Hazel E-Book

A.N. Wilson

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Animal Antics
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 56

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Brought to life by celebrated author and animal lover A. N. Wilson, and charmingly illustrated, Hazel will capture the hearts of guinea-pig lovers everywhere. Creep under the kitchen table and join Hazel the greedy guinea pig as she gets into some sticky situations... Hazel the guinea pig just wants to explore. But she's also very fond of food... When her seven-year-old owner puts her down into the kitchen, she seizes her chance to escape - but her bulging tummy gets her stuck in a wellington boot! That's just the beginning of Hazel's adventures. She's about to meet Tobacco, a handsome boy guinea pig, and together they must fight off a hutch invasion from a curious furball called Fudge. Can Hazel and Tobacco warn the humans in time - using just the power of squealing?

Leseprobe

Hazel the Guinea Pig

A. N. Wilson has written over twenty stories for grown-ups, many of which have won prizes such as the Somerset Maugham Award (for The Healing Art) and the 1988 Whitbread Award (for the biography Tolstoy). He has also written the story of the exciting adventures of a hamster in a book called Furball and the Mokes and the tale of an old cat looking back over his life, called Stray. He has had many pets in his life, including dogs and cats. His three daughters have, between them, had rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, goldfish and dogs.

Also by A. N. Wilson

Furball and the Mokes

First published in Great Britain in 1989 by Walker Books Ltd.

Published in paperback in Great Britain in 2012 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Text © 1989 A. N. Wilson Illustrations © 2012 Luisa Crosbie

The moral right of A. N. Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 0 85789 078 8 E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 079 5

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26–27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

Contents

Hazel’s Search

The Visit of Fudge

Brown ’Un

Hazel’s Search

Hazel was a brown, sleek, beautiful guinea pig with eyes as glossy and black as raisins. Like most guinea pigs, Hazel enjoyed her food. She was far from slender. To be honest, Hazel was a very fat guinea pig indeed. In fact, she was so fat that she looked as though she had been blown up like a balloon. Her cheeks bulged. Her black-curranty eyes seemed to pop out of her ample face. And her body was a sphere, a pudding of glossy brown fur.

But Hazel was an extremely handsome creature. It suited her to be fat, just as it suits some people to be fat. And fat is what she was.

Hazel was a brown, sleek, beautiful guinea pig with eyes as glossy and black as raisins.

Hazel liked to explore. When she was in her hutch, she sometimes ran from one room to the next, as though she were looking for something. Life in two rooms becomes more interesting if it can be turned into an everlasting quest. She waddled into her living room and ate some food. Then she nuzzled about behind the food bowl, as if she were looking for something there. Then she ran back into her bedroom and burrowed into the hay, as though she had lost something – something very precious.

When her young owner got her out of the hutch, Hazel liked to explore some more.

‘No,’ she seemed to say, turning this way and that on someone’s lap. ‘It’s not here. Let’s try up there.’ And she would scuttle up under someone’s jersey.

‘Hazel loves going up your jumper,’ said one of the children, one afternoon when their mother was out at the shops.

‘Yes, she does,’ agreed the other child. ‘She likes to explore.’

‘I suppose I do,’ thought Hazel. ‘I like to explore. I wonder what there is down this dark passage. I’ll just have a look. You never know.’

When she went down that dark passage, Hazel felt wool pressing hard against her cheeks, and she heard the girl’s voice crying out, ‘Hazel! What are you doing?’

‘She is going up your jumper,’ said the boy’s voice.

Hazel tried to advance further into the sleeve-tunnel, but it was tight and dark and woolly. Before long, she could feel the girl pulling at her hind legs and dragging her back into the daylight.

Hazel wriggled and struggled to be free. She had begun to feel a bit peckish, and she would not have refused if someone had offered her a piece of brown bread or a carrot. (These were her favourite foods.)

She found that the girl had put her down on the kitchen floor, and she was able to run about freely. Here there was much to explore.

‘Worth a look,’ thought Hazel, as she scuttled to the other end of the kitchen and peered between the bars of a fender. A fire was glowing beyond the bars, and Hazel wondered whether she might have a closer look at it. Very bright, fire is. Very interesting. On the other hand, it is also … Hazel wondered how she would describe it. Well, hot would be one word. The bars of the fender almost hurt her nose before she had started to sniff them.

‘I remember now,’ she thought. ‘Fire’s hot. Ar well, now that I’ve had a look at that, it is time to search about for … for …’

What was it that Hazel was always searching for and seeking?

She ran along the skirting board and listened at a mousehole. All was quiet within, for this was a household with cats. There was no mouse merrymaking there.

Hazel peered at the bottom of a cupboard. But the door was shut.

And then, at the other end of the kitchen, she saw another door. This time, it was an open door.

No one was taking as much notice of her as they should have done when Hazel, very swift, though very fat on her short legs, made her rapid progress towards the open door. She ran! Oh, how Hazel ran! She ran out of the kitchen and into the tiled hall, through the legs of a chair, and up to a most interesting selection of articles lying higgledy-piggledy by the back door.

‘Now,’ Hazel asked herself, ‘what have we here?’

She had stopped feeling slightly peckish. She had become extremely hungry. And she had decided that there was no point in waiting for someone to give her a stalk or a leaf, a carrot or a crust. She should go and look for them. That’s what she would do.