A Lamb Called Lucky E-Book

Helen Peters

• Herausgeber: Nosy Crow
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: The Jasmine Green Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 83

Beschreibung

The fifth in a fantastic series of animal stories for younger readers by Waterstones Children's Book Prize-shortlisted author Helen Peters, with beautiful black-and-white illustrations by Ellie Snowdon. Jasmine's dad is a farmer, and her mum is a large-animal vet, so Jasmine spends a lot of time caring for animals and keeping them out of trouble. Unfortunately, this often means she gets into hot water herself... It's lambing time on the farm and Jasmine has her hands full. She has two orphaned baby birds to care for, as well as a tiny motherless lamb who needs her attention. She's determined to look after little Lucky and keep him safe. But there are bigger dangers facing the flock, ones that come in the dead of night... Brilliant storytelling that will make you laugh and cry, this is Dick King-Smith for a new generation. Perfect for readers aged seven and up. Check out Jasmine's other adventures: A Piglet Called Truffle, A Duckling Called Button, A Sheepdog Called Sky and many more!

Leseprobe

Jasmine lowered Lucky into the pen. The ewe turned her head and sniffed the little lamb. Then, with a movement so swift that it took Dad and Jasmine completely by surprise, she lowered her broad head and butted him away! Lucky flew across the pen and landed in the straw, sprawled out and winded.

For Rosie and Jack H. P.

For Papa E. S.

Chapter One

Like Baby Dinosaurs

“We have to go in for lunch now, Truffle,” said Jasmine, scratching her pet pig behind the ears. “We’ll come and see you again this afternoon.”

The huge sow gave a contented grunt and lay down under an apple tree. It was hard to believe it now, but Truffle had been a tiny little runt when Jasmine had found her. Jasmine and her best friend Tom were planning to run an animal rescue centre when they grew up, and Truffle had been their first rescue animal.

In the farmhouse scullery, Jasmine’s cats, Toffee and Marmite, lay curled up in their bed on the work surface. Her collie dog, Sky, was sleeping in his basket on the floor.

“Look at him,” said Jasmine. “That training session tired him out.”

Jasmine had found Sky last summer, abandoned and starving. He was a year old now, and Jasmine was training him as a sheepdog.

“We’ll be able to give him loads of training now it’s the holidays,” said Tom.

“Is that you, Jas?” called her mum from the kitchen. “Wash your hands and come in for lunch.”

“Coming,” called Jasmine.

The rest of her family was already sitting around the kitchen table. Sixteen-year-old Ella had a book propped open in front of her, as usual. Manu, who was six, was wriggling in his chair and chomping noisily on a sandwich, scattering crumbs all around him.

Jasmine handed Tom a bread roll and took one herself. She reached across the table for the cheese.

“Is there any pudding?” asked Manu.

“There’s fruit in the bowl,” said Mum.

“Didn’t you do cooking at school yesterday?” asked Dad. “I thought you said you were making biscuits.”

“That’s right, you did,” said Mum. “As an Easter present for your family. Are they still in your book bag?”

Manu looked sheepish. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I’ll get them.”

He walked over to the pegs on the wall. From his book bag, he produced a clear plastic box. It contained one small biscuit.

“Is that it?” asked Dad. “You made one biscuit?”

“Yes,” said Manu, studiously avoiding all eye contact.

“Really?” said Mum. “You spent all afternoon making one biscuit?”

“Yes.”

Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Manu as he looked down at the table. After a few seconds, he glanced up at his family. Then he looked down again.

“I might have made more than one,” he said.

“Oh?” said Dad. “What happened to the others?”

“They fell on the floor.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” said Dad. “Would that have been the floor of your stomach?”

Mum tried not to laugh. “I guess you’ve already had your pudding, then,” she said. “Have some fruit if you’re still hungry.”

“Shall me and Tom check the sheep after lunch?” asked Jasmine.

“That would be great,” said Dad. “Then Mum and I can get on with the TB testing.”

Jasmine’s dad was a farmer and her mum was a vet. That afternoon they were going to be testing the cows for TB. All the cows had to be tested every year to stop the disease from spreading.

“Ben’s mum is picking you up at two o’clock,” Mum said to Manu. “Ella, can you make sure he’s ready, please?”

Ella, deep in her book, didn’t respond. Mum repeated the request.

“What?” said Ella, vaguely.

Mum sighed. “Manu, go and get your swimming things now, will you? Then you’ll be ready to go when Ben gets here.”

Ben was Manu’s best friend. Like Tom, he spent as much time at the farm as he could, but because Mum and Dad were working this afternoon, Ben’s mum was taking them both swimming.

