An Otter Called Pebble Read online

  “She’ll stay at the wildlife park for a year or so, until she’s old enough to be released. Then they’ll release her as close as possible to where she was found. She’ll need to be released near other otters, so they know it’s a good habitat, but not in a place where an adult male otter is living.”

  “Why not?” asked Jasmine.

  “Well, apparently he would harm a young one on his territory.”

  “But how would they know if there was an adult male living there? You just said it’s really hard to see otters. So they might release her and then she’d get attacked.”

  “Please may we leave the table?” asked Manu.

  “If you’re finished,” said Mum. “Have you had enough to eat, Ben?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Ben. “Thank you for the lovely dinner, Nadia.”

  Ben was always extremely polite to adults. That was how he got away with being so naughty.

  “So we need to make sure we find Pebble’s family,” said Tom.

  “Definitely,” said Jasmine. “I won’t let her be brought up in an orphanage and then let loose to get mauled.”

  “One more thing,” said Mum. “Neil said even if the mother is found, there’s not much chance she’ll take the cub back if they’ve been apart for more than forty-eight hours.”

  “So we’ve only got until Sunday afternoon,” said Tom.

  “Please can we borrow your laptop after dinner, Mum?” asked Jasmine. “We need to do some research.”

  This is a race against time, she thought. And we’re going to win it.

  “Let’s check on Pebble before we start researching,” said Tom as they went upstairs after dinner.

  “We’ll just creep in and peep under the blanket,” said Jasmine. “She’s probably sleeping.”

  They tiptoed in at the open door of Ella’s room. Which was odd, thought Jasmine, because she was sure they’d closed the door when they left the room.

  The blankets were draped messily over the puppy crate. This was also odd. Jasmine could have sworn they’d done a neater job than that.

  They knelt in front of the crate and Jasmine lifted a corner of the blanket. She couldn’t see Pebble. She lifted the blanket higher.

  The toy cat was there. The hot water bottle was there. But Pebble was nowhere to be seen.

  Jasmine and Tom gasped. Then they sprang to their feet.

  “Manu!” yelled Jasmine, racing out of the room.

  Tom grabbed her arm. “Shh. If he’s got Pebble, we don’t want to frighten her.”

  “Of course he’s got Pebble,” spat Jasmine. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to actually kill him.”

  “OWWW!!”

  A howl of pain came from Manu’s room. Jasmine and Tom rushed in.

  Ben was hopping around the room, his face screwed up in agony, sucking his index finger. Manu’s feet were sticking out from under the bed.

  “Where’s Pebble?” demanded Jasmine.

  “She bit me!” said Ben. “She bit me really hard.”

  “Good,” said Jasmine. “You deserved it. Where is she? What have you done with her?”

  “She’s somewhere under here,” said Manu from under the bed. “She ran away after she bit Ben.”

  “Get out from there right now, you idiot!” hissed Jasmine, kneeling down and tugging Manu’s ankles.

  “Ow! Get off me! I’m coming out.”

  “Stop shouting,” said Tom. “You’ll scare her even more.”

  “Ugh, there’s a wet patch,” squealed Manu, as he squirmed out from under the bed. “Oh, yuck, it’s weed on my carpet. Ugh, I’m covered in otter wee.”

  “Serves you right,” said Jasmine, pushing him aside and wriggling under the bed. “Get out.”

  It was dim and dusty under Manu’s bed, and there wasn’t much room to move between the boxes of Lego and broken toys. Jasmine heard Tom telling the boys to leave, and then there was silence. She lay still and listened.

  After a while, she heard a scuffling noise from the far corner. She turned towards the noise and saw a bright little eye looking back at her from behind a plastic digger.

  Jasmine was about to grab Pebble when she realised what a bad idea that was. Pebble must be terrified. She would probably bite any hand that came near her. Jasmine needed to cover her with a cloth to calm her down before she caught her.

  “Tom,” Jasmine whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you get a blanket?”

  Tom left the room. Pebble didn’t move.

