Young Fredle - Louise Yates [32]
“I’m going to explore past the garbage cans,” he announced. “Around the fourth side. Do you want to come?”
“Not me,” Bardo said.
“Me either,” Neldo said. “I don’t go there. The cats go hunting around that side of the house once the weather gets warm.”
“If even Neldo stays clear, you better believe it’s dangerous, chum,” Bardo agreed. “I can tell you that I’ve seen with my own eyes Fox coming around the corner with a fat, frightened gray house mouse in his jaws.”
“Some of them get away,” Neldo said.
“Even if they do, no house mouse lasts long out here. So I would advise against heading off in that direction, young Fredle.”
Fredle pretended to be concentrating on an eggshell, which had the advantage of being very light and thus easy to move around, with the disadvantage of being difficult to chew. But really, he was thinking about what Bardo had just told him, without meaning to. Fredle could draw the logical conclusion: if the barn cats came around from that fourth side of the house carrying a house mouse, then there was a way in. He could be sure that the cats must know how to get into the house because he absolutely knew that no house mouse would voluntarily venture outside.
“I’ll spare you the disappointment,” Bardo said. “Eggshells aren’t worth the trouble of chewing them up.”
Fredle turned his attention to a dark gray strip of apple peel. “What is that chicken feed you all go foraging for?” he asked.
“Corn,” Neldo said.
“Neldo,” Bardo warned her. “You know the rules.”
“What difference does it make if he knows? Haven’t you figured it out yet? He’s not going to try to share our food. He just wants to survive out here until he can get back inside. He’s no danger to us, Bardo.” She turned back to Fredle. “Plus there are brown things, like the dogs get only much smaller, some kind of kibbles, and something gritty and pale, like dirt. We never eat that. But the chickens like it; chickens will eat anything, they just peck away at the ground and swallow whatever comes up. They’ll eat bugs. Ick-ko.”
“Do they eat mice?” asked Fredle, since anything included mice and it was easy to see that a mouse was a lot smaller than a chicken.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” said Bardo. “But you don’t want to get between a chicken and its food. A good strike with one of those beaks and a chicken will cripple you, and chances are you’ll be dinner for the snake before you know it.”
Fredle didn’t respond. He finished his strip of apple peel and set off. As he came up to the garden gate post he saw the large figure of Missus, approaching. Fredle froze.
Missus carried a basket in one hand and the bucket in the other. Sadie bounded along beside her. “We’re working! Weeding the garden! Feeding the chickens! Taking care of the baby! It’s warm and sun—” Sadie fell silent, sniffing the air, and then she said quietly, “Hello, Fredle. My job is to watch the baby.” She went to the basket Missus had set down just inside the garden fence and sat in the dirt beside it. “Do you want to see our baby? I could lift you in my mouth but you have to be quiet.”
However, Missus leaned down to stretch a thin cloth over the top of the basket before she went off into the garden, so Fredle couldn’t have seen the baby even if he had trusted Sadie to put him up in her mouth and not eat him. He tried to explain it to her. “It’s not safe for a mouse to be near humans.” Or dogs, he didn’t add.
“The baby can’t hurt you. Not yet, anyway, because babies can’t do anything, not even pull my ears. That’s why I have to be her nanny.”
Fredle stayed crouched behind his post. “Where’s Angus?”
“When Mister checks the sheep in their pasture, Angus helps him. Sometimes I help, too, but not today.” Sadie lay down beside the baby’s basket, which wasn’t really a basket at all but more like a box with a handle, and pointed her nose at the post behind which Fredle hid. “What are you doing here?”
“I was foraging in the compost.”
“You don’t eat compost, do you? Ick-ko.”
“It’s better than your kibbles.