Escape from Silver Street Farm by Nicola Davies Page A

some of the luckiest turkeys in the world, the Silver Street turkeys were nervous and flighty creatures. They paced up and down by the fence of their enclosure, as if looking for a way out. They gobbled in alarm every time anyone — the children, Flora, or either of the two dogs (Buster, the Silver Street guard dog, and Flinty, Flora’s chicken-herding sheepdog) — passed their pen and ran about with their wattles wiggling like strings of red licorice.
    The turkeys’ nervousness was starting to rub off on Bobo and Bitzi, the Silver Street sheep, in the next-door enclosure. Or rather, it was rubbing off on Bobo. (Nothing much at all rubbed off on Bitzi, who only really noticed two things: food and what Bobo was doing.)
    Every time the turkeys gobbled or paced anxiously, Bobo headed for the far end of her pen. And because Bobo did, so did Bitzi. Pretty soon, they’d grazed almost all the grass and stray brambles that had covered the fence at that end. Which was how, on the day the children were merrily pitchforking chicken poop, Bobo and Bitzi nibbled through the last few bramble leaves covering the corner of their pen and found . . . nothing at all. No wire, no fence posts, just a gap.
    Bobo stood and stared at the gap. It was scary and tempting at the same time. She turned her back and walked away, but the hole seemed to call to her. She soon found herself back beside it, staring through to the other side.
    It was at that very moment that a large rat crossed the turkey pen, just as Buster was walking past on his way to look for cookie crumbs in Flora’s van. Buster was big and fierce looking, but, in spite of his appearance and his previous job as a guard dog, he was a big softie. Except, that was, when it came to rats.
Especially
rats that swaggered as if they owned the place.
    Grrrrrr!
Buster flung himself at the fence, barking as loudly as he could. Rats, of course have a deep understanding of fences and know exactly when they are on the safe side of them. So the rat took no notice of Buster’s woofs and snarls. The turkeys, however, already nervous for mysterious reasons of their own, had hysterics.
    The nasty noise and commotion was all Bobo needed to overcome her fear of the unknown. She pushed her nose through the gap in the fence and pulled her fat, woolly bottom after it. Bitzi followed along dreamily with a bit of leaf sticking out of her mouth. They tip-tapped over the little metal footbridge to the other side of the canal and disappeared through a flurry of old newspapers and plastic grocery bags, which were suddenly caught up in a gust of wind like confetti. Behind them, the barking and gobbling suddenly stopped. With a lot of panicky flapping and another big gust of wind, the turkeys made it up, up, up and over the fence at the bottom of their pen, then immediately down, down, down on the other side and straight into the canal. The rat, no doubt pleased with the chaos it had caused, went back down its hole, and Buster trotted off, suddenly remembering the importance of cookie crumbs.

It was easy to see how the sheep had gotten out — Karl and Flora found the gap in the fence at once. But when they searched along the canal bank, there was no sign of them.
    “Could Flinty sniff them out?” Karl asked. “I mean, she
is
a sheepdog.”
    “She’s
supposed
to be a sheepdog,” Flora explained patiently, “but she’s terrified of sheep. She’s probably delighted that they’re gone.”
    Hearing her name mentioned, Flinty wagged her tail and sniffed at the gap approvingly, as if to say “Nasty sheep, good riddance!”
    “They could be miles away by now.” Flora sighed and shook her head. “If they get onto a road, I dread to think what might happen.”
    Karl had never seen Flora so worried. He couldn’t think what to say. Then he had an idea. “Could
Kenny
sniff them out?”
    “That,” said Flora, “is the craziest idea I’ve heard in a long while. . . . And it might just work. Although, he is a