by Sharyn Munro
FREE TO GOOD HOME...
I should explain why I’m so frequently cranky with Shari, the barrel-shaped miniature pony, skewbald, white with splashes of chestnut. Other people find her attractive, with her thick shaggy mane and forelock and her tail almost sweeping the ground. Technically she’s my granddaughter Jessie’s horse, but useless to her or anyone else in my opinion, as she’s unnatural, a bonsai’d animal. That’s not Shari’s fault, nor why I dislike her; that’s due to her personality.
She’s stubborn, greedy, cunning and incorrigible.
If I let her into the house yard with the other horses to eat the kikuyu grass, she causes havoc. So I no longer let her in, and she stands at the fence peering through the netting reproachfully.
You see, she likes to straddle small trees or shrubs and scratch her tummy by rubbing back and forth, or back up to bigger shrubs and scratch her fat rump. Consequently she breaks many twigs and branches, so the shrubs are lopsided, and she snaps small trees in half.
She seems to prefer my especially precious ones, like the bushy young lemon myrtle that had bloomed for the first time—just before she broke several branches. I yelled and shooed her off. An hour later she was back. I ran towards her, flailing my arms—and swearing—but too late; she had broken all but a third of its branches. Bushy no longer. I did save and dry the leaves from the broken branches, for tea, but the little tree had hardly been of a size to harvest!
Shari also finds my metre-high orchard sprinklers handy to scratch her face on, and breaks their moving parts. If I put stakes around anything, she rubs against those and breaks them.
And she has Houdini abilities.
The little wretch gets through my rainforest gully regeneration area fences. She puts her front feet over the bottom wire and then wriggles and pushes her fat body through, spreading the wires and loosening the posts to the point of eventually lifting them clear out of the ground. If there’s a join anywhere along the bottom wire run, her pushing eventually snaps it (I admit I don’t do great joins).
The four-strand plain wire fence was designed to keep horses out, the timber and steel posts to resist sideways pushing, not from underneath. But then Shari’s not really a horse.
Having broken the bottom run of much of my boundary fence, she goes in and out at her leisure, including onto the track, but as passers-by are rare, there’s little chance of her being stolen. And anyway I’d not know what had happened and would probably spend fruitless days searching in case she’d had an accident. So even in her absence she’d be a pest!
I tried to give her away to a home with better fences and less for her to damage. This family had small boys to love her and a pony her size to be her friend. They led her back to their place on the Friday, then spent the better part of the weekend retrieving her after she escaped twice, through electric fences, and wire fences far more tightly and closely strung than mine. The last time they caught her she was halfway back here.
Having been away that weekend on an activist camp, I returned on Sunday night, tired and a little dispirited at the environmental challenges ahead. The next morning I got up later than usual, and far from alert. From the verandah I could see the horses patiently waiting at the gate. Then I literally rubbed my eyes, for I could also see a low splash of brown and white through the netting. Bloody Shari!
Spotting her halter and lead rope on a verandah chair, I rang the family. They were very sorry she hadn’t stayed; the little boys had cried; they’d all fallen for her cute looks. Their mother said, ‘She’s the sort of animal Walt Disney would make a movie about. I kept waiting for her to say something!’
I’m stuck with her. No fence can keep her in. And no amount of appeals from her big brown eyes, peeping up at me through her long lashes and thick fringe, will make me think she is anything other than a nuisance.
THE GUZZLER
About ten years ago, before my partner put a grease trap on our kitchen drainpipe outlet, one of my wild neighbours discovered the culinary delights of our plate smears. After the scrapings had gone into our compost bucket, the hot washing-up water still managed to deliver such minute treats as traces of egg yolk or pasta sauce or small threads of melted cheese. Birds used to come and peck at these as they dried on the grass, but once their bigger neighbour claimed the scavenging rights, they didn’t get a look in.
One night, reading at the kitchen table (actually the ‘everything’ table, as it’s the only one), we heard noises: slurp, slurp, guzzle, guzzle, snuffle, snuffle ... and so on. Unmistakable sounds of someone having dinner and enjoying it immensely. Grabbing a torch, we went out to see who was, and where, and eating what.
