The Great Escape
When Nigel came out to the garden in the afternoon to feed the guinea pigs, Coco, who was still determined to prove Pat wrong and get into the house, decided to try her hardest to impress him. She cleaned her whiskers and fluffed her rosettes and retied the bow in her hair. Then she sat where Nigel would notice her—at the door to the hutch—looking lovely.
“Good luck, Coco,” Fuzzy whispered as Nigel worked his way around the bored-looking guinea pigs in the other hutches.
“She’ll need it,” Private Pat snorted.
Nigel’s footsteps approached. He bent down to open the door. Coco held her breath. Any minute now, Nigel would realize his mistake and take her straight to the spa for a massage. She closed her eyes, expecting to feel herself being lifted gently off the ground.
Splat!
Something soggy landed on her. She heard the hutch door clang shut and the click of a key turning the latch.
Coco opened her eyes. The world had gone green.
“I told you,” Private Pat said as Coco crawled out from under the slimy lettuce leaf. “It’s only the special guinea pigs who get into the house.”
Coco hardly heard. She’d had enough of Nigel and Private Pat for one day. “That’s it,” she said. “One is going home. Come on, Fuzzy.”
“Going home?” Fuzzy echoed. “But how can we, Coco? We don’t know the way, and even if we find the house, we can’t get in. Ben and Henrietta are on vacation, remember?”
“I don’t care!” said Coco, who could be a bit silly when she got in a huff. “We can stay with Banoffee until they get back.”
Fuzzy shook his head. “It’s impossible, Coco. We can’t even get out of this hutch. It’s locked.”
Coco frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. If only Eduardo were here with his satchel full of skeleton keys! He’d help them escape. At the thought of Eduardo, Coco suddenly felt even more miserable. She wished she hadn’t been so horrid about his songs—she’d give anything to hear him singing now.
Private Pat spoke up. “You could escape through the tunnel, I suppose.”
“The what?” Fuzzy and Coco said together. Fuzzy was gazing at Private Pat with new respect, Coco with disbelief at the thought that Pat could have come up with something useful at last.
“The tunnel. I’ve been working on it since I arrived at the prison camp ten years ago.”
“Don’t you mean ten days?” Fuzzy asked.
“Fuzzy’s right. Even you can’t be that old,” Coco said rudely.
“Probably,” agreed Private Pat cheerfully, ignoring Coco. “When you’ve been in prison camp for a long time, you forget things.” She paused and looked at them, puzzled. “What was I talking about?”
“The tunnel,” Fuzzy reminded her.
“I knew that! The entrance is over here. Under my bed.” Private Pat rummaged around under the hay and then stood back.
Coco and Fuzzy scuttled over to take a look. They found themselves gazing down into a dark hole just wide enough for a guinea pig to squeeze through.
“That’s amazing!” Fuzzy said admiringly. “Just like in the movies!” Fuzzy liked watching TV with Ben. His favorite shows used to be cooking programs, until that got him into trouble with Scarlet Cleaver. So now he’d started watching action films instead.
“Thanks,” Private Pat said modestly. “I must say it’s been hard work. Moving large quantities of earth with a miniature screwdriver is no picnic.”
“A miniature screwdriver?” Coco repeated. “Where did you get one of those from?”
“The General gave it to me—to fix the tank, OBVIOUSLY!” It was Private Pat’s turn to be rude.
“But what do you do with all the earth?” Fuzzy said hastily before Coco could reply.
“I’m glad you asked me that, soldier,” Private Pat said. She tapped her bottom, then her nose. “I roll it into pellets and put it in the toilet tray. Nigel takes it away thinking it’s poo.”
“That’s brilliant!” Fuzzy exclaimed.
Coco looked sulky. The truth was that she felt a bit jealous that Fuzzy was paying Private Pat so much attention when it had been her suggestion to escape in the first place!
“That’s not all,” Private Pat said proudly. She sniffed. “You smell that?”
Fuzzy nodded. “It’s the rotten food, right?”
“WRONG!” Pat cried, tapping her nose, then her bottom again. “It’s poo! I keep the real stuff hidden up the gun barrel of the tank for emergencies. You never know when you’ll need ammunition in a place like this.”
“That’s disgusting!” Coco said. She moved to the edge of the tunnel and peered down it. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
“Not so fast, lady!” screeched Pat. “No one enters the tunnel without a safety helmet.” She scurried over to the tank, scrambled up the side and popped down the hatch. “Here!” she said, producing two more tin helmets and a miniature screwdriver. She plunked the helmets on Coco and Fuzzy.
