Summary
Danny’s father invites Doc Spencer over in the morning and shares the good news. The doctor calls it a miracle and a victory. Mrs. Clipstone walks over with a baby carriage—the only way of delivering pheasants safely, Danny’s father says. He adds that he specially made the pram to be extra long and wide so that it can carry one hundred birds.
Suddenly, Mrs. Clipstone breaks into a sprint. The baby is crying. One after another, the pheasants begin waking up and flying out of the pram. The doctor says the sleeping pills are wearing off. The pheasants, still doozy, don’t fly far. They land on the filling station. Doc Spencer takes the baby to examine it, and Danny pushes the pram into the workshop. Just then, he notices all the cars that have stopped to look at the spectacle of the birds on the roof. Among them is a big shiny Rolls-Royce.
Behind the wheel of the fancy car is Mr. Hazell. His enormous pink face stares at the birds. He leaves his car and comes toward them like a charging bull. His mouth foams as he shouts at Danny, Danny’s father, and Doc Spencer. Danny’s father says the pheasants are not Hazell’s, they are his, because they are on his land. That is the law with wild game.
Sergeant Samways arrives on his bicycle to intervene in the dispute. Hazell says his pheasants have been "enticed" to come to the filling station. The cop asks whether Hazell has any evidence, enraging Hazell. The cop suggests the pheasants must have known they were going to be hunted today, and so they clearly fled his woods.
As a compromise, the cop suggests they all shoo them off the filling station and across the road. Danny’s father obliges with a knowing sparkle in his eye. Danny is confused why he would agree, but then understands it is because the birds are too lazy to fly across the road and so instead land on the shiny Rolls-Royce, scratching the paint with their claws. Hazell drives away quickly to get them off his car. The birds go up in the air, and then stay up, the sleeping pills having worn off. They fly as a flock far away, over the hill in the opposite direction of Hazell’s Wood.
A line of twenty cars has stopped to watch and laugh. The cop moves them along because they are blocking the road. When they are alone, Danny’s father tells the cop the secret of how he caught so many. The officer and Doc Spencer compliment Danny’s intelligence, making the boy blush.
Mrs. Clipstone comes outside and says the baby is fine. She says it’s a shame she didn’t keep any aside before loading the carriage; now they’re all gone. However, just then, Doc Spencer reveals that he found six dead ones in the carriage. He figures they ate more raisins than others and would never wake up. They happily divide up the six between them.
In the last chapter, Danny and his father comment on how “that’s that” now that the others have left and the excitement is over. They close up for the day, and discuss how maybe they won’t be open on weekends anymore. Danny’s father talks about a stream over Cobblers Hill: they could try tickling trout there. They discuss buying an oven anyway, and talk about what they could cook in it.
They leave the caravan and walk into town to see which oven they should buy. Danny suggests they invite the doctor and his wife to eat roast pheasant dinner with them. They talk about how they’ll need to use a sheet as a tablecloth and buy a couple more sets of cutlery for the guests. They hold hands. Danny speculates on all the exciting things he has to look forward to. He ends the novel by saying that his father is without doubt the “most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had.”
Analysis
The theme of ingenuity arises again when Danny learns his father has covertly fashioned a pheasant-transporting vehicle by modifying a baby’s pram. With the hundred and twenty pheasants hidden in an enlarged undercarriage, Mrs. Clipstone hides the pheasants in plain sight, a defiance of authority that delights Danny’s father and Doc Spencer.
However, soon Danny and his father’s elaborate plan crumbles and a major instance of situational irony occurs. Just before Mrs. Clipstone can deliver the pheasants to the filling station, the drugged pheasants begin to wake up, one by one; they escape from the pram and take flight, landing on the filling station roof because they are too dozy to return to the forest.
The spectacle of the sleepy pheasants arouses the attention of passing motorists. Among them, in another instance of irony, is Mr. Hazell, the owner of the pheasants. However, as Danny’s father points out, according to the law, the pheasants are now his, technically, because they are on his small patch of land, not Hazell’s estate. The themes of solidarity and deception arise again when Sergeant Samways arrives to intervene in the dispute. Pretending to be an impartial authority, the police officer is in fact united with Danny and Doc Spencer and Mrs. Clipstone. Because of this secret alliance, built on years of working-class community solidarity, Hazell’s complaints fall on deaf ears.
The police officer reveals that he too possesses ingenuity when he realizes he can usher the flock of birds off of the filling station and onto Hazell’s Rolls-Royce under the guise of moving them across the road. The sleepy birds land on the car, scratching its expensive paintwork as they grasp for stability. The car, which is a symbol of Hazell’s obsession with status, is ruined. And because Hazell’s identity is tied to his status object, his inflated sense of self is simultaneously damaged. In this way, the community succeeds in undermining Hazell's authority and status, albeit in a way they hadn't expected.
Although Danny, Doc Spencer, Mrs. Clipstone, Sergeant Samways, and Danny have lost the flock of pheasants, they are content to share the six birds who overdosed on sleeping-pill-laced raisins. The book ends with a scene of Danny and his father bonding over the optimistic plans they make, which involve buying an oven, having the doctor and his wife over for dinner, and learning how to poach trout by tickling their bellies. Their ingenious poaching plan didn’t turn out exactly as expected, but they are content to have each other.
In the last paragraph, Danny summarizes his affection for his father by calling him “the most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had.” With this conclusion, Dahl emphasizes the centrality of the theme of father-son bonding to the story. Underneath the excitement of getting swept up in the illicit activity of poaching, the book, at its heart, is a story about a father and son who care deeply for each other.