We tracked the noises down to the sink outlet pipe, where my torch beam showed a plump brown furry creature, its back to us and its head almost hidden in the pipe end. The noises continued. We gingerly skirted widely around and above it to see better, but not alarm it. It briefly turned its head towards us, or the light, then resumed. Slurp, slurp, guzzle, guzzle, snuffle, snuffle...
Food came before fear with this one. As it didn’t seem bothered by us, I ventured closer to observe its features so I could then race inside to identify it in my Australian mammals book.
Fur—brown, quite coarse-looking; ears—small; eyes—round black dots; nose—long and pointy, pink tip; tail—apparently nonexistent. It was much bigger than a bush rat, and the back feet were long; I thought of what used to be called rat-kangaroos, like the Long-nosed Potoroo, a vulnerable species which I knew others had seen in these mountains. Oh please let it be something special like that!
We left the guzzler to continue its dinner while I looked it up. No, the head shape was totally wrong for a Long-nosed Potoroo; our critter’s face most resembled a Long- footed Potoroo, but that poor fellow was now rare and only ever seen far, far south of here, in Victoria. And they both had long tails.
After leafing through the whole book, I decided this must be a bandicoot, a Northern Brown Bandicoot, but what about the tail? Depending on its sex, it ought to have a tail length of between 130–170 millimetres. Perhaps in the dark we just couldn’t see it? No way to check now, as dinner was over and the guzzler gone.
But our place had got onto the top ten list and the abbreviated bandicoot returned most nights for several weeks. I could get as close as 10 centimetres away, even talking at normal levels to my partner, and it did not flinch. We thought it might be deaf, for if it actually looked at us, saw us away from the torchlight, it did scuttle off.
So I had plenty of opportunity to search for that tail, and there simply wasn’t one. Since no creature in my book fitted such criteria, I guessed it must have lost its original tail to a predator. This was either a case of a missing tail, or else it was a species not yet noted by anyone anywhere!
We grew to expect the evening sounds as the guzzler arrived for dinner: slurp, slurp, guzzle, guzzle, snuffle, snuffle ... yum, yum! Bandicoots being fairly omnivorous—from spiders and worms to berries and seeds—it wouldn’t have minded what was on the menu.
But even if well fed, being damaged, tail-less and possibly deaf must have made our bandicoot an easy prey, for it suddenly came no more. Assuming it would be around forever, and because it was always dark when we saw it, I hadn’t taken a photo, which I now regret.
Bandicoots are the only close relatives of the bilby, which is a sort of long-eared, long-legged, slender, soft-furred bandicoot. Because a bilby looks cute and is seriously endangered, it’s become a symbol for our many endangered animals, with the Easter Bilby now a chocolate alternative to the Easter Bunny.
There used to be two species of bilby: the Lesser Bilby and the Greater Bilby. The Lesser is even less now, because they are all gone, forever. The delicate and graceful Pig-footed Bandicoot, also now extinct, looked very like a bilby.
Bandicoots don’t dig burrows like bilbies do—not that such hidey-holes have saved them from harm. Although once common over the whole drier three-quarters of Australia, bilbies are now only found in cer
tain deserts and small pockets.
When I was a child, growing up on a coastal hinterland farm, bandicoots were the only native mammal I ever saw. My parents simply considered them pests, on the same level as mice, because they dug holes in the lawn. We saw them hurry off into the darkness when we ventured to the outdoor loo. It didn’t occur to me that they were the only survivors of what must have been a rich, multi-layered world of animals before most of the bush there was cleared for orchards and market gardens.
The only other native animals of which I was then aware, the Redbellied Black Snakes, the leeches and the ticks, were also pests—nasty ones. I had no concept of conservation or biodiversity, of the inherent value and ecological links of the natural world. I knew I preferred the remnant patch of bush by the creek, but that was partly aesthetics and partly the secret shelter and mystery it offered for a child’s fantasies.
