Ambrose the Cuckoo

Ambrose the cuckoo staggered about on the shed roof and tried to wake up. He’d just flown in from Africa and he was exhausted. As usual, he’d got lost and had ended up going the long way round. His head was buzzing, he was starving hungry and his wings were aching. He wasn’t sure where he was or where he’d even come from. It might not have been Africa at all, it might have been Turkey or Mexico or none of those places. Wherever it was, it had been hot, very hot and now it was cold. And wherever it was, there had been cockroaches the size of rabbits, great big juicy delicious insects with soft succulent insides that were a meal all on their own. Now all there was were miserable worms and flies that moved too fast to catch.

It was the same every year. Some idiot would say: ‘Hey guys, let’s take a trip,’ and like complete nitwits they did. They never learnt. It was great where they lived. The weather was always warm. It was true there was a lot of sand, hundreds of miles of it, to be honest; but there was always plenty to eat, big fat locusts by the million. It was always the same. As soon as they started flying north it began raining. If that wasn’t bad enough, in some countries people tried to shoot them. It was always cold and there was never enough to eat. And to make things worse Ambrose was always the last to arrive and all the best nests were gone.

‘Oh man,’ said Ambrose, ‘this cold is so uncool.’ He hunched up his shoulders on the wet roof and shivered.

‘It’s the last time,’ he said. ‘Next year I’m staying at home.’

Another cuckoo landed on the shed and slid down the roof towards him. It was his wife Lola and she looked fed up; but then she always looked fed up. Ambrose was not happy. Everything was so uncool.

‘Three weeks I’ve been here,’ said Lola. ‘Three weeks waiting for Mr Cool to get here.’

‘Oh man, just relax,’ said Ambrose sliding slowly down the roof. He slid slowly into the gutter, got his feet all tangled up in rotten wet leaves and then toppled gently over the edge into a bush.

And he fell fast asleep. He didn’t dream. He was too lazy to dream. He just lay on his back under the bush and snored, a weird noise that only a bird that can shout ‘cuckoo’ could make. Lola flew down and shouted at him but she knew that once Ambrose was asleep nothing would wake him.

‘Great useless uncool lump,’ she said and flew off to look for a nest.

It was the time of year when everyone was making or looking for nests. The garden had woken from a long winter. It had shivered through the early days of spring and now the promise of summer filled the air. New leaves flashed brilliant green, the grass began to grow, everyone woke up, and the birds that had been silent for months began to sing. Old visitors like the cuckoos and swallows, who had spent the winter in warmer places, were drifting back and inside the house the humans were spring cleaning.

The bluetits were clearing out last year’s grass and moss, pulling it to bits and throwing it out. On the ground beneath them, mice were picking it up and using it for their nests. In the treetops pigeons and crows were pushing and poking fresh twigs into their old homes and inside the twigs themselves small insects were settling down to raise families.

Under the old garden shed the hedgehogs were waking up. They stretched and yawned and snuggled down into their beds of old newspapers. They knew it was time to get up but when you’ve been asleep for three months it takes a bit of time to wake up properly. Some of the young hedgehogs had been up and about for a week or more but the old ones needed at least a day to wake up properly.

Lola flew from tree to tree looking for the best place to lay her eggs. The pigeons and crows were too big and clumsy, they would just squash her eggs against their lumpy wooden nests. The bluetits were too clever, they built their nests in holes that were far too small for Lola to get in. There were no vacancies in the sparrows’ nests. They’d either been taken already or their eggs had hatched. It was the same with the robin and the blackbirds. It happened like this every year. Ambrose was so lazy that everything was always left to the last minute. There was a wren’s nest in one of the bushes but it was far too small and the starlings had built theirs in narrow gaps and holes.

The old chicken that had been there every year for as long as Lola could remember was ambling around through the undergrowth. She looked old and clumsy now but she had been in the garden longer than anyone.

She should know where all the nests are, thought Lola. She must know every inch of the garden like the back of her foot.

She flew down to talk to her.

‘Well,’ said Ethel when Lola asked her, ‘I suppose you could borrow a bit of my nest.’

‘Would you sit on one of my eggs for me?’ said Lola.

‘I’ll sit on anything, dear,’ said Ethel. ‘At my age you can’t afford to be fussy.’

It wasn’t much of a choice but it was the only one she had. Ethel took her into the hen house and pointed at her nesting box. It was disgusting. It looked as if it hadn’t been made for a week and there were bits of old sweaters and envelopes sticking out of the straw. A family of mice was living under one corner of it and there was a red hot-water bottle with a hole in it shoved down the back. And as for the smell, it was like something very old that had been left in a dark damp corner for a very long time. Which is exactly what it was.

‘Is that it?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Ethel proudly. ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not exactly what I dreamt of,’ said Lola.

‘Please yourself,’ said Ethel, starting to go back out into the garden.

‘No, no,’ said Lola, gritting her beak. ‘It’s lovely.’ And closing her eyes and holding her breath she hopped into Ethel’s nest and laid an egg.

‘Bit small, isn’t it?’ said Ethel. ‘But it’s a nice colour.’

The old chicken climbed up into the mess of straw and paper and shuffled around until Lola’s egg was buried deep in her chest feathers. She closed her eyes and sat clucking softly to herself. Soon she was snoring gently and far away in a land of dreams. Lola tiptoed to the door and flew away as quickly as she could.

