Wednesday 2 October 2013

The Owl, Ord Hill and the Kindness of Strangers




A story written to help children in an Inverness Primary School understand the concept of the local Food Bank for which they were collecting food at Harvest 2013.


Fred the squirrel lived with his brother George in the woods on Ord Hill high above the Kessock Bridge. They’d hitched a lift from the south on an Asda lorry during the summer, and had each found a tree to build a comfortable nest in.

George and Fred were so glad they’d come north – they loved the sunshine, and the clear air, and the grey waters of the Moray Firth. They spent their evenings watching the dolphins through binoculars which had been a leaving present from their Aunt Ruby who lived in a forest near Edinburgh.

But then one day it began to get cooler, and somehow the amount of time between tea-time and darkness falling grew shorter, and the leaves began turning yellow, and acorns and conkers dropped to the forest floor.

George and Fred knew it was time to start collecting nuts so they wouldn’t go hungry in winter. From then on their days were filled with nut hunting – and they weren’t alone. The woods were full of squirrels – eyeing the nuts on branches just waiting to fall, rushing forward to catch a nut when a gust of wind persuaded a tree to let it go, rummaging among the piles of fallen leaves searching for buried acorns.

Many times George and Fred saw a nut on the ground, darted forward to grab it, only to be beaten to it by another squirrel.

‘This is hard work!’ Fred muttered, envious of the great white owl he saw high above who seemed to have all the time in the world to soar in the blue sky.

George and Fred hid the nuts they found in a hollow in the trunk of a tree. They made a big cross on it with white paint so that they would know where to look when winter came. Gradually, the pile of nuts grew – until they thought they had enough to keep them alive until the spring.

Now they could have a rest. They sat in their nests, watching the traffic on the Kessock Bridge through their binoculars, wondering if any of their relatives would come north.

But one night, there was a terrible storm. The wind howled through the cables on the Bridge, the waves crashed into the shore at North Kessock, the floodlights at the Caley Thistle stadium blew over, the rain soaked Fred and George’s nests through and through, thunder crashed and lightening flashed. Suddenly, there was a tremendous bang, and a blaze of flame, and an agonising screech of tearing wood. And eventually, calm and silence. Fred hopped trembling into his brother’s nest, and they spent the night huddled together for warmth.

When daylight came, the brothers looked out over the forest, and they saw a black scar where once a tree had been, and horrified, the realised that it was their tree, their nut tree, the tree with the white cross. It was gone, burned up.

They rushed to the ground, and nosed desperately among the ashes. But whatever had happened to them, their nuts were gone. Not a single acorn, not a single conker remained.

‘What are we going to do?’ they said, sobbing. ‘We’ll die with no food to eat over the long dark winter.’

‘We could ask the other squirrels to share theirs,’ said Fred

‘But I wouldn’t want to beg. And anyway even if they wanted to be generous they could only spare one or two.’

They sat in the pale autumn sunlight. ‘Did I hear you sobbing?’ said George. ‘Certainly not,’ said Fred. ‘It must have been a mouse.’ But his voice sounded strange.

And then both the squirrels realised that they were not alone. They looked up, and saw the great white owl perched on a fence post looking at them.

‘Don’t worry,’ said great white owl.

‘Don’t worry? Easy for you to say, soaring through the sky and catching a fieldmouse whenever you feel peckish.’

‘You come back here tomorrow at lunch time, and you’ll see why you don’t need to worry.’

And the owl spread his wings and soared off into the heavens.

‘Humph!’ said the squirrels, not sure if they could believe the bird.  They spent the afternoon in George’s nest watching Caley Thistle win a home game against Aberdeen through their binoculars.

‘What d’you think great white owl has got up his sleeve?’ said Fred the next morning.

At lunch-time they made their way to the old fence where they’d met the owl the day before. There was no sign of the bird.

‘Might have known,’ said Fred, glumly.

And then there was rustling of wings, and great white owl swooped out of the sky – and in his beak was an enormous Kelloggs Corn Flake box full of a winter’s supply of acorns and conkers for two.

And then, out of the undergrowth leaped dozens of squirrels, dancing and shouting.

Great white owl had invited all the squirrels to donate some food to help Fred and George, and they’d done it gladly – because they were pretty kind squirrels really, and besides, it might be them next time.

Fred and George said thank-you, and great white owl advised them to bury the nuts this time as that was safer, and they were so happy and so relieved.

And then they heard a lorry stopping in the car pack at the bottom of the forest walk, and the undergrowth waved dementedly as a small creature scurried towards them, and a voice said

‘I’ve come north for Christmas.’

It was Aunt Ruby, and her arrival made it the very happiest day of Fred and George’s life.

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