Beach Buddies

by Rebecca Johnson

  ‘Mum! Mum! Come quickly!’

  Mum, Dad and Max start to head towards us as fast as they can across the slippery rocks. When they reach us, we all peer over at the very sad pelican.

  ‘It’s caught up in fishing line,’ says Dad.

  Mum knows what to do straight away. Vets always do.

  ‘Juliet and Chelsea, can you run back to the camp and get some scissors and some beach towels? We’ll have to try to cut him free before the tide comes back in.’ She looks over at Dad. ‘I should have brought my vet kit.’

  Chelsea and I look at each other then race off to the camp site.

  We are back in no time and, of course, I have my vet kit, my emergency rescue kit, and my pet carrier too – just in case.

  Mum slowly slides down the rocks beside the pelican. He’s very frightened and makes low squawking noises. I snap open my kit on the rocks above our patient. We pass Mum the towels. She’s going to have to put them over the bird’s head to keep him calm and still while we untangle him. Pelicans are quite big and strong and can give a nasty bite.

  When the towels are on, Dad slides down to hold the bird still. Chelsea and I climb down to them and I pass Mum the scissors from my kit and some antiseptic cream. Mum smiles at me. ‘Good thinking, Juliet. It’s great that you brought your kit.’

  ‘Well, you just have to when you’re nearly a vet,’ replies Chelsea.

  Mum carefully snips at the line caught around the pelican while I dab along behind her with some antiseptic cream on a cotton ball where the skin has been broken. Luckily he hasn’t been cut too badly, but we got here just in time. Had the tide come in, he would have drowned for sure.

  Finally the line is all cut away and Mum tells us to get back up on the rocks. She slowly takes the towel off the pelican and for a minute he just stares at us. Then he flaps his wings madly and jumps to the side. We all back away to give him some more space. The pelican flies about ten metres away then lands and looks back at us. Then he starts to clean himself.

  ‘That’s a good sign,’ says Mum. ‘Really sick animals don’t bother to clean themselves.’

  I must remember to write that in my Vet Diary.

  ‘What is that smell?’ asks Dad, and we all look behind us to see Curly wagging his tail. He’s found his mullet and he is very, very happy about it. The mullet is looking a little worse for wear. It’s now swollen with bulging eyes.

  Dad and Chelsea look like they are going to be sick.

  ‘Phew! It stinks!’ laughs Max hysterically.

  Mum takes charge. ‘Girls, I’ll get the fish off Curly and you take him up to the camp and wash around his mouth. Dad and I will bury this fish once and for all.’

  ‘I’ll help,’ says Max, rushing to get his sandcastle spade.

  As we drag Curly back to the camp site we try to cover his eyes so he can’t see where the fish is being buried. He is very upset about being parted from his treasure again and struggles to break free. I look back at the beach and see that Max is already waist-deep in a hole and still digging.

  ‘Maybe a bath might calm him down,’ Chelsea suggests, and ducks into the tent to get her grooming kit.

  In no time at all Chelsea has Curly in a lovely foamy mass and he does seem to forget his troubles as she massages the shampoo into his back and ears. She rinses and trims, brushes and fluffs, until Curly looks like a new dog.

  ‘You really do have a gift, Chelsea,’ I say, and Mum nods in agreement as she comes up from the beach.

  Mum and Dad need a rest so we hang around the camp site after lunch. Chelsea and I make some posters for around the campground to educate people on the dangers of leaving fishing line lying around. Education is all part of a vet’s job, you know.

  After we’ve finished putting our posters up, we race down to join Mum, Dad and Max, who are back at the beach.

  There are heaps of people down there and a lot of them seem to be doing a funny sort of dance. We can see Mum and Max doing it, too.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I pant when we get to them.

  ‘Fishing for pipis!’ says Max, proudly holding up his bucket with a dozen or more smooth brown pods of two shells joined together. ‘Watch this!’ Max puts a pipi on the wet sand and we stare in amazement as the shell opens slightly, flips up onto its end and starts to twist and bury into the sand.

  ‘You find them by twisting your feet into the wet sand.’ Mum shows us the action.

