Precious and the Mystery of Meercat Hill Read Free Page A

a great big snake
had curled himself round my grandfather’s toes! Snakes like to do that, you know. I think it keeps them warm. They love people’s toes.”
    Precious gasped. She did not like the idea of having a snake curled around her toes. “Go on,” she urged. “What happened next?”
    “I wasn’t sure what to do,” said Pontsho. “For a little while I stood quite still with shock. You know how it is when you see something really frightening? You sometimes
just stand there, unable to do anything. Well, that was how it was. And I was so shocked I forgot that I had Kosi with me.
    “He had seen the snake too. He had been sitting on my shoulder, as he often likes to do when we go for a walk together. Now he jumped down and began to move very slowly towards my
grandparents. Do you know how a cat will move when it’s stalking a bird? That was how he moved. Very, very slowly, and very quietly.”
    Precious drew in her breath. “Did the snake see him?” she asked.
    “Not to begin with,” answered Pontsho. “But as he began to get closer and closer, the snake started to move. It didn’t move its coils – it just moved its head,
which had bright black eyes like little pinpoints of dark light. And it put out its tongue, which came out like a tiny wet fork and then went back in. That’s how snakes smell things, you know
– they stick out their tongue and then take the smell back inside.

    “I was really worried,” Pontsho continued. “If the snake became angry, then he could very easily bite my grandfather. And if that happened, then there would be very little we
could do for him. A cobra injects poison through his fangs and it stops you breathing and makes your heart stop too. My grandfather would never wake up if that happened. It would be the end of
him.
    “But then something really amazing happened. Kosi began to scratch at the ground as if he was looking for a worm, or even a scorpion. I could hardly believe it. Why would he suddenly be
hungry after eating all those juicy worms we had found? But then I understood what he was doing. He was attracting the attention of the snake.
    “The snake moved his head again. He was watching the meerkat and he was clearly thinking: ‘Now there’s a tasty little creature that would go very nicely down my throat!’
A big snake, like a cobra, loves to eat meerkats – if he can catch them.

    “Very slowly, the cobra began to unwind himself from my grandfather’s feet. Very smoothly, like a long piece of hosepipe, he moved across the ground towards Kosi. I stood quite
still, although I was terrified that Kosi was going to be caught by the snake. I love him so much, you know, and I would never find another meerkat if anything happened to him.
    “The next thing I knew was that Kosi had jumped up in the air. This happened at exactly the moment that the cobra struck at him. He missed, of course, and his fangs ended biting the ground
rather than a meerkat arm or leg. Kosi was safe, and now he ran helter-skelter towards some thick grass with the snake sliding after him, its hood up in anger.

    “Ten minutes later, Kosi came back unharmed. He had led the snake off into the grass and left him there. The snake never returned.”
    “And what did your grandfather think?” asked Precious.
    “He had been asleep all along,” said Teb. “So he didn’t mind. But he was very grateful to Kosi, of course. ‘Take good care of that meerkat,’ he said to
Pontsho.”
    “And I do,” said the boy. “I really do.”
    Precious smiled, and tickled the meerkat under his chin, just as she had seen Pontsho do. The tiny creature liked that, it seemed, closing his eyes with pleasure. He was so small, thought
Precious, and yet he had been brave enough to lure away a fully-grown cobra. Small and brave, she thought. Small and brave.



RECIOUS thought a lot about Kosi over the next few days. Whenever she saw Pontsho at school
she would ask him how the meerkat was, and he would