Mountain Tails

by Sharyn Munro

  So the pump needed attention and was finally about to get it. I had the kit of new seals ready; my son-in-law Joe had brought his toolbox, his male muscles and his mechanic’s mind—and his/my family.

  I rather boldly suggested spraying some WD40 on the parts to be parted, as they’d doubtless be most reluctant after such a long time. Being an easygoing sort of bloke, he agreed, and walked over to do that and generally reconnoitre the day’s project, while I made coffee. I cut the specially made lemon semolina cake into hefty wedges—I believe in feeding my workers well—and put the coffee on to do its volcano act.

  My granddaughter Jessie took orders and made mud pies and silty coffee in her well-equipped play kitchen on the verandah; I minded baby Ruby while my daughter Lucy set about filing the horses’ feet.

  Joe came back. ‘I don’t think I’ll be working on the pump today,’ he said. ‘A big black snake—six footer at least—just went under it.’

  ‘Oh, it won’t be there long,’ I assured him. ‘It’d just be hiding from you. It’ll be gone by the time we’ve had morning tea.’

  Only it wasn’t. We all drove over to see. It had wedged itself very discreetly under the steel angle strips on to which the pump and engine were bolted. As these were almost embedded in the dirt, I wouldn’t have known it was there. There was just the slightest line of shiny black where there shouldn’t be. We tried stamping on the ground, slooshing buckets of water from afar. From the safety of the car, Jessie’s squeals punctuated each effort and provided heart-stopping false alarms.

  But the snake didn’t move. Perhaps it thought it was invisible to us.

  ‘Maybe it lives there,’ Joe suggested.

  ‘Oh no, it can’t! This engine makes a hell of a racket. And besides, I kneel down right beside it to start it—surely I’d have seen it—wouldn’t I?’

  The thought of past or future secret snakey proximity gave me the shivers. It had never occurred to me to check for snakes there before.

  ‘We’ll have lunch. It’d be too scared to come out now after all our racket. Once it’s all quiet again, it’ll take off. It’ll be gone by then, surely.’

  We had lunch on the sunny verandah. I’d made several salads—a mixed and mysterious green one of leaves and herbs gathered from the garden and tossed with roasted pine nuts in a raspberry vinaigrette; a red medley of kidney beans, onion, diced baked pumpkin and grated raw beetroot in a sesame and ginger dressing; my favourite cucumber and yoghurt cream salad version, the Armenian one, Jajoukh, which is made with fresh dill—and chickpea patties with a special tamarind and raisin sauce. The less adventurous Miss Jessica had an egg and salad lavash bread wrap; Ruby was still only up to milk.

  Seconds were taken, plates emptied, tummies expanded, topped up with a cup of tea. The lunch had been leisurely, a good hour had passed. Joe and I set off to walk over to the dam, considerably more slowly than we had pre-lunch. I was confident that the snake would be gone by now.

  Only it wasn’t. Nor by afternoon tea time either.

  It was only after he drove out, taking the family, his toolbox, his male muscles and his mechanic’s mind with him, that I saw that the snake had departed. Talk about perversity!

  PESKY POSSUMS

  Of the marsupials who live here, my least favourite neighbours are the Common Brushtail Possums, who trespass in my garden and eat my plants, especially my roses. They demolish the leaves and buds and flowers, and don’t give a damn about thorns, chomping and snapping stems into grotesque prunings as they blunder heedlessly up my heritage roses, both shrub and climbing types.

  In the past I had tried chilli spray, quassia chip spray, garlic chive surrounds, planting extra rose bushes near the fences—here, eat these!—and still the possums were stripping the main garden roses and the citrus trees. As a last resort my partner had electrified the house yard fence.

  The first night it was activated, we watched as a bevy of possums conferred just outside the bottom corner. It appeared as if they were drawing straws, after a heated discussion—‘You go!’ ‘No, you go!’—had proved fruitless. But none of them was game to try it and the disgruntled group broke up and waddled off into the trees.