  Chelsea and I join in and pretty soon we are adding to Max’s collection. I look around and notice the fishermen from yesterday are doing it, too.

  ‘Why is everyone collecting them?’ I ask, and stop twisting as soon as I hear the answer.

  ‘Some do it for fun, like us,’ says Mum. ‘Other people use them for bait. They pry the shell open with a knife and put the pipi on the fishing hook. Fish love them.’

  Chelsea, Max and I look down at our shiny pipis in the bucket. Max starts to look a bit upset. ‘I don’t want my pipis to die.’

  ‘I have an idea, Max,’ I whisper. ‘Let’s take them up to the beach on the other side of the rock pools and let them go there where nobody will find them.’

  We all agree that it’s a good plan and Mum wraps her towel around the bucket so that people don’t notice, otherwise they might follow us for an easy catch.

  Curly is excited and runs ahead. He loves an adventure.

  We tip the pipis out and sit around them in a circle as they start to burrow. We are taking turns to guess which one will be the last to disappear when suddenly we are greeted by a familiar smell.

  ‘Oh, no!’ laughs Mum. ‘He’s found his mullet again!’

  Sure enough Curly, now covered in wet sand, is holding the treasured mullet in his mouth. Its head is now hanging half off and one eye is missing. He wags his tail at us.

  Chelsea lets out a small cry. ‘Oh Curly, your beautiful coat is filthy again!’

  Mum tries to grab the fish off him, but Curly thinks it’s a game. He runs around in happy circles, then takes off up the beach towards our tent. Everyone knows who he’s going to give it to!

  ‘Dad!’ we all screech and run after him, but we’re too late.

  We hear Dad’s bellow a few moments later. Then we see him chasing Curly around the tent with a rolled-up newspaper. Dad is out of breath when we get there.

  ‘That dog . . .’ he says to Mum. ‘That dog just dropped a rotten, stinking mullet on my bare chest while I was asleep. Why he had to come camping, I will never know!’

  Chelsea and I try to block Curly’s ears. It’s not his fault that he likes to fetch things. He usually gets a pat for it.

  Dad makes us tie Curly up while he puts the dead fish in a plastic bag, and then another, and ties them off. He throws the mullet into the wheelie bin on his way to the shower. Dad’s not a huge fan of animals, and especially not dead ones by the looks of it.

  Curly lets out a little whimper. He liked that mullet.

  The next morning we are at the beach early and it’s a beautiful day. There are surfers out on their boards and the sun is making the water sparkle. Max and Dad are out swimming when everyone starts to call and point out to sea.

  There’s a pod of dolphins diving through the waves chasing schools of fish. The surfers are so lucky! They’re sitting on their boards right amongst them. I would love to be out there, too.

  We watch them for ages and then Chelsea and I go back to building the perfect dinosaur zoo out of sand for the dinosaurs Max has carried down to the beach. Mum is reading her book under the umbrella.

  After a while one of the surfers comes up the beach to get his stuff right near Mum.

  ‘You were lucky to be out there amongst the dolphins,’ says Mum.

  ‘We sure were,’ smiles the surfer. ‘I haven’t seen that many at one time in ages. It must be all the whitebait that’s around. There’s some pilot whales out there, too, and one of them has a calf.’

  He shakes water from his afro, then he dries himself off and heads up the bea
ch with his board under his arm.

  By now Chelsea and I are on our feet again, peering out to sea. ‘Pilot whales! I’ve never seen a real whale, Mum. Will we be able to see them from here?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Mum. ‘They don’t tend to come in as far as the dolphins. You know, Juliet, pilot whales are not actually whales. They are the second-largest member of the dolphin family, after killer whales.’

  I race to my backpack and whip out my Vet Diary, brushing the sand off my hands as I go. This definitely needs a whole page.

  We head up for lunch and Chelsea and I go over to the toilet block. Curly follows along, but stops at the wheelie bin area. He sniffs and looks around sadly.

  ‘He really liked that mullet,’ says Chelsea, and she bends down to give him a hug.

