Read the book: «Merry Meerkat Madness»

For Laura and Sophie Campbell, faithful readers and kind friends to the entire Whybrow mob.

And with thanks to Dr Stuart Sharp of the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge and to Matt Gribble, whose knowledge and first-hand experience of life among meerkats has been invaluable. It was they persuaded me that there is such a thing as Christmas in the Kalahari.

Contents

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

Also available by Ian Whybrow

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Copyright

About the Publisher

he 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

Zora, Bundle, Quickpaws and Trouble began it… by being just a bit too good at begging.

It was midsummer in the Kalahari – Feast-time – when there were all sorts of newborn babies and young creatures everywhere.

“Whee! Whee!” said the babies, meaning, Give us a bite! Give us a bug! Just a little lick! Pleeeeeease!

Each sweltering suntime brought shockingly big infant animals lolloping and whinnying and snorting and crashing through the thorn bushes. Some of them were happy to nibble the tender shoots and fruits and bright yellow flowers. Others just wanted to chase and pounce. But quite a few of the ones with the sharpest teeth started chasing and nibbling… well, everybody, actually.

“Always stick close to a bolthole, what-what!” ordered Fearless, as his babies squeaked and bounced about. “Remember our motto. Stay together to stay alive! And listen out for alarm-calls from the sentry.”

The kits had quickly learned how to keep out of harm’s way by now. What’s more, they were becoming expert hunters themselves.

They dashed among the dunes after the smaller, squirmier newborn creatures that wiggled and hissed and slid. They easily sniffed out the tiny, crawly totterers that waved their legs and feelers or tried to hide from the sun in cool, damp patches of sand.

For a meerkat, a damp patch of ground around Christmas time is like a full larder. You just stick your paw in and grab anything you fancy – lizards, skinks, centipedes, bugs, ants’ eggs – and, best of all, scrummy, crunchy and juicy-as-you-like – scorpions. Yum!

“They’re so dim!” complained Mimi to her brothers soon after Warm-up on the morning of Christmas Eve. “They need brains like me, like Mimi!” She often spoke like that – but she was a meerkat princess, remember.

“Who? The bugs or the babies?” said Skeema. He had been hoping to scoff down a pawful of squirming larvae, but Quickpaws came and mewed and rolled on her back. She did it so sweetly that he couldn’t refuse her. He handed them over.

“Both!” moaned Mimi. “The bugs choose the most obvious places to hide and the babies can’t work out how to catch them.”

“Don’t you believe it!” laughed Skeema. “The babies are much sharper than us. They get us to do the work for them! Look out, Dreamie! Here comes Trouble!”

Little Dream had got rather hot. He’d been dancing a fat but furious scorpion to a standstill. Forward-back, forward-back, hup-two-three, forward-back. Panting like a honey-badger, he snapped off the scorpion’s sting. Then hup! went the kicking arthropod, high into the air. Little Dream had become an expert at this game and fully expected to catch his breakfast in his mouth and chew it up. But just as he opened his jaws, baby Trouble let out a screech like a steppe-buzzard. Little Dream went stiff with shock and closed his eyes tight. The scorpion bounced off the top of his head – bonk! – and before you could say ‘Where’s-my-brekky?’ his was halfway down Trouble’s naughty little throat.

“Bad luck, Dreamie!” laughed Skeema. “You’ll have to start digging all over again!”

At that moment, Radiant trotted over, hearty and cheery as ever. “Oh, you poor, dear kits!” she cried, laughing. “Never a moment’s peace with babies, is there? Come along, Trouble! You stay with your mother!” she said with mock-firmness. “You let your cousins forage for themselves, my greedy little warthog!” With that she grabbed the little squeaker by the scruff and carried him off to join his brother and sisters in the shade some distance away.

“Now’s your chance to tuck in, you two,” called Skeema to Mimi and Little Dream. “I’ve just had a spotted sand lizard. Yum!” He licked the juice from his lips and then hurried to the top of a Kalahari currant bush. “I can watch all round from here. Get your heads down and start digging!”

