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Dedication
With thanks to Professor Tim Clutton-Brock who is responsible for much of the madness about meerkats and who has taught me – in fact, he has taught the nation as a whole – more about meerkats than Uncle Fearless has had barking geckos for breakfast.
Contents
Cover
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
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Coming Soon!
Also available by Ian Whybrow
Copyright
About the Publisher
Foreword
The 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
under the cold and shivery midnight sands of the Kalahari desert…
Not that deep. Up a bit
Ah. This is it.
Here, in the warmest snuggest of all warm, snug sleeping chambers of Far Burrow,
four meerkats belonging to The Really Mad Mob were rolled up in a ball.
This is the Meerkat Way to enjoy a safe and restful sleep.
Chapter 1
Skeema, Mimi and Little Dream were thrilled with their new home. Far Burrow was dark and safe and wonderfully smelly. It was roomy, with comfortable chambers and plenty of secret entrances and exits. Above all, it was theirs – a home of their own that they shared with their dear old, mad old, lovely old, one-eyed… Uncle Fearless.
At the first coming of suntime, they made their way along the dark tunnels to the Upworld and stood together at the main entrance for Warm-up. Meerkats can’t really get going until they have warmed up their minds and muscles properly. To do this, they have to point the little pads on their tummies towards the rising sun for a while. So there they were, tummy-pads in the air, feeling a bit shivery, a bit tired… but happy.
Uncle stood beside the kits, mumbling to himself. He had been doing this a lot just lately. In fact, lately he had become even more eccentric than usual. For example, he had taken to dashing off by himself for quite long periods. And he was always popping down into the burrow, even in the suntime, declaring that he was “just checking that all the escape tunnels were in good order, don’t ya know?” If he had checked them once, he had checked them more times than he had teeth and claws.
And now here he was, mumbling to himself: “Hmmm… get a grip, Fearless. Whup-whup, now! Not so much shilly-shallying, you fool! Get in there before it’s too late. Just pop the question before she dashes off again, what-what…!”
“What is he muttering about?” whispered Mimi to Little Dream. “...before she dashes off again...?” Mimi usually thought of herself first and imagined that others did the same. “She? But I haven’t dashed off anywhere lately, not me, not Mimi!”
Little Dream said nothing. He still hadn’t woken up properly.
Uncle began to lick his paw and slick back his whiskers, mmyim-mmyam. “Quite honestly, Fearless, old boy, you’re not looking too bad for an old battler,” he said aloud. “You may be a bit bent and bashed-up in places, but you’ve got your health and strength. So get on with it, laddy! Pounce before the beetle buries itself, as they say!”
Mimi’s big brother, Skeema, pricked up his ears and looked sideways at Uncle. Being rather keen on plans and schemes himself, he too was curious to know what Fearless was up to. “Pounce, eh?” thought Skeema. “Old battler…? Hmmm. I wonder if he’s planning to have a fight with another meerkat mob. Prrrrr! Perhaps he’s found out that the Ruddertails are planning another attack on Far Burrow!”
For several suntimes now, Uncle had been exercising furiously. He had taken to doing press-ups, and making energetic sprints to and from a nearby shepherd tree. He would come back all breathless and fluttery, running his paws over his face and arms to smooth them and looking down to see if his fat tummy had got any smaller. Now and then he would throw himself on his back and kick all his legs in the air, making strange yip-yip-wheeee! noises and shouting, “I’m all yours! Come and get me!” He did a lot of waggling his eyebrows and clacking his teeth. Skeema felt pretty sure that he was getting himself fit for a scrap!
On this particular early-suntime, Uncle was taking unusual care with his grooming. He suddenly seemed to notice a wayward tuft in his fur and nibbled at it furiously. “Lie down tidy, now!” he growled. “Disgrace! This’ll never do! Hmmm, nip nip! Must keep meself neat and handsome, what-what!”
“Aha! I get it!” said Skeema. He had suddenly thought of another possibility. “Are you making yourself look nice for the Chief of the Click-clicks, Uncle?” he asked.
The Click-clicks were a small tribe of Blah-blahs who lived fairly close to Far Burrow. They were strange, giant creatures who had accepted Uncle as their king. They were not unlike monkeys, but smoother and they usually stayed out of trees and walked on the ground. They often came up quietly and left gifts of food for the Really Mad Mob. They bowed down to the meerkats and let them climb up on to their heads. Being as tall as young thorn trees, they made excellent look-out posts.
To show how much he admired Uncle, the Chief of the Click-clicks had given him the special collar that he always wore with pride. Like all Blah-blahs, the Click-clicks talked in blah-blah-blah noises instead of squeaking and chattering to one another in the normal way. The only time they didn’t go blah-blah-blah was when they got excited. Then they sounded like hyenas… hee-hee-ha-ha-haaah!