“Now can we go?” Coco said, feeling under her helmet for her squished bow.
“Don’t be silly. The tunnel isn’t finished yet!” Private Pat shouted. “But you two can help me dig.” Suddenly she grinned. “Ladies first,” she said, offering Coco the screwdriver.
Four hours later Coco and Fuzzy lay on their backs in the hutch on a thin mat of hay.
“I’m exhausted!” Fuzzy moaned. “And I’ve never been so hungry in my life.”
“My nails are ruined!” Coco wailed. “And my fur is covered in mud.”
“I’m never taking a vacation again!” Fuzzy declared.
“And I’m never going to let you go on the computer again!” Coco complained.
“Cut it out, you two,” Private Pat hissed. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
“What I don’t understand,” Fuzzy said, “is why we couldn’t escape tonight.”
“Yes, why couldn’t we?” Coco said crossly. “We only had five more centimeters to go.”
“We need provisions,” Pat snapped. “No soldier enters enemy territory unless they’re properly prepared. And anyone who approaches that tunnel without orders will be confined to the toilet tray all week. Now GOOD NIGHT.” Very soon, Private Pat was snoring softly.
Coco propped herself up on one front paw. “She’s asleep! Come on, Fuzzy, quick!” She got up, shook the mud out of her fur, and scuttled over to Pat’s bed.
Fuzzy heaved himself up. “What are you doing, Coco?”
“I’m going to escape, of course!” She pushed Pat gently aside.
“Are you crazy?” Fuzzy hissed. “What if she wakes up? You don’t want to spend the rest of the week in the toilet tray, do you?”
“I won’t have to,” Coco said, edging past Pat, who was still snoring. “By the time Private Poo-Poo finds out, we’ll be long gone.” She jammed her helmet on and grabbed the screwdriver. “Are you coming?”
“I . . .” Fuzzy started. He was going to say he didn’t really like leaving Pat after all the trouble she’d taken to help them, but it was too late. Coco had already disappeared into the tunnel. “. . . suppose so,” Fuzzy sighed. There was no arguing with Coco when she was in this mood.
“Pat will be all right,” he told himself. The General would be back to pick her up soon. When she woke up in the morning she might not even remember they had been there! He jumped into the tunnel after Coco and pulled the straw over the hole.
The tunnel was stuffy and narrow, but the guinea pigs were used to it after spending all afternoon digging with Pat. After a few minutes of going downward, the tunnel leveled out before it went up again. Fuzzy could see Coco’s furry bottom wriggling along in front of him. He heard scrabbling. Then he felt earth flying through his whiskers. “Oi! Watch what you’re doing, Coco!” he shouted.
Coco didn’t hear him. She was too busy digging the last few centimeters of the tunnel. She didn’t realize that without removing the soil as Pat had shown them, the freshly dug earth was making the tunnel behind her narrower and more difficult for Fuzzy to squeeze through.
It wasn’t long before Fuzzy was stuck.
“I made it!” Coco cried as her nose poked out into cool, refreshing night air. She could smell grass and leaves and trees. She sniffed. Her nose quivered as it identified something familiar. She brushed the soil out of her eyes and looked around. An old oak tree towered in front of her. Behind her were swathes of long grass. Coco gasped. She knew exactly where she was! The tunnel had come out in the thicket behind their garden!
“Oh . . . oh . . . oh!” Coco squealed with excitement. Henrietta and Ben must have driven around in circles when they got lost on their way to Furry Towers. No wonder the house looked like theirs. The horrible hotel was just around the corner from where they lived! “Hurry up, Fuzzy!” she cried. “We’re in the thicket.”
There was no reply.
“Fuzzy?” Coco called. Her brain was buzzing. The thicket! It was just a short scuttle across the grass to the hole in the gate and then under the fence to Banoffee’s hutch. And of course, the thicket was where Eduardo lived. They would see him in the morning. Coco blushed. She hoped he had forgiven her.
Just then the grass behind the tunnel entrance began to move. Coco frowned. It wasn’t windy. What could be making it sway like that?
“Fuzzy?” she called again. “Is that you?”
But it wasn’t long before Coco realized it wasn’t Fuzzy. Very soon, two yellow lights appeared, like flashlights. Coco swallowed. She began to tremble. She knew they weren’t really flashlights. She knew from the last time she had been in the thicket at night that they were eyes. And she also knew whose eyes they were.
A sly face peered out from the tall grass, followed by a red body and long bushy tail.
“Hello,” said the animal, licking its lips.
Coco nearly fainted. She was right. It was Renard the fox.
