Some of My Friends Have Tails

by Sara Henderson

  Then daytime raids were made on the beer fortress. While I was in the kitchen cooking, the flyscreen was cut away, and the glass louvres were in the process of being removed, when the sound of my key in the lock caused a hasty retreat down the flat. I opened the door to find the beer still intact, but the louvres had been removed to the stage where, in another few minutes, the beer would have been going out the window at an alarming rate. I recognised some familiar figures scurrying down the flat to the staff quarters.

  Our bed was an old wire frame that sagged badly, but when there was a pallet of beer stacked under it, it was very firm, and wouldn’t sag. As the cases of beer were taken out, my backaches returned. So I dragged the frame outside, built a bed-base out of beer cartons, then put the mattress on top; no more backaches. But it couldn’t eliminate the headaches. New ideas for stealing continued to be thought up daily.

  We had to keep two pallets of beer always on hand as the staff consumed fifty cases of beer a week. That was with them on a daily ration. If they had been allowed to drink their fill, the Beaver couldn’t keep up the supply. Most of the workers were capable of consuming a couple of cases a day each, given the opportunity. I didn’t know if they could do it every day, continuously, but they certainly could do it for a few days when they broke into the beer supply.

  When I made a larger bed-base out of beer cartons, I didn’t have so many stacks of cartons around the room, which was an improvement; I was tired of a room whose walls were lined with beer. The base of the bed was the reserve beer, and was neatly covered by the bedspread. So I didn’t have to check it, only the piles up against the wall, to make sure someone hadn’t thought up another beer-stealing ruse.

  The beer-under-the-bed scheme had been working successfully for many months, but there was only one reason why it was a successful system; because Charlie or I, at least one of us, was always in the house. It was usually me in residence, but the time came when we both had to be away from the station and our first thought was for the beer. What to do with the beer?

  When we had a few planning days in advance, the cases of beer were loaded onto the Toyota, and taken many miles—like twenty or more—into the bush, and hidden. All tracks carefully brushed over with branches, and phoney tracks set up to fool the avid beer trackers who started out on the search the moment the wheels of the plane left the ground. But we needed at least a day to set this up. On one occasion, we didn’t have time, so Charles reverted to a fear campaign, about the only option he had.

  He threatened Dick and the beer-stealing group with castration, instant dismissal, large deductions from salary, twenty-mile walks, no beer for weeks, and anything else he could think up. He left, quite confident they would not dare approach the ‘off-limits’ beer bedroom. I didn’t share his confidence; no threat devised by man or the devil would stop that mob. Charles said it was time we stopped being keepers; they were grown men, and it was time they took charge of their lives, faced a little responsibility! My answer to that speech was simply: ‘Ha!’

  We returned just before sunset, and of course both made a beeline for the bedroom. Charlie opened the door with the key; so far, so good. I had expected the door to be in splinters.

  ‘See,’ said Charles. ‘I told you I put the fear of God into them,’ he continued smugly.

  The room was untouched, at first glance, but the bedcovers didn’t seem right. I checked all around the sides of the bed-base of beer: not one case missing, not one case opened with a few cans missing; or the other trick was to fill the case with empty cans, the box looking full until you lifted it. No, all the cartons were heavy, all cans full.

  I was sure they had stolen beer, but couldn’t see any missing. One strong indication to me that something was amiss was that no-one was around. At the end of the day, usually they’d all be in the homestead waiting for dinner. The only time they didn’t want food was when they were drunk—or busy getting that way. Today there was not a soul in sight—and no-one appeared to pick up their nightly ration of beer!

  Charlie had finished his shower when I presented my suspicions to him, and said he’d better go down to the staff quarters and see what was amiss. He laughed and told me I worried too much; he was going to read his new paperback and not worry, because with no beer missing they couldn’t possibly be drunk.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, swung his feet onto the bed, turned to make his pillows comfortable—and disappeared into a hole in the middle of what was supposed to be a solid base of beer. All the cases in the middle had been removed. They had cunningly stood some cartons on their ends, with a carton flat on top to stop the mattress from sagging. I suppose they thought the cartons would stay in place and hold the mattress up. Charles rolled onto the temporary structure at an angle, and it all collapsed.