The Click-clicks had plenty of strange and silly habits. For example, instead of building proper, safe burrows deep down under the sands, they made pointy white mounds above the ground! These were so flimsy that you could see them flapping whenever the wind blew. The Click-click tribe was so called because they were very shy and often hid their eyes behind special eye-protectors whenever they came to admire the meerkats up close – which was often. Sometimes they used their tongues to make click-click noises as a greeting.
“No, no. The Click-clicks have gone, I’m afraid,” said Uncle, staring outwards. “The rains will be here soon; I can smell ’em. And Blah-blahs get very nervous about storms, don’t you know. Those feeble pointy mounds of theirs won’t keep them safe from sky-crash and fizz-fire. That’s why they’ve all jumped into their Vroom-vrooms, d’you see? I expect they’ve gone to find a safer place to live.”
The Click-clicks were not clever enough to think of building lots of different escape-tunnels. Instead, they relied on enormous travelling burrows that moved on spinners. At the first sign of danger, they would jump into them and vroom-vroom! – off they would roar in a cloud of dust.
“Oh, dear! That means no more nuts and eggs for me-me, then,” sighed Mimi. “No more standing on their heads and having my tummy tickled.”
At the mention of the word tummy, Uncle slid his paws under his rather fat one and hoisted it up with a “One-two-three… HUP!” It was a habit of his. Skeema and Mimi giggled and did a “One-two-three… HUP!” immitation of him. He took no notice, and just kept on gazing into the distance, sighing. After a while he sang a little ditty to himself:
“Fleabites are red, my love.
Blue skinks are blue.
Lizards are yummy, love
And so, my fluff, are you.”
The kits stood and stared as Uncle fiddled with his helmet, tilting it across his good eye and saying quietly to himself in a strange, low voice, “Not too bad for an old soldier, eh? How do I look, my dainty Itchy-Kitchy?”
“You don’t think he’s going potty, do you, Skeema?” said Mimi.
“I hope not,” said Skeema. “Although, come to think of it, he has been doing some very peculiar things lately. He kept me awake for ages in the darktime, talking in his sleep, giving me hard squeezes and saying strange things to me in a soppy sort of voice.”
“What sort of things?” asked Mimi.
“Well… like: You’ll be quite safe with me, you fabulous creature.”
“What do you think he’s on about?” said Mimi.
At that moment, Mimi heard something behind her and, turning round quickly, saw something moving in the shadows. She let out such a dreadful shriek that Little Dream leaped up and gave a shriek himself.
“WUP! WUP! WUP! ACTION STATIONS!” cried Mimi.
“Wh-what?” growled Uncle. “Enemies, is it? TAKE COVER! DIVE-DIVE-DIVE!”
In one sweeping movement, Skeema grabbed his trusty lime-green Snap-snap – a powerful weapon he had acquired from the Click-click tribe – and held him at the ready.
Tails up, claws out, the kits braced themselves, ready to run to safety or fight for their lives.
For a moment they stood rooted to the spot, for there, behind them, something was making its way steadily towards them from the darkness of their very own burrow!
Chapter 2
What was it, struggling up out of the gloom? A honey badger? A cobra? Either could be deadly!
Suddenly Uncle let out his breath and relaxed. “Stand easy, the Really Mads!” he ordered. “No danger.”
He bustled past the kits, bowed deeply into the tunnel and offered a helping paw to the intruder. “Up we come,” he said.
The stranger was a fabulously fluffy female meerkat. She was tall and youthful, and when she turned, she showed very pretty, regularly-spaced dark patches down the sandy fur of her back. She had clearly lost weight and condition, but not her dignity. Her eyes were very deep and dark and her gaze was steady. When she saw how anxiously the kits looked at her, she almost turned and went back the way she had come. But then she seemed to check herself and stepped forward and spoke up boldly. “What ho, Fearless, old thing,” she said. She sounded very grand and hearty. “I hope this isn’t an awkward moment. But I really don’t think I can keep myself a secret for much longer. There! I’ve done it now, haven’t I?”
With that, she threw herself down on to her tummy in the still-cold sand in the way respectful meerkats have when they wish to be introduced.
“Now, now, m’dear! Get to your paws, please!” said Uncle, puffing his chest out, pulling in his tummy and straightening his safari scarf. “No need for ceremony! The kits are not going to bite you. You’re quite safe here with us. Come out and join our Warm-up.”
“What is she doing near me, Mimi, in my home?” exclaimed Mimi indignantly.
“Our home,” corrected Little Dream quietly, looking a little confused.