  ‘Would you like us to groom you to take your mind off it?’ she asks him.

  Curly tries to lick her cheek and wags his tail. We guess that means yes.

  After lunch we play some board games. Curly is looking very smart because Chelsea and I have brushed his hair into sections and made little pigtails all over him.

  ‘That should keep the knots out for a while, anyway,’ says Chelsea, leaning over to pat him. Curly seems to be very interested in Max this afternoon. He keeps sniffing around him and laying his head on his lap.

  ‘He just loves me,’ laughs Max, as Curly burrows his nose into him again.

  Chelsea, Max, Curly and I decide to head back down to the rock pools and hunt for some more sea cucumbers. Mum and Dad sit up at the top of the beach to keep an eye on us.

  We find eight sea cucumbers and put them all in one rock pool and start giving them names. I grab my Vet Diary to keep a list so we don’t forget them all.

  They are the funniest things I have ever felt. They are like long, water-filled balloons that go all floppy when you pick them up. We carry them gently so they don’t squirt their glue out because it’s really gross and sticky.

  Eventually we put our ‘pet cucumbers’ back where we got them from and head up the beach to Mum and Dad. Then we all head back to the camp site.

  Curly runs ahead of us and starts barking like mad when he gets there.

  ‘You guys wait here a minute,’ says Dad. He and Mum go ahead to look.

  ‘It’s okay,’ calls Mum after a minute or so. ‘You can come now.’

  Our camp site is a mess. The plastic bag that held our rubbish has been ripped open and garbage is spread out everywhere.

  ‘Something’s got into the garbage,’ says Dad. He looks over at Curly.

  ‘Unless Curly has grown some very sharp claws, and leaves rather odd tracks in the sand. I think he’s innocent,’ says Mum. ‘What we have here is the leftovers of a goanna’s breakfast. Look – you can see the marks from his tail in the sand. It’s a big one.’

  ‘I should have put the garbage in the bin,’ says Dad. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘What’s a goanna?’ asks Max.

  I whip out my Vet Diary ready to take notes.

  ‘Well, Max, a goanna is actually a relative of your favourite animals . . . the dinosaurs.’

  I scribble down as many notes as I can while Mum speaks.

  I look over at Chelsea. She is now sitting on the table with her legs tucked up, looking around nervously. ‘That must have been what we heard the other day in the grass. It could have attacked us!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Chelsea. I’m sure it will leave us alone, if we leave it alone.’ I look at Mum and she nods.

  ‘And I bet that’s what ate all the sausages. Sorry, Curly,’ says Dad. Curly wags his tail and looks towards the bin.

  ‘Can we see if we can find it?’ says Max. ‘I want to see a goanna.’

  ‘I don’t,’ says Dad. ‘Leave it alone.’

  ‘I’ll follow the trails with you, Max,’ says Mum.

  Max runs off to grab some dinosaurs from the tent. ‘He might want to meet these guys,’ he says.

  Chelsea and I roll our eyes.

  ‘Do you want to see if we can find it, Chelsea?’

  ‘Um, you know, I’m a bit tired from last night. I might just pop into the tent and read my book.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘We’ll call you if we see it.’

  Chelsea climbs into the tent and zips it shut. I think she put her bag in front of the zip, too.

  Mum, Max and I head off. It’s really exciting following the strange trails in the sand, but a bit scary, too. Even vets can be scared of new things.

  The tracks disappear when we reach the long grass. We all look around, but it’s Mum who spots it. ‘There it is!’ she whispers, pointing up a large gum tree. ‘It is a beauty.’

  I step a little closer to Mum as I look at the enormous lizard with its long tongue flicking in and out.

  I’m glad it wasn’t what I saw when I opened the tent that first night!

  The goanna’s green and black markings help camouflage it in the dappled light coming through the trees.

  Max holds each of his dinosaurs up for the goanna to see. He insists on giving a description of each one. The lizard looks totally bored. No surprises there.

  Finally we head back to camp for our last night. It has been a lovely holiday and I know so much more about beach animals now. I take a bit of time to finish off some pages in my Vet Diary.