  Jasmine prayed that the otter would be all right. What if she was injured?

  She heard Tom come back.

  “Here you go,” he whispered, pushing the blanket under the bed.

  Keeping her hands behind the fabric, Jasmine held out the blanket and inched closer to the little cub. Once she was within reach, she slowly lifted the blanket as high as she could and dropped it over Pebble. Then she grasped her round her middle. Holding the bundle firmly in both hands, she wriggled out from under the bed.

  “Well done,” whispered Tom, as Jasmine carried Pebble into Ella’s room. She lowered the otter into the crate, next to the toy cat. Only then did she remove the blanket.

  Pebble sat on the towels, looking around. They could see her ribs heaving up and down beneath her fur.

  “You poor little thing,” said Jasmine. “What a horrible shock. Are you all right?”

  Several sets of footsteps came running up the stairs. Mum appeared in the doorway.

  “Oh, good, you’ve got her back,” she whispered.

  Manu peered into the room. Ben lurked behind him.

  “Come on, Tom,” said Jasmine, covering the crate with the blanket and walking out on to the landing. She wanted Manu to get a proper telling off, but Pebble needed peace and quiet.

  “That otter is vicious,” said Manu. “It nearly bit Ben’s finger off.”

  “Why on earth was Ben putting his finger in her mouth?” asked Mum.

  “He was trying to feed her.”

  “Feed her what?”

  “Crisps,” said Manu.

  “Crisps!”

  “We thought she’d like them. Otters eat fish, don’t they?”

  “Crisps aren’t fish, Manu.”

  “These were. They were prawn cocktail crisps.”

  “How could you be so stupid?” said Mum. “She’s a wild animal, and she’s just lost her family. What were you thinking, to take her out of her bed and treat her like a toy?”

  “It’s not fair,” said Manu. “Jasmine gets all the animals. We just wanted one for us.”

  “Well, the way you’ve just behaved with this one, it will be a very long time before you ever get one of your own.”

  “Like never,” said Jasmine. “Can’t you get him adopted, Mum? This family would be so much better without him.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mum. “Who on earth do you think would adopt Manu? Now, let’s clean up this bite, Ben.”

  “Yes, Nadia,” said Ben. “Thank you, Nadia.”

  “And don’t even think about going into Ella’s room again, Manu,” said Mum, “or this will be the last sleepover you ever have.”

  Once everyone had calmed down, Jasmine and Tom tiptoed into Ella’s room.

  Jasmine lifted a corner of the blanket and peered into the crate.

  “Pebble’s sleeping,” she whispered.

  Tom crouched beside her. “She looks all right, don’t you think?”

  “She’d better be,” said Jasmine, “or I’ll never speak to Manu again.”

  Back in Jasmine’s room, they sat on the bed and researched otters on Nadia’s laptop, while Jasmine groomed Marmite, her black cat, who was sitting on her lap. Marmite’s brother, Toffee, lay curled up next to Jasmine.

  “It says otters usually have two or three cubs at a time,” said Tom. “So Pebble probably has brothers or sisters. They must be missing her, too.”

  “If they’re anything like my brother,” said Jasmine, “she’s pr
obably glad to be away from them.”

  “Otters and badgers have five toes, but dogs and foxes only have four,” said Tom. “That should help with identifying footprints.”

  Jasmine studied the photographs of muddy footprints on the screen.

  “Otter and badger prints look almost the same,” she said. “It says the badger ones have longer claws, but I can’t see any difference.”

  “Mink footprints are similar, too,” said Tom, pointing them out, “but they’re smaller. It says you can cover a mink print with a two-pound coin. We should take one with us.”

  “Let’s make a list of what to take,” said Jasmine. “Sorry, Marmite. I need to get up.”

  She lifted the cat off her lap and fetched a notebook and pen from her desk. At the top of a clean page, she wrote: Otter Spotters List.

  “There’s drawings of all different animal prints here, actual size,” said Tom. “Let’s print the page and take it with us.”

  Jasmine added it to the list.