Dad was reading an article in the Farmers Weekly. “There’s a lot of sheep rustling about at the moment,” he said. “This poor bloke in Yorkshire had his whole flock taken.”

“How can anyone steal a whole flock of sheep?” asked Manu.

“Well-trained dogs and a big lorry,” said Dad.

“Will they take our sheep?”

Dad shook his head. “This is all hundreds of miles away.”

“Come on, Tom,” said Jasmine, stuffing the last of her roll into her mouth. “Let’s go and see the lambs.”

Lambing season was Jasmine’s favourite time of year at Oak Tree Farm, and the lambing barn was her favourite place. And now, she thought happily, she had two whole weeks with no school and new lambs being born every day.

They could hear the lambs long before they saw them. Their high-pitched bleats and their mothers’ low answering calls could be heard all across the farmyard. To a stranger, each lamb and each ewe might sound the same, but every one of those lambs could recognise its mother’s call amongst the baaing of a hundred other ewes, and every ewe could tell the cry of her own lamb.

The big barn was divided into pens with metal hurdles. Along the left-hand side were rows of small pens, each containing a single ewe and her lambs. Most of these had only been born yesterday. In the largest pen were the sheep with older lambs. They would be taken out to the field in a few days’ time.

Jasmine scanned the animals for any signs of trouble. Sometimes a lamb that had seemed perfectly healthy would suddenly die for no apparent reason. But they all looked well this afternoon.

She turned her attention to the most exciting pen of all, where the sheep still waiting to lamb were kept. A smile spread across her face as she saw a ewe standing in the middle of the pen with two tiny newborn lambs sucking vigorously from her udder, wiggling their little tails as they fed.

“Look,” she said to Tom. “Aren’t they gorgeous?”

It never ceased to amaze Jasmine that newborn lambs somehow always knew exactly what they needed to do. Just a few minutes after they were born, they would heave themselves up on their wobbly legs, stagger to their mother’s udder and start to drink.

Unless there was something wrong, of course. That was why somebody had to check the sheep every few hours. But there was nothing wrong with these two.

Jasmine and Tom scattered fresh straw on the floor and filled up the hay racks and water buckets. When they were finished, Tom said, “Shall we go and give Sky another training session?”

They were about to leave the barn when Jasmine glimpsed something bright yellow lying in the straw. She bent down to examine it, and drew in her breath.

“What is it?” asked Tom. He crouched beside her.

“Oh!” he gasped.

The flash of yellow that Jasmine had seen was the edge of a beak. It belonged to a tiny baby bird, sprawled in the straw. And now Jasmine saw another identical baby bird, nearly buried in the straw beside it.

They must have been almost newly hatched, because their eyes were closed and they had no feathers at all, just shiny skin, pink with patches of scaly grey on the wings and head, and a grey line down the back.

You couldn’t really call them cute. In fact, they were remarkably ugly. They looked more like baby dinosaurs than birds.

“They must have fallen out of the nest,” said Tom. “I can’t believe they’re still alive.”

They watched the birds’ tiny chests rise and fall with their heartbeats.

“They won’t survive much longer on their own,” said Jasmine. “We have to do something to help them.”

Chapter Two

The Right Thing to Do

“We need to put them back in their nest,” said Tom.

They stepped back and scanned the big metal beams that held up the barn roof. Where the beams criss-crossed each other, there were plenty of nooks and crannies where a bird could have built a nest.

Careful not to tread on the baby birds, Jasmine walked a few paces forwards to look from the other side.

“I can’t see a nest,” said Tom.

“Me neither,” said Jasmine. “And we couldn’t put them back up there anyway. Those beams are way too high, even for Dad’s massive ladder.”

“Anyway, their parents might have rejected them on purpose,” said Tom, “so if we put them back, they might push them out again.”

“Or there might be more than one nest up there,” said Jasmine, “and then we wouldn’t know which one to put them in. If we put them in the wrong one, the parents would push them out. And they might not survive another fall.”

“So,” said Tom, looking excited, “I guess we’re going to have to look after them ourselves.”

Jasmine grinned at him. “I guess we are.”

“Do you know what they eat?”

“No, but we can look it up. Mum would know, but we can’t ask her while she’s TB testing, and she won’t be finished for hours.”

“Come on, then,” said Tom. “Let’s take them indoors.”

“I’ll get something to put them in,” said Jasmine, walking over to the pen where Dad kept the lambing supplies. She found an empty plastic tub and filled it with straw. Gently, she picked up the baby birds, laid them in the tub and packed straw around them to keep them warm. Then she and Tom walked back to the house. It was very quiet, so Manu must have left for swimming. The house was never quiet when Manu was around.