  The next morning we wake up really early because there’s heaps of noise coming from the beach. When we come out of the tent, Dad tells us that Mum is already down there because a pilot whale calf has beached itself.

  Oh, no! It’s probably the one the surfer was talking about yesterday.

  ‘Mum’s just sent up a message for us to bring as many buckets as we can. Take these down with you, girls, and I’ll wake Max up.’

  We run down to the beach and can’t believe our eyes! There is a whale lying on the beach and it can’t move. It’s so awful I feel like crying. Mum is there and we run to her side with the buckets.

  ‘Quickly, girls, help the other people bring buckets of water up. We have to keep her wet and cool or the heat from the sun will kill her.’

  Mum turns to a lady who is watching with one hand over her mouth. Mum is very calm. Vets have to be. ‘Could you go and get as many beach umbrellas as you can and towels to put over her?’

  The woman is glad to be given something to do and runs up to the camp site. More and more people are coming with buckets and soon we have a line with buckets being passed from one person to the next and the water is gently poured over the whale.

  ‘Will she be all right, Mum?’ I start to feel tight in my throat. ‘Is she going to be all right?’

  ‘She’s been here since last night when the tide was high,’ says Mum. ‘Her only chance is if we can keep her cool and wet until the tide comes in this afternoon, and then hope that she can find her mother.’

  I feel even sadder knowing it is a baby. Its mother must be frantic.

  I look out to sea and start to worry. It’s such a big place to look for someone.

  The calf blows hard through its blowhole and opens and closes its mouth a few times. Its sad little eye looks up at us.

  Chelsea pats her. ‘Its going to be okay,’ she whispers to the baby whale.

  Suddenly the surfer we saw yesterday appears at Mum’s side. He has run all the way up the beach.

  ‘The pod,’ he pants, out of breath. ‘They’re still out there. We just saw them. They’re still after the whitebait.’

  Mum looks relieved. ‘How long will it be until the tide comes back up to this point?’

  ‘About five hours, I think. It was high tide around midnight, so it will be high tide again around lunchtime.’

  Mum and I look at each other. Vets know what other vets are thinking. That is a long time for the baby whale to stay alive out of the water, and a long time for the pod of pilot whales to stick around. I hope her mother knows we are trying to help.

  Dad brings Mum her mobile phone and she calls Sea World on the Gold Coast and speaks to a marine biologis
t. He says we are doing everything right. They will try to get here as soon as they can, but they’re at least three hours away.

  I look at the line of people passing the water. In this heat, they are going to get very tired, very soon. I have an idea and talk it over with Chelsea.

  ‘That’s brilliant, Juliet,’ she says. ‘No wonder you’re nearly a vet!’

  We make up a roster and go along the line and ask everyone for their name. Then we go up to the camp site and Dad helps us to ask everyone if they could pitch in. If everyone helps, then everyone gets a break, and the baby whale will stay cool and wet until the tide comes back up.

  We keep pouring water over the little whale and sheltering her from the hot sun. Every now and then she thrashes about and makes a shrill, panicked sound. I hope her mother can hear her so she doesn’t swim away.

  Max joins the line of bucket carriers.

  I see Mum talking to Dad quietly off to the side. I know she is very worried about the whale.

  Ever so slowly, the tide starts to come in. Max uses one of his dinosaurs to mark the highest point a wave reaches each time, and as the scorching sun beats down on us all we wait, and wait, and wait.

  By ten o’clock the first wave reaches out from the ocean and touches the whale.

  By eleven o’clock we stand around her with the water above our ankles. The whale flips and splashes, but she is still stranded by her weight.

  By twelve o’clock it starts to happen. She starts to be lifted by the waves. The experts from Sea World are here now and the excitement has grown. Our new friend Brett, the surfer, has come back several times to tell us the pod is still out there, and that the mother whale is calling her calf.

  ‘Now,’ says the marine biologist to the people gathered around the three-metre-long baby, ‘when the next wave lifts her, we have to try to push her into the deeper water. She will be wonky, so we must try to keep her upright and pointing into the waves so she doesn’t roll.’