  “And we should take binoculars,” said Tom. “It says you can often spot the entrance holes to a holt better from the opposite side of the river. Do you have binoculars?”

  “Only plastic ones,” said Jasmine, “but we can borrow Dad’s.” She wrote it on the list.

  “Otters are nocturnal,” said Tom, “so dusk and dawn are the best times to see them. They lie up and rest during the day. It says early morning is best. But we should stay away from the water’s edge. If you go too close to the water, it stresses them. And we need to look out for muddy slopes on the bank. Otters use them as chutes to slide into the water.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Don’t wear perfume. They’ll pick up the scent.”

  Jasmine laughed. “As if we’d wear perfume!”

  “And we should take silver foil,” said Tom, “for bringing home otter droppings.”

  “Why would we bring them home?”

  “I guess so we can show them to the experts, to check if they really are from otters.”

  “What do otter droppings look like?”

  “There’s a picture here,” said Tom. “They’re called spraints.”

  Jasmine looked at the screen, which showed two close-up photos. One was labelled “Fresh Otter Spraint” and the other one “Old Otter Spraint”.

  “It says you should smell droppings to check if they’re otter spraint,” said Tom. He read on and laughed.

  “What?” said Jasmine.

  “It says, ‘Otter spraint smells almost pleasantly fishy, with a hint of jasmine tea.’ So maybe it smells a bit like you!”

  “Oh, ha ha,” said Jasmine.

  “They use their spraint to mark their territory,” said Tom, “so we should look in noticeable places, like on top of big rocks and tree roots by the river.”

  “And we should also look for fish heads and crayfish claws,” said Jasmine. “It says they leave them behind after they’ve eaten.”

  Tom laughed. “So we’re going to spend tomorrow staring at mud, sniffing poo and looking for bits of dead river creatures. Nice.” Pebble didn’t seem to have suffered any permanent damage from her ordeal. She drank all the rehydration formula at her ten o’clock feed, and again at six o’clock on Saturday morning. When they put her back in her crate, she scampered to the side and looked out at them with her bright, intelligent eyes.

  “Ella will be sorry to have missed her,” said Mum. “You know how much she loves cute baby animals.”

  “I wish she didn’t have to go,” said Jasmine.

  “She’s well hydrated now,” said Mum. “She’s ready to travel to the centre. Neil said they usually get a lot more lively once they’re with other otters.”

  “Anyway, she’ll only be gone for a day or two,” said Tom. “As soon as we find her family, she can come back.”

  “When you go shopping today, Mum,” Jasmine said as they were eating their breakfast, “could you buy jasmine tea, please?”

  “Whatever for?” asked Mum.

  “To see if it smells like otter droppings.”

  “Sounds delicious. I can’t wait to try it.”

  “You’ve caused a lot of excitement with your find,” said Dad. “There’s a couple of people from the Wildlife Trust scouring the riverbank for otters. Mum’s friend Mira and somebody else.”

  “See?” said Jasmine, rounding on Nadia. “I told you we should have gone out earlier. Now they’ll find Pebble’s home and we won’t get to do anything.”

  Nadia sighed. “Does it matter who finds Pebble’s home? The only thing that matters is finding it, surely. Anyway, you had to feed your animals and walk Sky first. And I thought you wanted to be here when the woman from the Wildlife Rescue comes to collect Pebble.”

  “Me and Ben are going to look for otters, too,” said Manu. “I bet we’ll find them first.”

  “You and Ben aren’t going anywhere near the river,” said Jasmine. “Tell him, Mum. They’d scare away all the wildlife for miles around.”

  Mum was about to speak when the doorbell rang. Jasmine and Tom followed her out to the hall.

  Mum opened the door to reveal a tall, thin woman holding a wooden crate with several round holes in the top.

  “Good morning,” she said. “I’m Prunella Sharp. I’ve come to collect the otter cub.”

  “Come in,” said Mum. “Thank you so much for doing this.”

  Prunella Sharp stepped into the hall.

  “This is Jasmine and Tom,” said Mum. “They found the otter.”

