The Hungry Herd at Christmas

"Thank you Patricia," Tarquin said, "now, where are these pig nuts I've been hearing about? I'm starving!"

"Before you start stuffing your beak, what did you discover about the way out at the top of the hill?" Tina asked.

"Looks good, it leads to a little wild patch, which has some long grass for Lola and Kelly to feed on, because there's hardly any grass here where the pigs live. Then there's a dark wood behind the pasture but there's a gate to a field with a couple of horses in and that should lead to a lane on the other side of the field."

"So we can escape The Farmer's Wife?"

"Yes, Tina, I believe we can."

Tarquin and Tina left Lola and Kelly eating the lush long grass at the neglected top end of the pigs' field, while they walked with Paul through the wood.

"This is the Plantation," Tina said as soon as she saw the grid pattern they were planted in.

"Plantation?" Tarquin asked.

"I've heard The Farmer and The Farmer's Wife arguing about this plot in the barn. It was set out by The Farmer's father, years ago. The Wife wanted to cut it down this year, for some sort of flow, that she said they needed, while he wanted to leave it for another five years."

"Cut it down? Why would they want to cut it down?"

"Because they get paid to grow the trees," chipped in Paul, "and they get paid again when they cut them down and the timber's hauled away. My Aunt Patricia was telling me about it this morning while you were having your second breakfast."

"Yes, they planted the trees a long time ago and they are supposed to leave it a set amount of time before cutting them. That's how they have grown up in such even rows."

They left Paul rooting about in the light undergrowth, to mark the spot back to the pig field, while Tarquin and Tina trotted down to where the gate to the horse field was.

Tina called out to the horses when they got to the gate, but the horses ignored them again. It wasn't until Tarquin lifted the latch and Tina pushed the gate open that they trotted over to see what they were doing in their little field. One was a slightly smaller grey, the larger one a proud red roan.

"Hey, you big birds, this is our field, push off," snorted the rude red roan.

"This may be the field that you are KEPT in," Tarquin boomed, puffing out his chest as far as he could and holding his head high, "it's not yours at all but you HAVE to stay where you're put. We birds are free to come and go as we please."

"Ha! Ha! Cran," laughed the grey horse, "you've finally met your match here!"

She turned to Tarquin and Tina, standing by the gate, "I'm Goldie, by the way, and this bad-tempered quadruped is Cranberry."

Tina stood in front of Tarquin and flapped her wings in greeting, "We are Tina and Tarquin, we're turkeys from the farm the other side of the trees."

Cranberry and Goldie both snorted, "We know The Farmer, especially his Wife, she's horrible, keeps pestering our owners, The Carpenters, because they want their field back, even though The Carpenters have leased it for years, with options to extend. Can't trust that pair as far as you could throw 'em!" Cranberry snorted. "Sorry I was a little rude earlier, birds. What are you here for, anyway?"

"We're trying to get away from the Farm," Tina said sadly, "all our friends were carted away, almost as soon as we made our getaway."

"Yeah, that happens, not to us, but, you know, we've heard." Goldie commiserated, "I'm sure the end, when it came, was merciful."

"It makes me angry to think about it." Tarquin curled his beak, "I'd like to get my own back on that Farmer's Wife."

"Well, how can we help?"

"We have three friends, who we would go back and fetch in a while, then we want to go through your field to the lane on the other side."

The two horses looked at one another.

"The lane on the other side of the field is a very busy road, with traffic, you might want to leave it until after the middle of the night when it gets quiet. But you're welcome to stay in the field during the day, until you're ready to go."

When the turkeys returned through the woods to fetch Paul, Kelly and Lola, both horses decided to go along with them and explore. Because this was The Farmer's land, and there being so much animosity between The Carpenters and The Farmer, Cranberry and Goldie had never been allowed out this way before. They chattered amiably with their new friends as they returned to the horse field.

So, the five friends spent a very cold and frosty afternoon in the field, huddled together, close to some trees where the horses had a little shelter. Paul had goose bumps it was so cold, and Tarquin complained all evening that the pig nuts had given him worse wind than the sheep pellets had. That meant everyone complained.

"But at least," Goldie pointed out, with a little sarcasm, after another outburst from Paul, "you have the freedom to complain."

The Herd on the Move

They restarted their journey in the middle of the night, where two turkeys, a lamb, calf and pig made a strange set of companions out on a midnight stroll down a minor country lane. They were still walking down the lane when the frosty dawn matured into daylight.

