Young Fredle - Louise Yates [21]
After foraging, you went home to sleep: that was the way mice did things. But Fredle didn’t want to rest; he wanted to learn about the chickens.
Fredle trotted off toward the far corner of the garden fence. When he heard a dog barking—Sadie, by the sound of her—and Missus responding, Fredle froze behind a post. At first he just listened, then he took the chance of peeping around.
Missus was carrying a basket in one hand and a bucket in the other. She and Sadie were heading away from the garden to where another fence rose, behind which things moved and chittered. Fredle guessed that either the basket or the bucket had the baby in it.
“It’s such a nice day,” Missus said. “We can all use a little sunshine.”
“Sunshine, yes!” Sadie barked. “Look out, chickens, here we come! And sunshine, too!” She ran on ahead.
The gabble from behind that high fence grew louder, and Fredle, making a dash up to the next fence post for a better view, saw that there were birds in there, kept prisoners—or were they kept safe?—by the fence.
“Sadie? Down. Stay. I need you to watch the baby,” Missus said, and Sadie lay down beside the basket with her nose on her paws, while Missus opened a door in the high fence and went inside.
The birds—
But were they birds? Fredle could see wings flapping as they gathered around Missus’s legs, but they weren’t flying through the air, so could they be birds? Also, instead of making occasional loud comments like the crows, these birds chuckled and chittered constantly. Then his attention was caught by Missus, who reached into her bucket and threw something out around her, scattering it by the handful. Seeing how the chickens reacted, Fredle guessed it was food she was giving them.
The food sprayed around, in all directions, and the chickens scrabbled around after it, pecking and gabbling. Missus stood and watched this for a few minutes; then she left the fenced area, through the same door.
“Good dog, Sadie,” she said. “You’re an excellent nanny. That’ll do.”
Sadie got up. “I smell that mouse,” she said, but Missus didn’t understand.
“Shall we take a little stroll down to the barn and see what’s new with the cows?” Missus asked. “You haven’t seen the cows for a few days, Sadie.”
“But I did,” said Sadie. “Yesterday and before that, too. Angus checks them with me.”
“And neither have I,” Missus said, and they walked off, Missus carrying both the bucket and the basket.
The baby hadn’t made a sound. Fredle guessed that it was asleep, and he wondered if babies slept whenever they felt like it, daytime or nighttime, unlike house mice but very like the way he himself was sleeping now.
The chickens were working busily to fill their stomachs—heads down, sharp yellow noses pecking at the ground. As Fredle watched, they wandered around, even putting a head through the fence every now and then.
Probably, the way Missus tossed the food all around her, some must fall out through the fence, and Fredle wondered what that food was, if it was something a mouse might like. He was, he realized, enjoying himself. It was interesting to see all these new sights, think all these new thoughts, learn about all these new places and the things in them. When you were alone, you didn’t have to talk to anybody else, or take care of them, or wonder if you were getting in their way or be cross if they were getting in your way. When you were alone, nothing interfered with you.
Fredle decided to go closer to the chicken pen and find out what that food was, if he could eat it. The chickens were trapped inside their fence, so they couldn’t harm him with either their pecking noses or their flapping wings. Chattering away quietly to themselves, the chickens didn’t pay attention to anything besides their food, so why shouldn’t he satisfy his curiosity? He was about to move out of the shelter of the post when he noticed movement in the grass beyond the chicken pen, little twitches