Catch That Bat! by Adam Frost Page B

do have a point.’
    ‘Cool, let’s go,’ said Tom. ‘It’s got to be better than staying here in the pitch black waiting for the telly to work. Besides, we practised moving around in the dark with Grandad and I was brilliant at it.’
    Sophie had already put her coat on and was standing by the door. Mrs Nightingale blew out the candles on the table. She took a pair of torches out of a kitchen drawer and put one in her pocket. She gave the other to Sophie.
    Tom had picked up the night vision goggles and was strapping them on.
    ‘What are you doing, Tom?’ Mrs Nightingale asked.
    ‘They’ll help us to see the fox,’ said Tom.
    Mrs Nightingale thought for a moment. ‘Well, those goggles belong to the zoo, so you have to be very careful.’
    ‘Course,’ said Tom, and walked out of the door, banging the top of the helmet on the frame and knocking a pot plant off a window ledge with the binoculars.
    Mrs Nightingale picked up the pieces with a sigh and ordered Rex into his basket.
    Then the three of them stepped on to the towpath.

Chapter 2
     
     
     
     
    Tom, Sophie and Mrs Nightingale stood next to their houseboat getting their bearings. There was no light coming from anywhere except the torches that Sophie and Mrs Nightingale were holding.
    ‘Let’s tell your father what we’re doing,’ Mrs Nightingale said.
    Tom squinted through the night vision goggles and peered along the bank.
    ‘I can’t see him,’ he said. ‘I thought you said he was fiddling with the generator.’
    Then they heard someone humming. The sound was coming from further along the towpath. They found their father next to one of the marina’s power points, slotting a plug into one of the spare sockets.
    There was a small explosion and a puff of black smoke floated past Mr Nightingale’s face.
    ‘That’s the third time it’s done that,’ he said.
     
     

     
    Mrs Nightingale told him what they were doing.
    ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘It should all be fixed when you get back.’
    Sophie was tugging at her mum’s sleeve. ‘Come on, we don’t have much time.’
    Tom, Sophie and Mrs Nightingale crossed over the bridge to the other side of the canal. Mrs Nightingale and Sophie were flashing their torches on the water.
    Tom adjusted the lenses on the night vision goggles and saw the fox’s head through the binoculars, bobbing up and down in the water.
    ‘It’s still alive,’ he said.
    Mrs Nightingale shone her torch into the undergrowth. ‘Let’s look for a branch or plank. Then it can climb up on to the bank.’
    Sophie and Mrs Nightingale walked up the verge of the towpath, crunching through the grass and twigs.
    ‘It’s swimming the other way,’ Tom whispered, ‘I think it’s scared.’
    Mrs Nightingale and Sophie tried to search more quietly, but it was no use – they kept making snapping and cracking noises.
    ‘It’s heading down the canal,’ said Tom, twisting the end of the binoculars to zoom in on the fox’s location.
    The three of them began to walk quickly and quietly along the towpath, following the fox as it swam towards Camden.
    ‘It’s going to end up at the lock,’ Sophie whispered, ‘and then what will it do?’
    They crossed back over the bridge.
    ‘I’ve lost it,’ Tom said.
    ‘Give me that helmet,’ Sophie hissed.
    ‘No, there it is,’ Tom said, pointing at a fork in the canal.
    Sophie shone her torch on to the water and picked out a small sleek head.
    ‘It doesn’t know what it’s doing any more,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘It’s exhausted.’
    ‘Mum, can it see us? Does it have eyesight like an owl?’ Tom asked.
    ‘No, no,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘A fox’s vision is pretty average. It’s all about hearing.’
    ‘Then we’ve got to stop chasing it,’ said Tom. ‘It probably thinks we’re trying to eat it. All it can hear is Sophie clumping around in the dark.’
    ‘I do NOT clump!’ Sophie said.
    ‘We should imagine we’re the fox,’ Tom said, ‘If you were him, what