  Yet the next night, and every night after for a few years, one battered old warrior climbed the fence without visible reaction. He had tattered ears and tufts of fur missing from fights past—and an addiction to roses. Knowing what the ‘Zap!’ feels like, I deemed such effort heroic; the garden could cope with one possum having a well-earned rose munch.

  That fence hasn’t been electrified since the 2002 fires, but in any case, once the quoll had moved into the shed and taken over my yard as her territory, all possums moved out. Quolls eat possums. But this past summer no quoll came to breed in my shed, and a brushtail possum moved back in.

  It has thick fur, fluffy almost, but is not cute. I assume its eating habits have removed my capacity for objectivity, but I don’t like its staring eyes, the shifty way it scurries along the verandah railings and up the eave rafters as soon as I appear, the heavy-footed way it walks on the roof, always after I’ve gone to bed, or the pellets it drops on the tank lid.

  I pity New Zealand, where they have become a major pest since they were introduced, reaching population densities six times what we have to cope with here! Such an opportunistic creature, which cohabits so well with humans in suburbs and towns as well as rural areas, will be hard to beat.

  One morning lately, inside the vegie garden I discovered that it had pulled down, broken off and eaten my tall snowpea plants and munched flat what had been my thriving parsley mounds. I’d have to put a netting roof over there if it had begun climbing the fence, the netting of which I’d deliberately left floppy to deter possums. I indulged in a fleeting moment of spiteful consolation—‘Serve you right!’—when I saw that it had also eaten the leaves of the rhubarb, which I’d always thought to be poisonous. But I didn’t mean it—not really.

  And I realised that it had gone under the fence, which was in a temporarily vulnerable state, as it awaited the addition of finer netting to keep the snakes out. I could more easily put a stop to crawling than climbing.

  I’d love to see the less common possums that have been noted in these forests, like the Mountain Brushtail Possum, the huge Greater Glider, and the rare Yellow-bellied Glider, now a threatened species, listed as Vulnerable, like my quoll. Since I don’t walk around in the forest at night, I don’t give myself much of a chance. I should get a decent torch and go spotlighting, but admit to being a bit nervous of going by myself. No real reason, just a feeling that I shouldn’t intrude. Still, Greater Gliders can make 100 metres in a single horizontal glide, which would be a sight indeed.

  But I like smaller creatures best, and top of my wish-to-see list would be the Feather-tail Glider, smallest of all gliders at about 75 millimetres long, a cute brown and white creature with a wonderful fringed tail, who feeds on nectar and blossoms. I have had a quick glimpse of the mid-sized Sugar Glider in ‘flight’. The furry membrane that joins their hands and feet, much paler underneath, opened out flat like a parachute or a sail, with the tail steering, as it glided from a tall tree to a lower one. I was alerted to its presence by its warning call, a ‘shrill yapping’, that really did sound like a small dog barking. Having heard that before, but not seen the creature that made it, it was a treat to have the mystery solved.

  Long ago, in my weekender time, I considered brushtail possums cute, but I didn’t have roses then. Or a house fence. The kids and I even used to spotlight and feed any possum that dropped by the verandah, to amuse visitors. Fruit mostly, but once my daughter insisted on giving it some of her birthday cake. That possum would never have tasted cake or icing before but there was no hesitation in scoffing the lot.

  I stopped feeding them when one seized my hand instead of the apple I was holding. I didn’t take this as a personal attack, since it was probably blinded by the torchlight. When it dug its sharp little claws into my fingers, I knew not to pull back, but
I squealed as it brought them up to its mouth. It bit down, but not hard and not for long: my flesh was not fruity or sweet enough and it dropped my hand in disgust. I didn’t take that personally either.

  All I can hope is that the quoll comes back this season. She doesn’t eat roses—but she’d eat my fingers if she got the chance.

  SHY YET SHOWY GOANNAS

  Only once have I seen a goanna here. It was climbing a stringy-bark tree. Perhaps it was forced out of lower sandstone country by a fire, as this is not typical goanna territory. I’ve kept my eyes open for it or others since, knowing they are shy in the wild, but with no luck. My carnivorous quoll would be a competitor for food, so they may not coexist here.