  He emerged from the hole, a look of black, thunderous gloom on his face, strapped on his revolver and headed off down the flat. Shots rang out in the night, but the staff were used to Charlie shooting up the place, and on this occasion they were probably so drunk they were applauding him as a sideshow. Thirty cases of beer were counted as missing, so I was sure the shooting didn’t faze them in the least.

  I didn’t have to cook for quite a few meals. There wasn’t much work done for days, and there were a lot of shaky hands around as they worked through hangovers, and lack of ‘the hair of the dog’ to stop shakes, in the following days.

  I soon got sick of my bed going from ten inches high to three feet high, or sloping at different angles, and generally living with, or dragging cases of beer out of my bedroom daily. So another fortress had to be found for the beer. The new fortress was a difficult place for me to get the beer out of, but also difficult for the beer stealers.

  In the middle of the slowly developing living room, the former equipment shed, there was a big cement hole, built as a mechanic’s pit, to work under machinery. It made a perfect beer fortress—easy to get the beer in, hard to get it out—but I never lacked helping hands to get the cases out daily. At night, with the padlock in place and Hottentot sleeping on the rug, the beer was safe. When we went away, we were back to taking bolt cutters and oxy fittings with us, and also the saw, as the cover was wood, very heavy wood, but still wood. Even so, the beer was stolen if we were away long enough for them to hack through the locks. We never did find a one hundred per cent safe place to store beer; the only time it was safe was if one of us stayed on the station and guarded it.

  These days, with no alcoholics on the station, a fortress isn’t necessary; it is such a pleasure not having to lock up the alcohol. But after all those years, I still can’t completely put the nightmares out of my mind, and many times when walking past the store room in deep thought, I stop and close the door and pull the bolt across without realising I am doing it.

  Hottentot was not a conscientious guardian of the beer; I used to have to stuff him with meat, or he could be coaxed away by a tasty side of rump, which the beer stealers would take out of the abattoir without a twinge of guilt. If I fed him to the point of not being bribable he would snore the night through on top of the beer and nothing could budge him; but it took a lot of meat to stuff Hottentot!

  Donna, my next dog after Hottentot, was a different matter. True, she would eat any morsel of food offered, but at night she switched to ‘guard mode’, and the beer stealers, even with meat offerings, couldn’t get within a hundred yards of the house before Donna had the entire station wide awake.

  Donna took guarding seriously, especially guarding my office and bedroom, so while I had her in the house it was very hard for anyone to get in unnoticed. Donna would sneak along after them, watching their every move with her head on one side and an intent expression, then she would pounce and scare the daylights out of them.

  Many of the dedicated drinkers tried vainly to win Donna over with meat offerings. (I am sure our abattoir would have operated at a profit if it had not been manned by dedicated drinkers.) Donna would take all the offerings, then nearly bite their l
eg off if they tried to sneak into the house in the middle of the night.

  One night prowler came into the kitchen one morning and declared my dog had just bitten him. He showed me the bite on his leg; you could easily see it was not fresh, but many hours old. I told him that was pretty remarkable since she was sitting under the bench behind him, and had been there all morning. He swung around to see Donna’s eyes staring intently at him, a low growl escaping her slightly opened, bared teeth. He said she should be destroyed. I told him I knew someone had been prowling around my house at night, and Donna was doing her job, and if Charlie ever caught him prowling at night, maybe he should start worrying about being destroyed. Donna continued to chase him and growl at him whenever he appeared, until finally she wouldn’t let him in the back gate. The problem was solved when Charles fired him over some other matter, and Donna got a bit more sleep.

  During her reign as ‘top dog’ at Bullo, we had quite a large chicken run. The old chicken pen, housing hundreds of chickens down by the pig pen, was closed down when we closed the abattoir. We ended up with about thirty chickens in a pen behind the aircraft hangar, nearer the house. This kept them safe from dingoes. With four dogs in the garden, the dingoes tended to stay away unless they were very hungry. If the dogs were asleep and the dingoes did get too close, the chickens set up such a racket that someone came running to their aid.

