Stout Fox returns home and in desperation makes his dying mate go to the steam to drink for the sake of the cubs. The last otter of Farthing wood makes her peace with Stout Fox and the other animals there at the time (Sly Stoat, Kindly Badger, Young Badger, Lightning Weasel and his new mate) and dies, wiping out the last of the Farthing Wood Otters and the protection of the Wood. Long-Whiskers does not know the cure but tells the fox that it was something to do with water plants. Stout Fox runs to her and apologizes, then asks for the cure to the sickness. Assuming he has come to finish her off, she runs into the road in a panic and is hit. She heads back to Farthing Wood and sees Stout Fox. However, Long-Whiskers is hurt but alive. The humans presume Long-Whiskers to be dead also and leave. However, the humans unintentionally startle the otters who run into a nursing badger sett. They encounter Long Whiskers, now pregnant, and Lame Otter. Humans in Farthing Wood have noticed the disappearance of otters and have gone to help the creatures. When Lean Fox and Lean Vixen are hunting, they are drowned in this swamp. Rabbit burrows and destroyed by diggers and a swamp is caused.
In Farthing Wood, humans have began developing on the grasslands. Sleek Otter continues alone and is hit by a car. She and Lame Otter become mates and begin to travel back to Farthing Wood. They cannot find food and Long Whiskers decided to return to the Wood despite the danger of the foxes. Sleek Otter, Long Whiskers and Lame Otter are the remaining otters. Slow Otter fears to return to the other three otters and so lags behind and is killed on the railway. They find a trout farm but two sister otters are killed there, party due to the sefish actions of Slow Otter and his jealousy of Lame Otter, the other male. Outside the wood, the otters are doing badly. But Quick Weasel and Wily Stoat die from the parasite after suffering terribly for some time, and Sly Stoat blames himself for both of their deaths. In fear for his mate and his cubs, Stout Fox remembers the otters have a cure for the illness and sets out to find the otters. Stout Fox remembers the sick voles incident and so deliberately avoids eating voles but his mate is less careful and catches the illness. She is carrying his cubs during the following spring. Stout Fox meanwhile has met a mate, Stout Vixen. Sage Hedgehog predicts doom with the departure of the otters and the badgers, Kindly Badger, his mate and Young Badger, pity the otters. The otters, of which only about seven remain, flee. Lean Vixen, her mate Lean Fox, Sly Stoat and Stout Fox are enraged by the otters behaviour and so chase them out of the wood, killing a great number of them in a bloody encounter. They realise that they are ill due to not eating enough cressy water plants and so cure their disease. The otters, unaccustomed to eating land food, eat the voles and catch the sickness. She teams up with Sly Stoat and they sneakily drive sickly voles toward the home of the otters. Lean Vixen, a bossy Farthing Wood vixen, is especially envious.
The predators of the Wood are envious of the otters hunting talents and the otters began to taunt them. The otters include Sleek Otter, Slow Otter, Lame Otter and Long-Whiskers. The Otters of Farthing Wood are coming onto land to hunt. The book is a prequel, set five years before the original novel, showing how Farthing Wood came to be destroyed and introducing characters that had died before the original journey to White Deer Park took place.
The book was illustrated by Trevor Newton and first published on 16 June 1994.
#LAST WOOD WIKIA SERIES#
Farthing Wood: The Adventure Begins is the eighth and final book of The Animals of Farthing Wood book series by Colin Dann.
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