Immediately, a shower of sand flew up below him as Little Dream and Mimi dug in and shifted twice their own weight of it in a trice. At once, two scorpions, a frill-neck, several spiders and an assassin bug were kicked out of bed.

“I say! Well done!” cried Skeema. “You’re still clear to tuck in! Go for it!”

Hardly had he spoken when the voice of Uncle Fearless suddenly sounded the general alarm. “WUP-WUP! ACTION STATIONS! PUFF-ADDER ON THE PROWL! TAKE COVER!”

In a split second, the kits were deep down a bolthole. They waited, pricked up their ears, lifted their noses. As soon as they thought the coast was clear, they peeped out. There was no sign or smell of a puff-adder. Instead, they saw a sleek young fork-tailed drongo pecking away, tucking in to the last of the spiders that Little Dream and Mimi had just dug up. The little bird looked at the crestfallen kits and gave them a wink.

“Ta very much!” he called cheekily. “Very tasty!”

“W-where’s the snake?” asked Little Dream nervously.

The drongo opened his beak and let out a loud HISSSSS – exactly like a striking puff-adder. Instinct made the meerkats duck for cover again, but soon, very cautiously, they could not resist looking out of the entrance of the bolthole again.

“I did that,” said the saucy bird. “That was me! I can copy anybody. Listen…” He threw back his head and in quick succession he chattered like a frightened starling, laughed like a hyena, screamed, “Huu-eee-oh!” like a martial eagle and finally shouted, “WUP-WUP!” in a voice exactly like Uncle Fearless’s!

“You thief! You robber!” yelled Mimi. She showed her teeth and rushed at him.

“Hoy!” said the drongo, hopping out of the way. “Do you mind? I’m only doing what my mum and dad taught me.”

Skeema looked at the little bird with deep admiration. What a trick! he was thinking. Just think how useful it would be to be able to do that! “He’s right. Let him be, Mimi,” said Skeema. “It’s just his nature. What’s your name, by the way?” he asked.

“Fledgie’s me name; mimicking’s me game!” chirped the bird. “Alarm calls are my speciality! Chuck me a few more wrigglers some time and I’ll give you a lesson, mate. Uh-oh! There’s me mum calling. Sorry, got to flit. See you!” And off he flew to join his parents.

“Brilliant!” cried Skeema.

“It’s all right for him!” complained Mimi. “But thanks to him and those greedy babies, I’m starving and I’m thirsty! So I’m jolly well going for a drink! Goodbye!” With that, she scuttled away in a huff.

“Hang on!” called Little Dream. “It’s not safe on your own. We’ll come with you.” Tails up, he and Skeema fell in behind her at a gallop. They knew exactly where she was going. She was heading for the farm where the Tick-tocks lived. Not that the kits actually thought of it as a farm. They had no idea what a farm was, but being naturally inquisitive they had discovered this place very shortly after the Really Mads moved into their new burrow.

To them, the farm was the strange and thrilling territory of an interesting tribe of Blah-blahs. Other Blah-blahs lived in pointy mounds that flapped in the wind, but these seemed to have built themselves a great white lump of an upside-down burrow, bigger and harder than a giant termite-heap. There was a round fire-pit in front of the ‘burrow’ that alarmed the kits. But in spite of their fear of the smoke and flames, they were drawn to the farm by the smell of sweet, fresh water. Meerkats mostly live without needing to drink, by sucking the juice out of their prey. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t enjoy cooling their tongues and splashing about in water when the weather is particularly hot.

The kits had already come across a fair number of Blah-blahs in their short lives. They were mostly tall, pale, harmless creatures, who sometimes wandered across Really Mad territory on two legs calling “blah-blah-blah-blah” to each other. Like meerkats, they came from different tribes. The tribe that the kits knew best, the Click-clicks, often gave them bits of boiled egg and let them stand on their heads. They held strange eye-protectors in front of their faces, and they sometimes went click-click.