  I let the chickens out every day so they could get some green pick, and this hour gradually stretched until they were free all day, and were only locked into their pen up night, to be safe from the dingoes and feral cats.

  But their being out all day caused problems. The soft dirt around the plants close to the house was quite desirable for digging and laying eggs, and thirty chickens soon made a mess of my small garden. They also started wandering onto the sand and stone floor, and even into the rooms. When I found one laying an egg on my bed, I knew action had to be taken. Each time I found them near the house I chased them with the broom, and it soon got to the point where if I just appeared at the door with a broom they would take flight back to the chicken pen.

  One particularly tiring, hectic day I had collapsed into a chair in the living room for a few minutes rest. I looked out the arches, and there were twenty or so chickens scratching up the lawn, digging holes under the plants, and roaming into the house. My first thought was, Who cares, I’m too tired. But there was ever-diligent Donna, poised and looking at me as if to say, ‘Come on! The chickens need to be put in their place; that’s your job.’

  I gave her a ‘get stuffed’ look and said out loud, ‘You chase the chickens if you want them back in the pens; I’m too tired.’

  Her head went on one side with a ‘What?’ expression clearly in her eyes.

  ‘You heard me. You chase the chickens,’ I said, pointing at them. ‘Get those chickens.’

  Well, what a reaction! She went out at double speed, and soon frantic chickens and Donna were colliding and running around in circles. I had to rush out and save the chickens.

  But she looked trainable, so I persevered. Each day, with Donna at my side, I would herd the chickens halfway across the lawn towards the pen, until they realised there was an invisible circle at a certain distance from the house, over which they were not allowed to pass. If they did, they would be chased by the woman with the broom and her dog.

  It wasn’t long before I could just say, if chickens appeared on the lawn, ‘What are those chickens doing on the lawn?’ Donna would be out in a flash, and I’d watch in amazement as she patiently mustered all the chickens back across the lawn towards the chicken pen, in exactly the routine she had been following with me. When the chickens realised she wasn’t going to eat them, and was following a routine they knew well from the past month, they’d head towards the invisible line halfway across the lawn, running, head and neck stretched out, in that loping fashion hens assume when moving is urgent. Once they reached the point where I always stopped chasing them, they’d stop running, and Donna would stop shepherding them and turn back towards the house. Such a funny sight, like a football match in full swing, and then the full-time whistle blows and everyone just stops what they’re doing and walks off the field.

  I never had to chase the chickens again. As soon as I said, ‘What?’ Donna’s head would lift, and if she saw the chickens, she was off. She would herd them all across the magic line, then return to sleep at my feet. If a chicken became scared and just squatted down, Donna would put her nose under its tail and flip it over and over until it either reached the line or chose to get up and walk to the line, and it usually did. The chickens soon learnt that Donna would not give up until they crossed the agreed line, so it wasn’t long before there was a perfect understanding between the two parties.

  They were very smart chickens; they had to be, because each day presented challenges and risks to life. Much as they loved being out in the open, their lives were in danger from chicken-hawks, which can kill a chicken with their claws in one sweeping dive, then carry it away in a second dive. At first the chickens would only graze close to their pen, so they could rush back in at the first sign of a hawk, but they slowly became braver and moved further afield. That was why the lawn in front of the house was a favourite place: if a hawk appeared they could run into the house for shelter.

  When Donna’s vigilant patrols barred them from the house, they found another shelter. They ventured far afield from the pen, and scrounged and scratched through the grass. But always with a beady eye on the sky, for a chicken-hawk to start its death run. Then a general alarm would go up in the form of a shrill petrified squawk, capable of mobilising any hearing creature. On this signal, all the chickens would run under the nearest cow, or horse, and stand under their stomachs. The diving chicken-hawk would have to abort its death dive, and circle, waiting, but the smart chickens would just stay put, and scratch at leisure, moving with the slow-grazing cattle or horse.