They noticed almost straight away that the lane was busier than the other lane, cars and trucks trundled through most of the night, coming by all the time, in ones and two. So they were forever ducking into the bushes growing up between the fence and the road.

The longer they walked, slowed down by the ponderous movements of Paul the pig, who travelled half the speed of Lola the lamb. Kelly seemed to have no problem keeping up but she would panic every time a car's headlights were seen. Tarquin was also getting very hungry now, which manifested itself in a cacophony of rumbling sounds from his stomach.

"At least you being hungry has reduced the amount of gas you're leaking," Tina observed, less than tactful for someone who was his oldest and dearest friend, "although come to think of it, I'm feeling hungry now too!"

From just before dawn, and until an hour or so after, the lane was thick with vehicles, trucks, cars, even a huge people carrier as high as the trucks that Tina saw cart away their turkey friends, also appeared to be carting away humans. Surely they weren't harvesting humans as well! Somehow the thought made the human farmers seem even more barbaric.

"Did you see that?" Tina whispered to Tarquin. They had left the road by this time and were hiding in the undergrowth of a leafless copse for a couple of hours of grazing, until what the horses had described as 'the rush hour' had calmed down.

"See what?" Tarquin grumbled.

He had been head down scrambling to find something edible for breakfast since they had stopped here. Lola and Kelly were cheerfully munching grass that was growing unchecked, now that the leaves blocking the sunlight had blown away. Paul had rooted around and was noisily crunching acorns and smiling like it was his birthday. Even Tina had poked about using her beak to turn over the crinkly old leaves and find a few seeds, fresh ground cover leaves, and even snapping up a couple of creepy crawlies she'd dislodged.

Eugh! Tarquin thought, (A) He didn't do salad, like, ever. Nope, no salad, definitely. And (B) he didn't like his food moving about while he was trying to eat it. He was a poultry pellet man through and through. Now, that was proper grub you could really get your beak into. OK, it may be over-processed, full of saturated fats and protein from dubious sources, but it was man-turkey grub that put feathers on your chest. The barn had switched from grower pellets to finisher pellets in the last couple of weeks, and most fowl hadn't noticed, but Tarquin could tell. He'd actively searched out the less-used hoppers in the corners, that still had his preferred brand. Besides, he could read, thanks to Tina, and she was one smart turkey, all right. All the new stuff was labelled "unmedicated" and "GM". Were they serious? What were they thinking, unmedicated, with all those birds closely packed in like that? They were asking for trouble. As for GM, well, Tarquin didn't actually know what that meant, and thought it stood for Goat Meal. I mean, he'd had sheep pellets and pig nu-

Tina interrupted his thoughts again.

"Didn't you hear what I said, Tarq?"

"Sorry sweetheart, miles away. What were you saying?"

"The traffic's died down, we're on the move again."

They made their way down the busy lane until the fields on either side were replaced by houses set back from the road, with long front gardens and fences or hedges. Even the avenue of trees petered out, leaving the animals no cover at all.

The path, which had been made of the black earth like the road, became hard slippery stone squares, especially as the earlier rain was turning to freezing sleet. They could see the main twin highway ahead, down at the bottom of the hill, still thick with traffic.

"We'll have to lie low again until midnight," Tina pointed out, "someone will see us if we go on and then The Farmer's Wife will hear about it and catch us for sure."

"What are we going to do?" Tarquin asked, "We can't wait here. Besides, I'm really hungry and so tired that I don't want to go all the way back to that copse, there was nothing for me to eat there."

"Your trouble is, you're too picky," Tina laughed, "relax, and a few crunchy bugs'll set you up for the day."

"No thank you, I'd rather eat pig nuts," Tarquin retorted, "and I don't even like pig nuts."

"We can go back to that last field back there," Kelly suggested, "they had a crop growing in there. Although I didn't notice a gate, we might get through the bushes, they were light in places, where you could see all the way through."

Backtracking, they found the field and it was Lola who discovered a narrow way for her to get through. After exploring for a few minutes she shouted through the gap that she'd found a gate. They had to go around the last house they had passed, to an alleyway which lead to a path which ran by the field up to the gate. Soon they were altogether again in a large field full of neat rows of cabbages, Brussels sprouts and sprouting broccoli.

