them high. Sharing a joke always helps when things get tough.

They stood quietly like that, watching the thousands of rosy flamingos flapping busily onward above them, stretching their long necks towards their feeding-grounds.

“I wish I could fly,” said Little Dream, pretty much to himself. “Last night I dreamed about flying. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to lift yourself up and up… higher than the highest tree in the Upworld?”

“And what would you do then?” asked Uncle affectionately. In the early morning sunlight, he felt some of his customary vim and vigour swelling in him, like the sweet juice that plumps up a wild tomato.

“I would look for Mama,” said Little Dream softly. “And when I found her, I would fly down and lead her home.”

Uncle was so touched, he had to clear his throat. “Hurrumph! Lead her home, you say?”

He didn’t really see how his sister, Fragrant, the kits’ mother, could possibly be alive. The night she had gone missing, there had been wild dogs on the loose. No one could seriously believe that a lone meerkat could survive a pack of hungry Painted Ones on the prowl. However, he felt sure that this was not the time to say so. The Really Mad Mob had come very close to losing everything dear to them, so his duty as king at the moment was, as he saw it, to keep everyone’s spirits up.

“In that case,” he added gently, “we shall just have to make sure we build a splendid new one, shan’t we? Meanwhile, we all know what we must do at this present moment, which is…?”

“Get some food inside us and Crack On!” came the resounding reply.

Crack On is the Meerkat Way.

Chapter 3

And even as the meerkat breakfast-party cracked on, some miles away, a two-legged creature had decided that soon he would crack on, too.

A boy, we would call him. And let’s call him Shadow because his apricot skin blended with the colours of the shady grove of trees in the centre of which he stooped, gathering up his things.

For some weeks he had wandered alone across the vast, scorching centre of the Kalahari Desert. It was a test of how strong he was in body and in spirit. Like all the boys of his tribe, he had to go by himself and face sandstorms and hunger and thirst and treacherous paths and mirages. He had been stalked by wildcats and mobbed by packs of dancing jackals. He had leaped over lunging snakes and felt the sting of porcupine quills. So far, he had come through every test bravely and confidently. And without a map or a companion or any sort of help, he had found his way to an ancient oasis. The Really Mads called the place Green Island.

On his walkabout, Shadow had witnessed some strange and wonderful things and in his head he was already turning them into stories to tell round the fire when he returned home to his family. His favourites were about the bravery of three little meerkat kits. They were so small that they could have stood altogether in the palms of his hands. Yet by working together, they had saved a lion cub who was helpless, lost and starving. And when the cub was captured by hunters, they had set him free.

That was the story he most wanted to tell.

“Soon,” he told himself. “I must go home soon.”

Chapter 4

Radiant thoroughly enjoyed the snacks they brought back to the Whiffy Old Scrape for her and they all sat together, happily munching in the sunshine.

“If you haven’t sucked the juice out of a frill-necked lizard, you haven’t lived!” said Skeema with a satisfied sigh as he smacked his lips.

Uncle would have agreed, only he had just bitten the head off a barking gecko and he thought it would set a bad example if he talked with his mouth full.

“A feast, for me, for Mimi!” cried his niece. Her sharp claws had swept aside a mound of damp sand to reveal a clutch of wiggling white larvae. She gobbled them up like sweets.

“Oh, do hurry up, Mimi!” squeaked Little Dream, who was on top of a drie doring bush taking his turn as look-out. “It’s way past time for you to take over from me!” He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his tired eyes, but only for a moment. Unlike most meerkats, he had been born without the dark eye-patches that protect the sky-watcher from the dazzling rays of the desert sun. Many a suntime ago, he had dug a Safari-man action-doll out of the sand near the pointy mounds where the Blah-blahs camped – far away in the kingdom of the Sharpeyes. He simply could not have managed without Safari-man’s cool-looking eye-wear. And Uncle felt the same about Safari-man’s stylish pith helmet and safari scarf: he never went anywhere without them.

“Skeema!” said Uncle. “You’re pretty good at the scorpion dance these days! Show the babies how it’s done.”

“Skeema dance, Skeema dance,” chirped the babies, clambering over each other to get a front-row seat.

Skeema gave a very nice demonstration of sniffing, listening, turning stones, rapidly moving the sand and… turning up… a scorpion!

“Nice work, Skeema. Now, babies, watch how he dances him. That’s it, Skeema, dart and dodge. Quick and tricky or he’ll sting your nose!

Forward-forward – JUMP!

In-in – and – BACK!

You see, Zora? Watch Skeema, Quickpaws. Up comes the sting and WHOOPS! – mind-yer-nose! And

Up comes the sting and WHOOPS! – missed-again! And

Up comes the sting and BITE-it-right-off! Hooray! Well danced, Skeema! Now give Bundle a taste of what you caught. Nice, Bundle? Yum-yum-scrummy, eh? Just wait your turn, Trouble. Trouble! Don’t throw sand on Bundle. TROUBLE! Now look. You’ve buried him! You’ve made him cough. That’s not nice, is it? No, and it’s not funny!”

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