But now I treasure each instance of that biodiversity in my wildlife refuge. If there’s one member of a species here, there are probably others—like my bandicoot, but hopefully with tails and hearing intact.
There are other instances of damaged animals taking deeper refuge, closer to the house. A possum once wandered around here in daylight for about a week. Possums don’t do that; they are nocturnal, seeing well only at night. Assuming it was blind, I put out fruit, which it ate, but it also seemed confused, as would be natural. It must have been blinded recently or it couldn’t have lived to that size and age.
Quolls eat possums, and this one would have been easy pickings. It disappeared.
Life’s tough in the real world here.
JACKY DRAGON
The cutest creatures here, in my opinion, are the Jacky Lizards. Spade-shaped heads always up and bright eyes on the alert, they are seen either as fixed statues or fast-moving flashes.
Their elegantly patterned camouflage coat—taupe and brown, grey and white—mimics lichen-dappled bark or rocks. They have the most delicate feet and toes, especially the elongated rear ones, and a ridged spine like a small dragon, leading to a tail that narrows to a fine point.
But it’s their perky attitude that I find most appealing. Naturally, being lizards and thus cold-blooded, they love to sunbake. I suppose there are lots of them here, all looking the same but only seen individually, yet I feel as if it’s just the one, my little mate, whom it won’t surprise you to hear that I call Jacky.
About 20 centimetres long in total, he chooses exposed spots for sun-soaking, like my steps or my woodheap cover or my favourite round boulder in the garden. I’m always passing close by and he usually doesn’t take flight. ‘Hey, Jacky!’ I call, or ‘Hello, little one!’
When he does run, he elevates himself like a Citroën to his highest leg position, holding his tail rigidly straight out behind him. I read that, when cornered, the Jacky Lizard will puff up and open its mouth to display a bright orange interior, but my Jacky hasn’t done that yet. Well, I wouldn’t knowingly corner him, so I probably won’t see him do it; just as he probably won’t see me lose my temper, a behaviour of which I am capable if required. Actually he might; for example, if the brushcutter won’t start, despite my doing everything by the book and still missing that elusive compression point I keep being told about.
Recently I saw Jacky on a chimney. Not my chimney, which isn’t a ‘real’ one, just a stainless steel flue from a slow combustion heater, but the stone and cement one on the little cabin my sisters and I made for my dad’s last resting place. Jacky was right at the top of this circular tower, his head above it, as if on lookout duty, his tail draped around it and his muscular little legs gripping it tightly.
My dad would think it a good joke to have a miniature dragon guarding him.
As usual, Jacky ignored my approach, but his eyes followed me. I went for the camera and when I returned he had moved around the chimney to face where I’d been. I was walking about to get a good shot, but he would not change position when I was there. He must have thought he was so well camouflaged that if he kept still I wouldn’t notice him.
As if a dragon on a chimney is normal!
Or perhaps it’s just that he knows I won’t harm him?
MACROPOD MOTHERS’ CLUB
Many groups of wallabies graze around the clearing in which my house yard is sited. It’s rare not to see several wallabies at any given time, at the very least a mum with an older joey in tow. As they appear quite uninhibited by my presence, I am given the opportunity to be a fascinated voyeur of macropod social and family lives, which are very busy indeed.
Like that of all macropods, a wallaby’s birth and child-care system is incredibly complex. Wallabies have four teats inside their pouch, but only give birth to one young at a time. The females must be quite keen on this courtship business, despite their nonchalant demeanour, because they are ready for sex soon after the birth, and the mating usually leads to a fertilised egg.
The newborn’s suckling sends a pause signal to that new egg, in which state it remains until a few weeks before the suckling joey is ready to vacate the pouch for good, which is after about ten months of joyriding.
Rather like a full city car park, where the entry gate doesn’t open until a space is newly vacant, only then does the egg resume its development. Pregnancy lasts three to five weeks, and while that one’s growing, the evicted joey is being weaned, at arm’s length, so to speak.
