The Roaring Reads gang loved The Baby Deer Rescue, the first in Michelle Sloan’s Animal Adventure Club series, and it made us wonder if her stories had been inspired by real life encounters with nature.
So we asked Michelle to tell us about the wildlife she had enjoyed when she was a little girl. Here’s what she said…
“My first wildlife experience must have been on one of my childhood holidays in Scotland. Every year we would go camping or to stay in a cottage on one of the islands – Tiree, Colonsay, Coll, Mull or Eigg. There, we were free to be outside all day, having picnics on the beach, cycling to find secret coves or exploring parts of the islands that felt, to us, as though no man had ever set foot there before.
“We saw seals and were convinced we could communicate with them as they bobbed up and watched us on the shore. We were dive-bombed by angry sea birds as we dared to walk near their nests.
“Holidays in early spring were always rewarded with frog-spawn finds in boggy pools and gentle streams. In summer as we slapped midges and clegs on our legs and arms, we would listen for grasshoppers in the machair as skylarks sang joyfully overhead.
“Once, on a boat journey to the Isle of Eigg, we were followed by a Killer Whale or Orca. ‘Keep an eye on it,’ the craggy boatman said. ‘They can be very inquisitive.’ Ah, yes, I thought as I glued my eyes to the sea. But so are we…..”
Roaring Reads 