  Occasionally, you would hear a terrible squawk and rush out, worried a hawk had taken a chicken, only to find a chicken had been concentrating on looking out from under its protection platform to suss out the chicken-hawk above, and the mobile shelter had moved and stepped on its toes. You would see the poor chicken running back to the pen with a very evident limp. The horse would bolt because of the noise, and again a terrible squawk would pierce the air, as a bundle of feathers and claws got tangled up with pounding hooves. Miraculously, a bundle of dusty feathers would pick itself up, and after a few violent shakes, turn back into a slightly ruffled chicken again. Because of this, they mostly chose the cattle for their protection. But even the horses’ hooves were preferable to the swoop of the chicken-hawk out in the open, which was sure death.

  Our chickens learnt survival skills at an early age. When they got to the egg-laying stage, they had more problems. The goannas would raid the laying boxes in their pen and eat the eggs. Soon we weren’t getting any eggs. We changed the laying-box entrances to the point where it was such an obstacle course even the chickens could only just get in; but still the goannas ate the eggs.

  Despite Donna’s almost constant vigil, chickens still managed to sneak into the house, and they started laying eggs in the strangest places. Over the wet season, we park the bull-catcher buggy on the verandah, out of the rain. One day, Marlee went to get into it to drive down to the workshop, and found a dozen eggs on the floor around the accelerator pedal. So I put a few boxes lined with hay on the floor of the bull-catcher, more on the seat, and as demand grew, more in the back of the vehicle. I soon had thirty hens laying in the bull-catcher.

  Of course, the goannas didn’t like the new set-up at all, and soon there were egg-raids on the house. One morning a hen set up a terrible commotion; when I came running around the corner, there was a goanna, claws holding onto the top of the box, its head in the box, fighting the hen for her egg. The hen was standing her ground, pecking vigorously at the goanna. Interestingly, the other hens were also attacking the poor old goanna, and it soon realised it was f
ighting a losing battle. It was already retreating when I whacked it with the broom. Soon the goannas decided there was easier fare elsewhere, and left the hens to lay their eggs in peace.

  In the first few weeks of our new laying project, the chicken-hawks also tried an inside attack, flying in under the arches of the verandah to grab a chicken while it was sitting on the bar of the bull-catcher waiting for a vacant laying box.

  It was a daring manoeuvre; the hawk had to swoop under the arch at high speed, grab the chicken, do a 180-degree steep bank to avoid the ceiling fan, and then swoop down again to get out. Several times, a hawk made it under the arch, missed the chickens, clipped the fan, and in a dazed state tried to find its way out to safety. In the confusion of thirty hens squawking and screaming in alarm, and me swinging a broom, many a hawk finally found itself out in the open again very much the worse for encounters with fan blades and broom.

  After a few failed raids, the hawks were content to cruise the skies, waiting for the chickens to make their evening dash to their pen. But Donna and I, and the broom, would escort them across the dangerous stretch, so the hawks mostly gave up.

  So the chickens continued with their strange laying routine. They stood patiently in line around the bull-catcher, or perched on the bar over the boxes, all waiting for a box to be vacated. If any hen queue-jumped, she would be pounced on and sent to the end of the line. As a box was vacated, another hen would jump down off the bar to occupy it; the other hens would shuffle along the bar, and one would fly up from the queue on the ground.

  They cackled and chattered continuously; it was a very amicable morning gathering. Some hens didn’t time their egg-laying too well, and I would hear a plaintive plea at the back of the queue, to which the others would turn a deaf ear, so the hen would just squat where she was in line and lay the egg, then leave with a ‘take that’ expression. The other hens would just walk around the egg and ignore it, never breaking it. It was a different matter if the hen was sitting on the bar above the laying-boxes. Some of these eggs made a soft landing on a laying hen’s back or fell into the hay; others missed the boxes and crashed to the floor. The hen would look at the result with her head on the side, and one beady eye on the smashed egg, then with an ‘oh, well’ expression she’d be on her way.