It’s a miracle how the newborn gets to the pouch: only about 25 millimetres long, it looks as unformed as the very early human embryos we see in ultrasound pictures. This naked pink ‘grub’ has nubs of forelimbs, and a sense of smell apparently, and somehow works it way up the mother’s tummy fur and into the pouch, where it latches on to a teat and doesn’t let go for six months. The teat functions rather like an umbilical cord, because from its sustenance the baby continues to develop as if it were in a womb.
Even with a new one in the pouch, the mother still lets the older joey stick its head in and suckle until it’s over a year old. It uses its own special teat, since new and old joeys receive custom-designed milk from their individual teats. As I said, cute, and beyond clever—an extraordinary animal!
The mothers’ club members meet on the north-facing grassy slope. In the morning sessions they sunbake without a care for danger or dignity, their legs sprawled apart, leaning right back on their tails to expose their pale furry tummies to the warmth of the early sun. In the hotter afternoon sessions they take to the shade of the edging trees, stretch out wearily, lolling sideways, yet with heads erect to keep an eye on their restless young who catapult about like overwound clockwork toys.
These toddler joeys are always on the verge of tipping over; they leap about way too fast for their ability to manage their disproportionately long tails. In mad circles, they race into clumps of bracken, disappear, then spring out again further along, wide-eyed and bursting with energy.
As the pouch-bound joey grows, it’s not unusual to see mother and joey eating in tandem, the baby practise-grazing on what it can reach from the safety of the low-slung pouch as the mother slowly levers her way across the grass. If she stops and sits erect to check me out, the baby might withdraw until all I can see poking out are its black nose and eyes, ears hidden inside the furry parka hood of its mother’s pouch.
Bigger joeys, spending more and more time out of the pouch, each try their mother’s patience by interrupting her grazing to demand a drink of milk. When she decides that it’s had enough, she pushes it aside and resumes grazing. At other times I see a mother holding her wriggling joey still with one dainty black paw while searching for fleas in the soft baby fur with the other. The joey cringes exactly like a child does when you want to wipe its face or comb its hair.
When the alarm goes up for the group to take flight, which they do in a very helter-skelter, every-wallaby-for-itself kind of way, these toddlers often rush to get back into the safety of their respective pouches, but it’s a terrible headfirst scramble and squeeze, and usually the mother takes off with a
tangle of tail and long black feet and paws still hanging out. At this size they have to do a sort of somersault in there to fit and to get their heads back around to face the pouch opening.
Or else the joey doesn’t notice her leaving, since she doesn’t call him; he’s supposed to stick close by her and pay attention to what’s going on. When he suddenly becomes aware that he’s alone, he goes hurtling off in any direction. Pure panic—just like any toddler in a shop who looks around and can’t see Mum.
Except for the vocal carry-on, which we humans do best from the earliest age. As I currently have three granddaughters under two—Ruby, Layla and Matilda—I can vouch for the freshness of my experience in saying so.
SNAKE PERVERSITY
Being hopeless with machinery, and living a long way from town, I treat any mechanically minded visitor, male or female, as a precious opportunity. There’s always some collection of moving metal parts that’s refusing to function. This time, and unfortunately too many other times, it was my pump.
In the past, operator ignorance and/or weakness—mine—has mainly been to blame, and I’d excused my old Ajax pump for slowing down a bit, given that it and its partner, the Lister diesel engine, were getting on. For 30 years they’ve squatted over by my big dam, ready to be cranked into action at approximately three-monthly intervals, and pump steadily up to my cement tanks on the ridge. The faithful pair would work continuously for 24 hours or more without complaint.
The Lister had been overhauled once, and the Ajax had its leather seals replaced once—but not by me. All I knew was what I now saw when it was in operation, that the float in the dam was barely moving, when it used to bounce at each tug of the suction from the pump, and that it took three days to fill the tanks last time. Given that I had to keep walking up the hill to check the levels in the tanks, my arthritic knees were not happy.