Page 62 of The Wisteria Tree Cottage

‘He is, very. Or it could be a she.’

‘How can we tell the difference?’ Star asked.

Bear fiddled with his watch as he thought. That could be an awkward conversation about male and female body parts. He decided to play it safe. ‘In a lot of species, especially mammals, the males tend to be bigger than the females. But a young male might be smaller than an older female so that rule doesn’t always apply. Something like a lion is very obvious because the males have that big mane but the females don’t, and with some animals, like birds, the male and females have different markings, but with a lot of animals it’s very hard to tell the difference. But if we start to see this hedgehog regularly and others too we’ll be able to tell the difference with the shape of its nose or the colour of its fur or other characteristics. Want to give this one a name, something that is not male or female?’

Star watched the hog eat the food they’d left out. ‘Strawberry.’

‘Good name.’

They watched Strawberry move around the screen for a while and Star made a note of which camera it was, what time and what Strawberry was doing. To their surprise, as Strawberry feasted on a nut, it was joined by another, much smaller hedgehog.

‘Oh, do you think that’s Strawberry’s baby?’ Star asked.

‘It could be. Hedgehogs tend to be solitary creatures so, if this smaller one is hanging around, Strawberry could be its mum.’

‘I’ll call that one Peanut.’

Bear nodded. The video clip came to an end and they watched the next one. This one was much shorter than Strawberry’s clip but Star gave a squeal of delight as a fat badger waddled across the screen.

‘We’re very lucky to see one of those,’ Bear said. ‘They are very shy.’

Indigo leaned back in her seat to have a look too while chatting to the customer on the phone.

‘They live in groups, don’t they?’ Star asked.

‘They do but they don’t always get on with the members of their group, just like any family really, which is why some badgers might forage for food alone.’

‘Does that mean we won’t see any others here?’ Star asked.

‘It depends. We might have seen that badger because the camera is really close to their sett, so we may see many more. But badgers can travel around a mile from their sett, sometimes more to get food, so we’ll have to wait and see if we get more glimpses of this badger or others here.’

Star carefully made a note in her notebook. ‘I’m going to call that one Dash because it dashed across the screen.’

‘Great name.’

They watched the last clip for that camera to see a tiny fieldmouse come and eat a raspberry before scurrying away. Star called that Tails because it had a really long tail.

They moved onto the first clip of camera two where they had left out some cat food. Bear pressed play and then immediately sat up to stare at the screen more carefully.

‘Bear, is that—’

The clip didn’t last long just a few seconds before the animal was gone and Bear immediately replayed it and then pressed pause when it was in the middle of the screen.

‘That’s… a wolf, isn’t it?’ Star said, her voice holding a tremor of nerves and excitement.

Bear wanted to say that it wasn’t, that maybe it was a fox or a dog because of course it couldn’t be a wolf, but he couldn’t say those words. The animal on the screenwasa wolf, there was no denying that.

CHAPTERFORTY-ONE

‘See, I told you,’ Heath said, a huge grin on his face. ‘No one would believe me but that’s pretty hard evidence to ignore.’

Bear watched his brother with a smug smile on his face as he waited on hold for his friend to come back to him. Kristofer was a local vet but as luck would have it he’d also spent six years working with wolves on a special nature reserve in Canada. If anyone would be able to identify the animal it would be him. There were three clips with the wolf from two different cameras so Bear had sent them over to him. In the meantime, Meadow and Indigo were desperately ringing round every zoo and wildlife park in the whole of Wales and some in England to see if any of them were missing a wolf.

Star was sitting on Amelia’s lap with wide eyes as she took in all the activity. He thought she might be scared but she was visibly buzzing with excitement, practically bouncing in her seat.

‘I think we need to alert all our guests to the potential dangers,’ River said. ‘Some of them have small dogs with them, can you imagine the horror if the wolf eats one of the pet dogs?’

‘Let’s not panic just yet,’ Bear said. ‘Let’s just wait to see what Kristofer says. I’ve watched these clips a hundred times and the face is more gentle and floppy than astute and sharp. I think we’re looking at a stray dog.’

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