The next morning when the children came down from the house to collect the eggs that Ethel’s children had laid, they saw the old hen asleep in her nesting box and thought she was ill. She woke up when they spoke to her and when they offered her corn, she got up all stiff legged and clambered out onto the floor.

‘Hey look, she’s laid an egg,’ said the boy.

‘Small, isn’t it?’ said the girl.

‘It’s big enough for a tiny omelette,’ said the boy and they put it in the basket with the other eggs.

Ethel ate her corn and went back to her nest for a nap. She was so old that she couldn’t remember things like she’d used to and she didn’t notice the egg had gone. She was all right with things that had happened a long time ago. They were just a bit fuzzy round the edges, but what had happened yesterday was different. When she tried to think about that she just ended up daydreaming.

After lunch Lola flew into the hut to see how things were going. She landed in front of Ethel and said, ‘How’s the egg?’

‘Egg?’ said Ethel. ‘What egg?’

‘My egg,’ said Lola. ‘The one I laid in your nest yesterday.’

‘Oh, that egg,’ said Ethel. ‘What was it called?’

‘Called?’ said Lola. ‘It wasn’t called anything. You can’t call them anything until they hatch out. You can’t give them a name until you know if they’re girls or boys.’

‘The children did,’ said Ethel. ‘They gave it a name.’

‘What name?’ said Lola. ‘What children?’

‘The children who come and feed me,’ said Ethel. ‘They gave the egg a name.’

‘Okay, okay, what did they call it?’ sighed Lola. She knew something had happened to her egg. This was the price you paid for not having to build your own nest. Sometimes things went wrong and you had to start all over again.

‘They called it Omelette,’ said Ethel. ‘Lovely name, isn’t it?’

‘Wake up, you great useless lump,’ shouted Lola. Ambrose rolled over onto his side, blinked and slowly stood up. His feathers stood out at all angles, his claws were full of mud and his whole appearance made him look as if he had been pulled through a bush backwards, which is exactly what had happened.

‘I’ll have a large stick insect, man, and make it snappy,’ he said. Lola shouted at him some more until at last he was as awake as he was ever going to be.

‘Hey man,’ he said with a stupid grin. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Stop calling me man,’ said Lola, ‘and concentrate.’

‘Cool,’ said Ambrose, staring at his feet and sulking.

Lola told him what had happened, how she’d been all over the garden and been made to look a fool by the owls and what had happened to the egg she’d laid in Ethel’s nest.

‘It’s getting very late,’ she went on, ‘and you’ve got to help me find a nest.’

‘Far out, man,’ said Ambrose.

‘Never mind all that,’ said Lola. ‘You’re usless in the air so you look on the ground while I check round all the bushes and trees.’

‘Yeah, man,’ said Ambrose. ‘I’ll groove around in the grass.’

‘Go on then,’ said Lola. ‘Wipe that stupid grin off your face and get going.’

Ambrose ambled off towards the pond.

‘And don’t spend hours talking to your reflection,’ Lola shouted after him when she saw where he was going.

Ambrose stared into the water and there was his beautiful reflection looking up at him. He was the handsomest bird he’d ever seen, so sleek, so colourful and above all, so cool.

‘Hi there, handsome,’ he said to himself. His reflection just sat there staring back at him with its eyes full of admiration.

Okay, Ambrose thought. He’s too cool to speak to me, but I can tell he thinks I’m cool too.

‘Will you shut up?’ said a voice. ‘Some of us are trying to lay eggs and all your useless chattering is putting us off.’

Ambrose looked up and there was an angry moorhen. She swam backwards and forwards in front of him making his beautiful reflection go all wobbly. And half-hidden in the long grass on the other side of the pond was her nest. It was wide and soft and had three eggs in it. It was perfect.

Oh wow, thought Ambrose and flew up into the trees to find Lola. He couldn’t believe that he’d actually done something clever and useful. Neither could Lola. It took Ambrose a long time to persuade her to go and look at the moorhen’s nest but as soon as she did, she was delighted.

‘Oh man,’ she said. ‘I take back all those nasty things I said about you. You’re brilliant.’

So while Ambrose distracted the moorhen by singing to his shadow, Lola laid a big beautiful egg in its nest.

As the days passed, Lola and Ambrose hid in the treetops above the pond and kept an eye on things. Eventually her beautiful baby hatched out and while the moorhens’ backs were turned it rolled the other eggs out of the nest into the water.

‘Oh, look at him,’ said Lola. ‘He’s so handsome, just like you.’

‘Yeah, cool,’ said Ambrose.

‘He’s grown so fast,’ said Lola.

A few weeks later Ambrose and Lola set off back to Africa.

‘If we go now,’ said Lola, ‘we’ll miss the rush.’

For once Ambrose didn’t argue with her. He missed the hot sunshine and giant cockroaches.

‘What about our son?’ he said, but already he could see the endless African plains stretching out in his imagination.

‘Oh, he’ll be all right,’ said Lola. ‘He’ll catch us up.’

And she was right. Their son was almost ready to follow them. The day after they left, when the moorhen swam away from her nest, the baby cuckoo followed her. He raised his tiny head to the sky, opened his bright red mouth and said, ‘Cuckoooo ... splutter ... glug, glug, glug.’