15

AMIMAL FARM

Once the new corral was built, Machu and Picchu did stop breaking out. That might have been because they never figured out how to open the gate. Or maybe it was the female llama that made them content to stay put. Dolly Llama was not tan like them, but black and white. Danny said her colour reminded him of a soccer ball, and probably would have named her Soccer Ball if Wendy hadn’t already decided to call her Dolly Llama.

“Just look at the way she bats those long eyelashes at the boys,” Wendy laughed. “She’s a total flirt.”

Danny eventually chose Machu as his own. He loved the llamas, but didn’t spend all his time with them. There were also the peacocks to feed, and several nest boxes on the screened-in back porch containing various injured or orphaned wild animals. The number of baby animals to look after increased in the spring, since that’s when most wild animals are born.

Wendy was still the person whom people in the area first thought of when they came across hurt and helpless wildlife. Some phoned, wanting her to come pick up the animal. Others drove out to the farm and dropped it off. Usually the ones Wendy got were ones that had been injured in some way, or orphaned when their parents were killed by dogs, cats, or humans.

All of this created so much work that Wendy had to give up her volunteer work at Red River Ranch. She occasionally went back to teach classes in wild animal care, the kind she herself had taken when she first started there, but most of her time was spent looking after animals at home.

• • •

One night Wendy woke to a thumping sound downstairs. That would be Kyle, who always worked the evening shift so he’d have a few daylight hours to do stuff on the farm. He usually got home a little after midnight. Wendy didn’t mind, since she also worked most evenings on her home computer, doing accounts for several local businesses that were too small to hire a full-time accountant. That was how she earned extra money to buy food for the animals and pay their vet bills. It was taking all Kyle could earn to pay the mortgage and their day-to-day living expenses.

As the thumping continued, Wendy crawled out of bed, went to the top of the stairs, and called down, “Kyle? That you?”

Instead of an answer, she heard Kyle yell, “Oh, drat! Come back here, you!”

Wendy pattered down the stairs, where she found Kyle pursuing a frightened fawn around the living room.

“Oh, poor baby!” Wendy cooed, catching the fawn as it tried to slip past her. “Where did you get her?”

Kyle flopped down on the couch. “Somebody left it tied to the bumper of my patrol car, if you can imagine that! With a note saying it has been hand-raised and needs a good home, and would I please take her out to the Animal Farm.” Kyle glared at Wendy, sitting on the floor in her pajamas, holding the frightened fawn. “Get that, Wendy? They call this place the Animal Farm. You know what the Animal Farm is don’t you?”

“Uh, a book by George Orwell?”

“Yeah. About where the animals rebel against the humans and take over, and become dictators. In the end, the pigs are in charge and you can’t tell the people from the pigs,” Kyle grumbled. “Just like this place.”

“Are you saying you can’t tell me from a pig?” Wendy teased. “Especially when we don’t even have any pigs?”

“That’s about the only animal we don’t have,” Kyle retorted.

“Oh, there’s lots we don’t have … yet,” Wendy assured him. “So why were you chasing this poor baby?”

“I was trying to put her in the bathroom,” Kyle said. “At least till morning. But I fell over something in the hallway.”

“The cage with the baby foxes,” Wendy said. “I didn’t want to put them on the back porch because I thought that since foxes are predators, the bunnies out there would smell them and be frightened.”

“Good thing we’ve got two bathrooms,” Kyle said. “Seems like you’ve had some kind of animal in the one downstairs ever since we moved in.”

“Only when they first arrive, so I can check on them during the night.” She gently stroked the fawn, who was nuzzling her as if she were its mother and it was expecting to find a place to nurse. She was pleased to see that it had calmed down.

She glanced over at Kyle, who seemed to be on the verge of dozing off. “We should build this one an enclosure over on the back side, well away from the house. Right away, so it doesn’t get attached to us.”

“Now?” Kyle asked in a half-awake voice. “In the middle of the night?”

“Of course not!” Wendy rose and kissed him lightly on the lips. “What I want you to do right now is feed those little foxes. While I bed down the fawn and feed the baby bunnies.”

Wendy took the fawn into the bathroom and left a pile of towels on the floor where it could curl up when it wanted. She then went into the kitchen and from a row of various-sized bottles, chose one of the larger ones, the size normally used for a human baby. In it she put a special milk formula she used for fawns, plus vitamins.

The fawn took the bottle eagerly. As it suckled, Wendy stroked the soft tan coat, still speckled with white spots. “Like velvet,” Wendy murmured, and at that, Velvet became the fawn’s name.

Wendy finished feeding the fawn and shut her into the bathroom. Then she returned to the living room carrying the bunny babies, along with a cup of warm milk and an eyedropper to feed them. Kyle was sitting on the couch giving one of the fox cubs its bottle.

Although Kyle often came home tired and irritated by the lowlifes he had to deal with as a policeman, Wendy didn’t feel guilty asking him to take ten minutes to feed an orphan animal. Already he had begun to relax, just as she did when she held a small helpless creature in her arms and did what she could to help it survive.

Wendy finished feeding the baby rabbits and put them back in their nest box. She checked on the fawn and saw that it had lain down on the towels. Then she went back into the living room to see how Kyle was doing with the baby foxes.

He had fallen asleep. The little foxes had, too. Kyle barely stirred when she lifted them out of his lap and carried them back to the nest box. Then she caught Kyle by the hand and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, Lover Boy. Bedtime.”

Kyle trudged up the stairs behind her and tiredly stripped off his police uniform. As he climbed in next her, Wendy said, “Thanks, honey. That little fawn was the best birthday present you could have got me.”

“Oh my gosh!” Kyle jerked wide awake. “Is this your birthday?”

“It wasn’t when you left for work. But it’s after midnight, so now it is.”

“Oh.” Kyle was silent for a moment, and then asked, “Is that really all you wanted? Another animal?”

“As long as I can have all the animals I want, I’ll be happy,” Wendy murmured.

Kyle sighed deeply. “To think, all the girls I could have married who would have been satisfied with a piece of jewellery for their birthday.”

Wendy kissed him on the neck. “You missed your chance, didn’t you, darling? Or else you got really, really lucky.”