"Oh goodie, just what I wanted," Tarquin said without much enthusiasm, "a field full of booooring salads."

Everyone except Tarquin managed to find supper, while he halfheartedly scratched around under the hedgerows without finding much to sustain his appetite or maintain his interest. Eventually, they all settled down in a huddle under the canopy of a huge oak tree, still largely in leaf, providing some relief from the sleet and light snow.

They slept uneasily, with Paul particularly feeling the cold. Tarquin's patience was already short.

"Stop moaning about how cold it is, your continual shivering is spilling the cushion of air in my feathers, letting the cold in."

"Well, as you've probably noticed, I don't have any feathers, no woolly coat or much in the way of fur, so I am really, really feeling the chill."

"Yeah, I can see that in the moonlight your skin is shiny with a coating of frost."

"Here, see if this helps," Tarquin spread one wing over Paul's bare back. Tina opened one eye and spread her wing to cover where Tarquin couldn't reach.

"That's better..." Paul sighed, only long enough before he dropped off to sleep. All five settled down to doze until the middle of the night.

"Who who?" an owl hooted.

"What?" Tarquin woke up almost instantly.

"Who who?" the owl hooted again.

"Tarquin, pleased to meet you."

"Not you, idiot, I was calling to the girl owl at the other end of the field, and I was trying to make an impression on her —"

"Well, you're certainly making a impression on me, bird. You woke me up and when I'm awake I'm hungry."

"Well, you'll have a long climb up if you want to eat me and I'll be long gone by the time you get here."

"I don't want to eat you! I'm dreaming of poultry pellets, full of protein and life-giving E numbers and none of that Goat Meal rubbish. Who are you anyway, 'who-wooing' all over the place?"

"I'm Oliver the Owl and I don't just go 'who-wooing' all over the place. No, I'm on a mission here."

"Looks like an impossible mission to me, it seems like she's flown off."

"Really?" Oliver scoured the moonlit tree opposite from all angles, bobbing his head about like it was on a coiled spring. "Fiddlesticks! No sign of her. Did you see which way she went?"

"No, sorry."

"Oh well, might as well call it a night, then. It looks like it is going to snow again in a minute."

"Well, goodnight, Oliver."

"Come to think of it, there are bags of pellets in my barn. I've not noticed whether they are poultry pellets or not but The Carpenters do keep a few chickens in their yard."

"Where's your barn?"

"It's not far, as the crow flies."

"Well, I'm on my feet, so I have to watch out for fences, building, rivers, you know?"

"I know, you can follow me if you like, there's a full moon, and I'll go slowly."

Tarquin found following Oliver while the owl was flying and Tarquin stumbling in the dark on foot was tricky. Even with a full moon the way was full of dark shadows. He skidded on patches of ice more than once, tripped over roots near overhanging trees and put one foot in a deep pothole full to the brim with icy water.

By the time the owl led Tarquin to the barn he promised, the poor turkey was completely disorientated as to how far and what direction he had travelled. He felt a little ashamed of abandoning the others for the sake of his appetite, too.

Oliver flew without hesitation through a gap under the roof, but Tarquin could not get in as the barn was securely locked with a clasp and padlock. While he was considering the lock, Tarquin heard a growl behind him, he looked around to be faced with the biggest and hairiest dog he'd ever seen. It growled at him again, baring its yellow teeth. Tarquin imagined the only question on that dog's mind was whether he was 'breast first or leg'. Tarquin guessed the dog was a preferrer of shapely legs, and Tarquin had long ago decided his were the most muscular in the flock, although

Tina's was more shapely, daintily so. He felt calm somehow that Tina would be the last thing on his mind at the end of his life.

Before Tarquin could weight up the pros and cons of 'fight or flight', another animal entered into the equation.

The Carpenter's Cat jumped down from a fence where she had been sitting unnoticed, observing proceedings.

Both the Dog and Tarquin looked and watched her slow, deliberate steps until she walked and stopped midway distance between the facing protagonists. She was elegant, was Carpenter's Cat, her head held high, her tail vertically pointing toward the black sky. She turned to face the Dog, then sat and purred, a purr that carried in the cold, clearly frosty night. To Tarquin's amazement, the dog lay down quietly with its head resting peacefully on his paws, the snarling attitude evaporated like a bad memory. The owl silently flew down and glided in front of Tarquin's eyes.