Sometimes other small mobs of visiting Blah-blahs hurried across the Really Mads’ territory, making a lot of noise. There were the Oolooks and the Hurry-ups and the Whevubins, all named by Uncle after the calls they used. They were often very frightened of the local animals and hid from them in their mobile escape tunnels that ran very fast on spinners.

As it happened, the family on the farm were not pale like these creatures; these were Zulu people. The kits knew them as the Tick-tocks because that’s how the Zulu language sounded to them, with all its tick-tocking of tongues. Generally, the Tick-tocks were gentle and not threatening, moving about their territory calmly and gracefully on their two legs, though they did keep a mobile escape tunnel near their main burrow – a very big and noisy and smoky one that roared vroom-vroom!

The kits loved to sneak on to the farm, partly to enjoy the water and partly to test their courage. To reach the water needed nerve and skill, for there were delicious dangers and challenges everywhere.

One was the wire fence stretched round the place, which glittered and whistled in the wind. The clumps of fur and feathers that were caught in it warned them just how nasty it could be. But the wire didn’t put Mimi off. “I’m not scared one bit!” she had scoffed when she first set eyes on it. “I can just burrow underneath. And look! This is easy-squeezy. Somebody’s started digging here already!”

Under she went with her brothers following close behind, passing back the dug-out sand, no problem at all. Even so, to reach the water they still had to get past some strange beasts that they hadn’t come across before. These bearded, woolly creatures trampled about everywhere inside the fence. They had mad eyes and sharp horns, but luckily, as the kits soon discovered, they were harmless. They seemed quite happy just to get their heads down and nibble and bleat, “Baaaa… Baaah!”

There were some hungry-looking fat birds there too, strutting about. Luckily they turned out to be silly, clumsy things. They didn’t fly up but scratched in the dirt.

“No danger,” the kits whispered to one another. Still, they knew that you had to be careful not to scare them or they would flap and cry, “Perk! Puck-puck-puck!” If that happened, one of the Tick-tocks would think you were a striped polecat and come running out with a stick.

As if that wasn’t enough, the kits had to face the turning tree that guarded the water. It whirled its arms wildly and rattled and shook. “Take no notice,” said Skeema boldly. “It’s only making threat-noises. Just wait till it’s looking the other way and we’ll sneak past.” And indeed, when the wind changed and the windmill was facing away from them, the kits raced to lap the water that came from deep under the sand.

It happened that as the kits were enjoying a refreshing drink on this particular Christmas Eve, their attention was suddenly caught by a movement in front of the farmhouse, near the fire-pit. The young female Tick-tock and her infant brother (let’s call them Molly and Ajahn) were jumping up and down and clapping their paws together.

Suddenly the Blah-blah papa came running with a loud cry. He had knocked down a young camel-thorn tree as tall as himself and now he lifted it above his head with his mighty arms and shook it at his cubs. As he did so, the mama appeared from the burrow entrance, with a box of bright, shiny things that sparkled in the sun.

“Quick! They’re going to attack!” cried Mimi. “Run!”

“No, wait,” whispered Little Dream. “They’re not after us. Look!”

With a grunt, the papa stood the tree upright by jamming it into the sand, and with many a tick with his tongue, and a clock and a tock, and with many a shriek of delight, the family gathered round it and did something very strange indeed. They began to make a dress for the tree, which dazzled and danced in the breeze, and to hang strange fruit of all shapes and sizes on it!

When they had finished dressing the tree, the adults went away. But then the kits saw another strange sight. The Blah-blah cubs began building a sort of tower out of sand!

“What is it? A nest for termites?” whispered Skeema.

But no. Gradually it became clear that what they were actually making… was some sort of tall Blah-blah like themselves! They dipped their hands into a bucket and began to smooth his skin with water. They made him eyes out of berries and a long red nose out of a pepper. They wound a scarf round his neck, as long and colourful as a rainbow. Finally they popped a bush-hat on his head.

“Look at that!” breathed Skeema, astonished. “We’d better go and tell the others about this!”