Skeema dashed over and peered down into the entrance tunnel, wagging his bottom from side to side as fiercely as he could, to show that he was ready for any sort of attack. “If there are any more of you down there – come out and fight!” he cried.
Mimi joined him, and began to make loud spit-calls to show how fierce she was. “Yes! Come out and fight me, me!” she challenged. “I’m special, you know! I’m the maddest kit of all the Really Mads!”
Little Dream was still looking rather dazed by the speed at which things were happening, but he was quick to stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother and sister. “Exactly,” he cried. It wasn’t very scary but it was the best he could manage on the spur of the moment.
“Steady! As you were, everyone!” growled Uncle Fearless. “Stand easy! There’s no-one else down there, you can take my word for it.”
“There could be, Uncle!” said Skeema. “After all, this female must have sneaked in through one of the escape-tunnels.” Skeema knew a trick or too himself so he was always quick to sniff out the cunning plans of others.
“I can assure you, Skeema,” said Uncle, licking his paw and briskly polishing the fur on his chest with it, “that I invited only one guest to use the spare chamber last night. And that was Miss – or to use her proper title, hem-hem – Princess – Radiant.”
At the word princess, Mimi bristled. She had always wanted to be a princess like her poor mother, Princess Fragrant who, tragically, had disappeared when Mimi and her brothers were no bigger than baby mole-rats. So when the Really Mad Mob had moved to Far Burrow, Uncle had promised Mimi she could be a princess. Thanks to Uncle Fearless, they had escaped from their old home where they had been bullied by cold Queen Heartless and her horrid, mean royal kits.
They had made their way, facing any number of dangers together, across the kingdom of the Sharpeyes, almost as far as the land of their arch-rivals, the fearsome Ruddertails. Mimi no longer had to bow and scrape to the cruel Princess Dangerous, who had reminded her constantly that she and her brothers were of no importance at all, being mere orphans.
Now the Really Mads had their own burrow and their own tribe, and she certainly didn’t want to have to go through that sort of thing again!
Skeema was still alarmed too, and he blurted out, “Is she a Ruddertail? She smells like one to me.”
“Enemies!” piped Little Dream, remembering the tremendous fight they had all had to keep the Ruddertails out of Far Burrow when they first arrived.
“Manners, everyone!” roared Uncle. “Silence, PLEASE!” Sulkily, the kits obeyed. He went on, “Princess Radiant is most certainly not a Ruddertail, Skeema. And she is not an enemy. She is… or rather she was… a member of the Truepatch tribe, who treated her as cruelly as the Sharpeyes treated us. And they threw her out. Sadly for her, she had no fellow meerkats with her, so had no choice for many a suntime and darktime but to be a tribeless Wanderer. When I came across her, worn-out and defenceless under a shrub on the border of Shepherd Tree Clump, I… well, I didn’t hesitate, did I, Princess?”
“Radiant, please, my dear! Let the kitties just call me Radiant!”
“Kitties!” spluttered Mimi. “Me? Me? A kitty?”
Uncle ignored Mimi and pressed on with his story. “I had no hesitation in offering the, hurrumph, very lovely Radiant, my protection. Our protection, I should say. Only…”
“Only we thought I might be a bit of a shock to you if I just wandered into the burrow,” put in Radiant with a twitch of her (very lovely) nose. “So we thought I’d better lie low until we could think of a way of, er, breaking the news about me as gently as possible. Your uncle – the dear, kind fellow – hid me away and brought me all sorts of smashing grub to fatten me up a bit. Didn’t you, my splendid old fearless hero?”
The kits looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “Yuck!” muttered Mimi.
“That explains why Uncle kept running off and disappearing!” whispered Skeema with a touch of admiration. “And why he kept pretending to check on the escape-tunnels. Crafty!”
“But she can’t stay here,” returned Mimi, horrified.
“Well, I don’t want to intrude if I’m not wanted,” said the newcomer, sensing that she was far from welcome. “Perhaps I should leave now. I’m sorry…”
“Nonsense! You’re not intruding at all!” cried Uncle. “Allow me to introduce you properly. Radiant, this is my niece, Mimi. Say how-do-you-do, Mimi.”
Mimi was so furious that she could only just manage to say hello.
Skeema was equally stiff and he couldn’t quite bring himself to say that he was pleased to meet her.
Little Dream was much more welcoming. “How do you do?” he said politely and touched his nose against the stranger’s face. “Our Mama is a Wanderer too,” he said sadly. “I have dreams about her sometimes. Her name’s Fragrant. You didn’t bump into her on your wanderings, did you, by any chance?”