"Time to go, big bird," he whispered, "sorry you couldn't get into the barn. Sometimes The Carpenters leave it unlocked. I'll guide you back to your friends."

Tarquin trotted after him, looking back, to see the Dog still laying down calmly, while the Carpenters' Cat had turned, silently watching him go.

"Hey, who's the fluffy Dog?" asked the turkey when they were a hundred paces or so away from the farmyard.

"The Carpenters' dog is Arthur the Huskie, he's the pet of Jonathan, who is The Carpenters' son. The kid still lives at home, while the older twin girls have moved away and only come back for a day or two every few weeks."

"So, what is The Carpenters' Cat doing, was he out to spoil the Dog's fun as rival meat eaters?"

"By all accounts, those two get on well. It's your lucky night, my friend."

"I don't feel lucky," Tarquin moaned, "I'm still hungry!"

"Oh, there you are, Tarq, we were just about to set off." Tina welcomed him warmly back to the field where he had left them sleeping. She dropped her voice to a whisper, "Paul thought you'd abandoned us, but I said, no, you'd never do that, we're inseparable, right?"

"I was just, you know... er, inseparable are we, huh?"

"Yes, of course, Tarq, like brother and sister, I mean we're practically twins, aren't we?"

"Yeah, I guess," Tarquin replied unenthusiastically.

Down the Lane

Tina clucked at Lola pushing her in front of Kelly, having insisted on leading the herd today. Tina put herself in the middle, in front of Paul, who sat expectantly, waiting to be off. Tarquin would therefore bring up the rear. Tina looked at her best friend, listlessly standing watching her.

"Are you all right, Tarq?" Tina asked.

"Yeah, almost twins, right?" Tarquin started remembering their conversation last night.

"Our eggs were touching when I was born, remember?"

He nodded as shuffled to the back of the little herd, "Yeah, I remember."

The merry herd moved on down the cabbage field, intending to get across the main road before dawn exposed them to view. It was a cold and frosty middle of the night, the gate from the field coated in hard icy frost.

As Tarquin lifted the heavy metal latch, he had visions of his beak sticking to it and being stuck fast, an object of ridicule to be discovered in the morning and opportunity processed for someone's dinner. He shuddered at the thought, which only made his stomach rumble as it groaned to be fed.

It seemed incredible to him, just three days ago he was an intensively-fed turkey, with an unlimited supply of tasty pellets to eat whenever he felt like it, plus refreshing cool water on tap. Now he was sipping ice-cold gritty liquid from muddy puddles after breaking the icy crust with his beak. He had sampled lamb and pig pellets, a long time ago it seemed, neither of which agreed with him, and was forced to eat salads, which he hated. However, although the single Brussels sprout he munched for breakfast, in imitation of Tina's dainty dining, was marginally less revolting than most other available leaves, it did little to fill him up.

Around the houses, and down an alley they went, before entering the lane where they found a dusting of snow on the ground, but the roadway was quiet, for now devoid of terrifying traffic.

Lola skipped ahead of the tiny herd, bleating a song of her own fashion, upbeat, chipper, generally lifting the spirits of the band. Kelly followed behind, still wary, glancing behind, scared of the few loud vehicles that usually zipped by so fast. Tina encouraged her to press her gangly legs onward despite the slippery pavement under hoof. Paul ambled on, his heavy body wobbling on stout legs, breathing out clouds of white breath heavy with effort, wanting to sit down every few steps, and soon losing interest in sniffing at every post along the way.

Tina glanced at Tarquin, continually worried about him, normally so idiotically buoyant, he was silent, sullen, this morning.

"Hey, Tarq," she called softly, "where'd you disappear to last night? When I stirred you'd gone."

"I followed an owl, hoping to find some food that he knew about but the barn he took me to was locked. Saw that cat again though, the Carpenters' Cat. He stopped a big dog from eating me."

"Oh, Tarq, are you all right?"

"Yeah," he replied, "no damage, except I've never been so frightened before in my sheltered life. I felt, well, quite a bit useless, really."

"Hey, mate," Paul pipped up between puffs of steam, "we wouldn't ... have got this far ... without you. You're the ... best gate-opener ... I know! We'll get through ... you see."

"Yes," Tina agreed, "without you being brave and resourceful, I would still be in the clutches of that horrible Farmer's Wife. Who knows, I might have been plucked and stuffed by now."