There is perhaps nothing so sweet in this life as to be in need, to hope for help, and to have help arrive. And so it was that remarkable night in Gooseberry Park.
Most creatures—in fact, perhaps all creatures—are brave. They try to meet life’s challenges with courage and with action. The earth’s forests and prairies and mountains and seas are filled with greatness. Animals ask almost nothing of life except that it give them a chance—a chance to be their best.
So it had been a terrible blow to the animals in Gooseberry Park to be rendered nearly helpless in the face of forces beyond their control. They could not control the movement of the rains. They could not control the heat of the sun. They could not control all the new machines that had created so many poisons for which the good green Earth was unprepared.
The animals did their best. They adapted. They conserved their energies, they learned to eat different things, they had fewer babies.
But water: Water was vital, and without it they would die. And who among them had ever imagined that right there in Gooseberry Park—where humans strolled with their infants and had picnics and threw Frisbees—there would be so great a risk to the lives of many of the park’s creatures, namely the very young and the very old.
Fortunately, many creatures have not only great courage but great heart as well. And this night those hearts were beating strong.
At precisely 10:40 p.m., 199 owls plus one volunteer motivational speaker left Gooseberry Park on a mission of mercy.
The owls flew silently. With binocular vision they could see the fire fighters attempting to wake up Henrietta (as her eight babies ate granola bars someone had thought to bring). The owls could see a yellow tabby cat in a tree with a dalmatian barking vigorously beneath it, a chocolate Labrador cheering him on. The owls could see the fire house door, wide open, and the four squirrels inside with four hundred straws filled with precious water for pickup.
Then, capably and swiftly, the owls flew through that open door with precision and grasped a straw in each foot, and, capably and swiftly, they flew away.
Morton, lagging behind because the owls were such strong fliers, straggled in for the last two straws.