  Prunella Sharp gave them a sweeping up-and-down glance. She didn’t seem impressed.

  “Jasmine and Tom are going to look for the holt today,” said Mum. “Neil said we need to find it as quickly as possible if we want the mother to accept Pebble back.”

  The woman gave them a pitying smile.

  “I’m afraid the chances of your being able to reintroduce this cub to its family are practically non-existent. The female’s territory could be up to fourteen kilometres long, and otters move about all the time, so there’ll be several holts. You’ll have no way of knowing which one she’s actually using. It’s really not worth wasting your time.”

  “That’s not a very good attitude,” said Jasmine. “It’s got to be worth a try, surely?”

  Mum gave Jasmine a warning look, which Jasmine pretended not to see.

  “Also,” said Prunella Sharp, shooting a poisonous look at Jasmine, “it’s very possible that the mother rejected this cub. They do that quite often, unfortunately. And in that case, she certainly wouldn’t take her back.”

  She pulled a pair of thick gloves out of her handbag.

  “Where is the cub? I need to get on. It’s a long journey.”

  “Of course,” said Mum. “She’s upstairs.”

  Jasmine and Tom followed them up to Ella’s room. Mum opened the puppy crate. The woman put her gloves on and grabbed Pebble by the scruff of her neck. Pebble growled and bared her teeth.

  Please bite her, Jasmine begged silently. Give her a really hard nip right through those gloves.

  Pebble kept her teeth bared and continued to growl as she wriggled and squirmed in the woman’s grasp. To Jasmine’s disappointment, Prunella Sharp managed to lower her into the carrying crate without getting bitten. She shut the lid.

  “Wait!” said Jasmine.

  She went to the puppy crate and fished out the toy cat. “This is Coco. Pebble needs her to keep her company on the journey.”

  Prunella Sharp took the toy without a word and put it in the case. Then she closed the lid and snapped the clasps shut.

  “Goodbye, Pebble,” said Tom, through the holes in the box. “We’ll see you again very soon.”

  “Goodbye, Pebble,” said Jasmine. “We’re going out right now to find your family. And we won’t stop until we’ve found them. We promise.”

  By half past five that afternoon, Tom and Jasmine were weary and fed up. They had sniffed a lot of droppings, none of which smelled pleasantly fishy with a hint
of jasmine tea. They had found a lot of footprints, all of which, on close inspection, turned out to have been made by dogs or foxes. And, since they had eaten their packed lunches at ten thirty in the morning, they were also very hungry.

  “It’s hopeless,” said Jasmine. “We’re never going to find anything. Cruella Sharp was right.”

  “She only said the chances were practically non-existent,” said Tom. “She didn’t say they were totally non-existent. So even she admitted we’ve got a chance.”

  Jasmine grabbed his arm. “Look!”

  “What?”

  She pointed across the river. “Do you see that hole in the bank?”

  They stared at the opposite bank. “It’s got all the right things for a holt,” said Jasmine. “It’s muddy, and there’s a big old tree stump and a fallen branch at the top of the bank.”

  “Let’s investigate,” said Tom.

  Fired up with excitement, they ran back to the bridge and hurried along the opposite riverbank until they reached the tree stump. Its lumpy roots protruded from the ground like the toes of some gnarled old giant.

  “We should be really quiet,” Jasmine murmured. “If this is where Pebble’s family are living, we don’t want to scare them away.”

  They started to search the muddy ground around the tree roots. After a few minutes, Tom whispered, “Jasmine! Footprints!”

  He was staring at a patch of bare mud under an oak tree a little way away from the tree stump. Jasmine hurried across and crouched beside him.

  “Five toes,” she whispered. “Definitely bigger than a two-pound coin.”

  “Could be a badger, though,” said Tom.

  He rummaged in his rucksack and took out the crumpled piece of paper with the life-size drawings of animal prints on it.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Ow!” said Jasmine.

  Something hard had hit her on the head. She rubbed the sore spot and looked on the ground where the object had fallen. It was a little green acorn.