What with that, a liking for carrots and a sudden passion for orange peel – she found some on the hill one day, savoured it as if it were caviare, and thereafter a customs inspector had nothing on Annabel going through the waste-basket at the bus-stop every time she passed – things looked pretty black indeed.
There was no point in consulting the Vet. That became obvious as Spring rolled on and practically every day we opened the papers to read of unexpected foals.
A twenty-year old donkey whose owner said he couldn't think how she'd managed it had had a little blackjack. A small bay mare, bought for a greengrocer's round by a man with a lifetime's experience of horses, had scared the daylights out of him by lying down in the shafts on her first trip out with the cauliflowers and producing a small bay filly. A little girl's riding pony, whose owner could only inform reporters that recently Polly hadn't seemed keen on going to pony-club meetings though previously she'd liked the other ponies, had had a white one with spots... The papers quoted veterinary experts as saying you often couldn't tell with horses.
We certainly couldn't tell with Annabel. One minute we thought she was and prescribed plenty of greens for vitamins. Her own paddock being threadbare after the winter's eating we tethered her up on the hill to get them, trekked leisurely back to the cottage – and within minutes were running back up again like mad. Annabel, by way of amusement and presumably trying to snap her tether at the same time, was up there galloping furiously down the slope like the Charge of the Light Brigade, pulling taut on the end of her rope with a jerk that must be knocking the triplets for six if she had them, plodding steadfastly back to the starting point like a skier returning up a ski-run, and doing it over again.
Later we decided she couldn't possibly be in foal, the trouble was she was eating too much and we ought to cut her rations down. The result of that was that Annabel's stomach, which despite her non-stop eating habits had rumbled at intervals ever since we'd known her like a distant train on the Underground, now began to rumble more loudly, like an incipiently active volcano. The day we gave her a reduced allowance of hay, stayed to clean out her house, heard what we thought was Timothy trundling his go-cart down the lane and looked up to discover that it wasn't Timothy at all but Annabel's stomach rumbling, we gave up putting her on a diet. We decided to let nature take its course, fed her so that her stomach remained muted though steadfastly barrel-shaped, and waited. For what looked like being rather a long wait, seeing that it takes a horse eleven months to foal; presumably (though we couldn't find it even in Britannica) it takes a donkey the same; and it would be October before we knew.
Meanwhile, so that we wouldn't get ennuied while we waited, the bird-mating season set in at the cottage. Missel thrushes nested trustingly in the damson tree, we showed them by way of a treat to Miss Wellington, and created a ripe old situation there. We had Miss Wellington hovering constantly by our gate in case when the young were hatched they fell out on to our path. Miss Wellington nipping smartly across to the hedge to pick dandelions when anybody passed – 'To make wine,' she informed passers-by; 'To put them off the scent,' she advised us; with the result that after being put off the scent daily for a week Father Adams enquired interestedly of us what th'old girl was making as much wine as that for; planning a Batchanalia? When the birds hatched they did start falling out, too, and, as nutty as Miss Wellington, we put straw down for them to fall on and kept going out when she wasn't around to return them to the nest.
How they escaped the cats was a miracle, said Miss Wellington. Actually it was because the mouse-hunting season had started also and our March of the Siamese Cats was returning, not, as it often did, via the front gate with an excursion up the damson tree for exercise, but in a crow's flight line from the paddock. Over the wall, down the path, up the stairs to our bedroom where they usually stored their catches and where one day, to our horror, we found they had stored a rat. Only a young one, stone-cold dead on its back, but where there was one there were others.
There were, when we started to look for them, dozens. Multiplying like flies, no doubt, with the warmer weather; attracted by Annabel's bread; and coming not only from the walls of her house but trekking, at feeding time, down the valley. Like a portage procession through the Khyber Pass, said Charles, who watched astounded one morning from across on the hillside as they filed familiarly down a track from some ruins in a neighbouring field, disappeared into Annabel's house, and a second or two later filed familiarly back up again carrying whacking great lumps of bread.
Something had to be done, of course. We couldn't leave the cats to deal with them – otherwise, as we knew full well, one day they'd come up against a big one and somebody would be bitten. We couldn't trap them on account of the danger to the birds and cats. We couldn't call in the Pest Officer and have them poisoned for the same reason. On the other hand, for our own sakes and everybody else's, we couldn't have them multiplying like this. So Charles, with the cats shut in the cottage, Annabel on the lawn and a bowl of bread in her house for bait, shot them. Not before we'd noticed something interesting, however. On the whole the rats made Annabel nervous. She stamped her feet at them; kicked when she was eating and they rustled in the straw; looked worried from time to time at their entrance holes in the corners. Not, however, when it came to a certain light-brown rat. A rat whom we, too, recognised.
He could come out of his hole with impunity. One night, when we went up to see Annabel at dusk, we discovered him actually feeding with her at her bowl. We watched amazed from the paddock as he stood up on his hind legs, leaned into her bowl and ate nose to nose with our donkey. We watched even more amazed when, as the level of bran went down, the rat got into the bowl, Annabel went on eating, and when he got in her way she just tossed him out with her nose. Even then, while we stood there pop-eyed with incredulity, the rat unperturbedly climbed back again.
We didn't shoot him. He was a rat of character. If we kept the rest of them down, we decided, he could hardly propagate the valley on his own. So Charles despatched the rest. The fawn one was allowed to go free. In order not to encourage a further invasion we fed Annabel, as it was now full Spring, in the open field where rats hesitate to go...
Meanwhile Annabel had a further adventure. We were having lunch one day when the owner of Misha the Alsatian arrived with a distracted expression on her face and asked whether she could borrow Annabel for a while.
She had, she explained, a two-year-old called Monarch, destined to become a racehorse. Her other horses had gone away to grass. Monarch, kept behind because he needed building up as thoroughbreds sometimes do, was pining for the others and refusing his food. She wondered if Annabel could help him eat.
Annabel, we assured her, could help anybody eat. Probably only by getting the idea from watching her that if they didn't hurry up there'd be a famine. But they'd eat. She even made us feel ravenous at times. Which was why, that evening, the village saw another local procession. Our taking Annabel over to meet Monarch.
Some of them, since Monarch lived quite near the centre of the village, saw the moment when they actually did meet when Monarch towered over his gate to sniff at her and Annabel, with one look at the tallest horse she had ever seen, put her tail between her legs and started determinedly for home.