  This particular type of large, long goanna is properly called a Lace Monitor. It’s a matter of personal choice whether you call the family monitors or goannas. They are all predators, so ‘monitor’ might come from the Latin word meaning ‘to warn’. Apparently the word ‘goanna’ is a corruption of ‘iguana’, a tropical American tree-climbing lizard.

  As this is the only type I’ve ever seen, mostly in sandy areas, you could say it’s my generic goanna. It’s one of Australia’s largest lizards, with the males sometimes exceeding 2 metres in length. They are strikingly handsome, prehistoric-looking creatures, so on a recent camping trip with a friend, I was pleased to have one visit our campsite.

  It checked out the cold campfire and the garbage bag, but was disappointed in our vegetarian scraps—fruit peelings and limp lettuce leaves just can’t compete with chop bones or charred sausages.

  Having always been told that, when disturbed, goannas will run up the nearest vertical object, be it tree or person, I kept my distance, wary of those sharp claws. While goannas are not aggressive, their powers are to be respected. Males fight fiercely and in prolonged bouts for the favours of a female, clawing and biting, sometimes to the death.

  Spotting us, this one headed up the closest tree and splayed himself like a designer brooch across its broad trunk. He was so long it was hard to fit him in the camera lens. My close clicking disturbed him, and he moved higher up the tree.

  He must greet the holiday season with very mixed reactions: possibilities of interesting tucker, but what nuisances people are, never minding their own business, always staring, pointing, exclaiming, clicking, forcing him up trees when he has work to do.

  Admiring the dramatic pixellated pattern of stripes and spots on his loose tough skin, I could see where the ‘lace’ part of the name came from. It also recalled certain indigenous art styles, for which perhaps it had been the model. Its colour palette ranged from black to grey, white to cream, with touches of amber—smart and showy.

  They are carnivorous, eating any carrion. Where my husband and I used to camp at the Myall Lakes in the early ’70s, before it became a national park, there were lots of goannas, and they would wolf down the stale meat pies a friend saved for them from his takeaway shop.

  And many a farmer has cursed the egg thief in the hen house.

  I once saw a goanna catch an egg that was tossed to it. It simply opened its vast mouth, flicked its head up and caught the egg in mid-air, swallowing the whole object effortlessly. No more eggs forthcoming, it turned and lumbered away, swishing its long tail in poised arcs, defined by the fine pale-brown point at its very end.

  In the shade of a nearby ironbark, it sprawled its back legs flat and settled down to contemplative digestion of that egg which had so mysteriously arrived in time for brunch.

  P.S. I have just seen another goanna here on the Mountain—only the second in 30 years!

  PRAYING FOR PREY

  One sunny winter’s morning I took my morning coffee out to the verandah, as I like to do when there’s no chilly breeze. Comfortably ensconced, feet up on the railing, I let my eyes wander idly over the remaining foliage of the vines and climbers that had provided my summer shade.

  The apricot-blooming Crépuscule Rose is the only non-deciduous one, although its corner is being invaded by a similarly evergreen self-sown passionfruit vine, whose fate I haven’t yet decided. I was considering this matter when I noticed a movement amongst the leaves of the rose.

  I put down my coffee and went closer. A small bug-eyed space creature clung there. It was a green Praying Mantis, well camouflaged, with the spines on its large forelegs seeming to mimic the serrated leaf edges. For this carnivorous insect, the main purpose of those powerful legs is akin to that of a rabbit trap: to snap shut, interlocking the spines and imprisoning the prey.

  A mantis often holds these legs in a closely folded position that resembles hands joined in prayer, hence the name ‘praying’ mantis, when actually it’s holding them ready to swiftly grab prey once within range. They are very efficient hunters, mainly by day, possessing the ability, rare amongst insects, of being able to turn their heads—300 degrees in some species—and follow prey with their large eyes. Mantids have big appetites, eating live flies, aphids, moths, caterpillars, spiders. Bigger species will apparently ambush and eat small lizards, frogs, birds, snakes or mice!