“Now, now, Dreamie,” said Uncle gently. “Let’s not go over that again, eh, dear boy?” His sister, Fragrant, was dead and gone, he was sure of it. He hated to see the little chap get excited by a false hope. “Harrumph! I tell you what. We can’t bring your Mama back. But I’ve been thinking. What the Really Mad Mob needs more than anything is – um – a kind and caring adult female to join us. Someone strong, with spirit, d’you see? Someone who can bring… well, the things that the right sort of adult females can bring.”
“But you look after us,” said Skeema.
“And we manage very well on our own,” grumbled Mimi.
Uncle wasn’t listening. He gazed adoringly at Radiant. “So if you’ll permit me, my dear…” he said, “as King of the Really Mads, and Lord of the Click-clicks – I should like to welcome you officially into our tribe.”
In a flash, he twirled like a dancer and sprayed her with the mark of the Really Mad Mob. “Please consider yourself one of us,” he said merrily, rapidly blinking his one good eye. “Kits, give her a nice welcome, what-what!” He puffed out his chest proudly.
“I say, you’re all frightfully decent!” cried Radiant, hugging them firmly and giving everyone a jolly good nose-rub. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to be among friends and out of danger. I had a pretty grim time all on my own-io in the Upworld, I don’t mind telling you. We meerkats are not much good without other meerkats looking out for us, are we?” She tried to make light of it, but were those tears of relief shining in her eyes? She wiped them away impatiently. “I’m not sure how I can ever thank you.” She looked hard at Uncle when she said this. Then she was bustling among the kits, squeezing and nipping them affectionately. “But I give you my word that I am bally-well going to try.”
Skeema and Mimi managed to mumble something and Uncle, bursting with joy and pride, gathered them all into his arms.
“Hear, hear,” said Little Dream, politely. “Good speech. Welcome to the Really Mads.”
Chapter 3
“Now, come along, everyone!” Uncle cried. “That’s enough talk! With the rains so late, we need to save bags of energy just to find enough to eat. Tails up then, the Really Mads, and let’s head for the foraging grounds!”
Off they raced, dipping in and out of the dry tufts of spiky grass splashed with the stinking white tell-tale scent-marks of hyenas. “Eyes sharp!” barked Uncle Fearless. “Stay together to stay alive! Don’t be fooled just because hyenas giggle. The louder they laugh, the hungrier they are.” So everyone was extra-watchful as they came to open ground near a lofty camelthorn tree.
“I’ll take first sentry-duty!” cried Mimi in a huffy sort of voice. She darted up to the top of the tree like a monkey and scanned the horizon for signs of trouble. “Though why I should look out for HER I really don’t know,” she muttered under her breath.
With Mimi on guard, the others could get their heads down and dig with a will, but the pickings were thin. Before the rains came, food was always scarce. The damp places, where the juiciest bugs and lizards and scorpions love to cool themselves, lay far below the surface and were hard to sniff out.
Skeema was chasing ants, throwing up a shower of hot sand to get at some of their eggs, when he suddenly came face to face with a crawler he hadn’t met before. It was a shiny black beetle with white marks on its cheeks. It seemed to be tucking into the ants itself and was waving its long legs and pincers in a wild sort of way. Skeema was very fond of his food, especially scorpions, so he was used to the darting and threatening tricks that many delicious creatures use to try to avoid getting eaten. In fact, the sheer cheek of the little creature made him determined to find out what it tasted like. He lowered his nose almost to the ground to get within nibbling range. Then he began to knock the beetle about with his paw.
Crack-crack! The creature let off a double explosion from its back end! It sent twin streams of acid flying right at Skeema’s eye! With a yelp and a backward-roll, Skeema flung himself away from the danger. But in a couple of seconds he was nose down and back in the hunt.
“Careful now!” warned Uncle. “Black-and-white stranger – always a danger! I’ve told you that before. That’s an Oogpister you’re playing with, by all that stinks and stings! He’ll do real damage to your eyes if you let him! Give him a wide berth!”
“Respect!” muttered Skeema to the little squirt, thinking how clever it was and that, if ever he found himself cornered, a quick Oogpister-move, might come in very handy.
When it was Skeema’s turn to keep watch, Mimi came down from her perch to feed. She was still very grumpy and complained to Little Dream, “I’m not hungry at all, and it’s all Uncle’s fault!”
She was dreadfully jealous. Instead of giving her lots of attention, Uncle seemed to be more or less ignoring her. He kept fussing after Radiant, offering her the choicest grubs and crawlers, no matter how difficult they were to find.
Mimi stamped about in a sulk, scratching at the increasingly hot sand and throwing it up in clouds when she could find nothing to eat.
Radiant noticed what was going on and trotted over to her with a fat skink between her jaws – a rare find in this dry season and one of Mimi’s favourites. “Here,” she said kindly. “You have it. You’ve done a lovely job as look-out. You must be starving, you poor thing.”