  Mantids are also known to be cannibals, eating each other or their young. The female often eats her smaller partner after mating. Perhaps, like Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, she ‘can’t get no-oo satisfaction’?

  This one was a safely small variety, not that I was thinking of picking it up; although they have no venom, they can bite. My mantis looked very frail, but then danger is a matter of scale: to a ladybird it would have been a veritable King Kong.

  It’s a good thing they’re only human-sized in science fiction films, and looking at that blank-eyed head I could see why they’ve been used as the models for so many ‘aliens’. It is a quintessentially inhuman ‘face’: there’s nothing to relate to.

  THE QUOLL KIDS

  Although the shed is quoll-less at present, a quoll family has taken up residence there almost every year and I hope will do so again.

  Since there’s not much to hunt in the shed, the mother quoll has to go out foraging every night to feed herself while her young ones are growing. Once they’re older, she takes them with her or sends them out on forays of their own. These runs include my verandah, where I have my various waste containers, including a simple metal holder for a supermarket plastic bag as my ‘true garbage’ bin (it’s very old, from the days before we woke up to the plastic bag nightmare).

  She jumps in, scrabbles around, selects and jumps out. I hear her every night, and if I shine the torch on her through the window above, she takes no notice. Her boisterous kids make so much noise they often don’t hear me open the door, so sometimes I surprise two pink-nosed little faces peering in astonishment over the edge of the suspended plastic bag, followed by an explosion of spots as they make their getaway, gambolling off like runaway rocking horses.

  The quolls prefer strong cheeses like Blue Castello, and even though I think I’ve scraped the wrappers clean, they find them worthwhile. Anything dairy-based will do, or even substitute-dairy, like tofu. Spinach and ricotta lasagne, dropped on the floor and dumped on the compost, was popular, but bliss was an oily tuna tin when I had visitors. It was passionately and noisily licked from one end of the verandah to the other.

  I always thought my quoll had twins, as each summer, from dusk till dawn, I’d seen just two spotted bundles of mischief cavorting about the house yard while she went hunting. They’re fully furred, although less spotty than their mother, old enough to be left unattended in the playpen.

  I shut the front windows at night ever since two of them got inside into the sink, where they made a terrible racket cleaning up the unwashed dishes. When sprung by the torch, a flurry of spots leapt out the window, which I quickly shut before hopping back into bed. I soon realised that only one had got away, as an almighty din began; one had got confused and leapt down behind the fridge, where, once recovered from the shock, it was banging away at the coils trying to get out.

  Quolls are not reluctant to make their wishes known, or, as my Nanna
used to say, they’re not backward in coming forward. Once I temporarily added some timber to a hotch-potch pile near the house, not bothering to remove the corrugated-iron covering. I knew the quoll used this as her halfway house, but not how often.

  Within minutes an extremely loud banging began from inside the pile and did not stop. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? How’s a quoll supposed to survive if you squash my space? Get those extra planks off at once!’

  We rushed to do as told and lifted off the planks one by one until, the load apparently being light enough, the banging ceased. We were allowed to leave two planks on.

  But for all her ferocity, the quoll doesn’t always win. One day she came home late—midday—and along the track, which was unusual. She was moving slowly, awkwardly. Then I saw why. On her back she was carrying one of her offspring, who was far too old for that, almost as big as herself. But this was a rescue operation for, as she passed close by the window, I could see that the young one had a large area of raw flesh on its hind leg. Only a dog could have done that.

  Too exhausted to make it to the shed, she took her sad burden to her halfway house and disappeared into its dark depths. I put a container of water at the entrance to it, and hoped for the best. It was an even greater tragedy, because one had drowned in the horse trough weeks earlier. I’d cried at that, thinking she must only have one left—which now was badly hurt.

  Next day, I glimpsed a patch of brown and white just beyond the stack; it must be the injured one resting in the sun, I thought, and tiptoed round the back to see better.

  A spotted furry carpet of young ones, sleeping, curled together like kittens! I counted six. The mother must have brought them down from the shed to keep the sick one company. I was delighted that she felt so secure with me; they were only about 5 metres from the house, right next to my woodheap.