Flower Garden |
Living on the mountain means it’s four degrees cooler than on the Gold Coast. It’s late November and at 5pm I’m sporting a cardigan; a very unattractive grey cardigan with balling and moth holes attached but the mountain folk don't care.
If I was in Townsville I’d probably still be able to fry an egg on the walls of my bedroom at 5pm. Not even joking.
I still work down on the coast though and this morning it was quite hot. We spent half an hour on the oval playing dodgeball with grade sixes and I almost fainted. I don’t know how people can be P.E teachers. They're bloody super humans if you ask me. I almost faint when I stand in a queue at Coles so I don't know how they do it all day in the sun.
But because it’s so cool up here in the afternoons, Scotto and I feel like doing various recreational activities after work. Get your minds out of the gutter, I mean stuff like hiking and gardening.
Scotto and I walk at least three times a week through the national park up here on the mountain and often whilst slipping along the treacherously muddy path, I hear a cat screaming. This cat screams at the top of its lungs as if a savage Bull Mastiff has accosted it up a tree or as if an illegal New South Wales Greyhound has it by the throat. Sometimes the cat hits a high C note with its terrifying shrieks. It’s quite disturbing; especially for the cat.
I keep asking Scotto if we should try to push through the snake-infested rainforest undergrowth to save the cat from imminent death but he just grunts at me and we continue puffing on our hike.
But I’ve recently been informed by my son, Thaddeus (who visited last weekend), that it isn’t a cat that’s screaming but merely a koala and that’s the normal sound koala bears make in the wild.
Not that I’ve ever seen a koala in the wild. In fact I highly doubt any koalas even exist in the wild. I think it’s a myth. I’m bloody old and have lived in Australia all my life so why haven’t I ever seen one?
Clearly, koalas died out years ago and the whole koala thing is a conspiracy.
Oh yes, I cuddled one once for a photo… at a zoo… but perhaps it was just a robot koala. Who knows really?
So anyway, I do wonder why someone has placed a mechanical koala in the middle of the rainforest to alarm a middle-aged, cat aficionado, adventurous bush hiking woman but I suppose people get their kicks in strange ways.
I saw a dead deer in the middle of the road last week on my way to work. It was a proper Bambi with spots on its back and everything. What the actual??? A deer? If I’d seen a dead koala I might have just thought, “Eeergh! That poor Android koala. I hope the council workers come and scrape it away soon, or at least after their smoko break.”
But why was there a dead DEER in the middle of the road in sunny, hot Queensland? There are signs on the side of the road saying. “Beware of Deer Crossing!”
Naturally I thought it was a joke, an ironic Christmas joke or something.
Speaking of wildlife, we’ve begun taking our happy hour wines out in the backyard when we let the chickens enjoy a romp every arvo.
One of us had the stupid idea that I should buy some meat strips to feed the Kookaburras and Magpies and now our back yard resembles a scene from The Birds Vs Chicken Run. The carnivorous birds don’t fancy mince or cheap cuts though. Of course not, the pernickety buggers only partake of expensive gourmet beef strips.
We look out towards the back yard at 5:30pm and there are aggressive-looking Kookaburras squatting in the gum tree, perched ominously on the backs of our chairs or balanced on the bird bath with their mandibles clacking hungrily. Various Magpies and Butcher Birds hover, stalking us from the pool fence. Not to mention the King Parrots and Rainbow Lorikeets and wild Budgerigars that come for the seed we put out for them.
It’s like a form of emotional flockmail.
P.S. Please don’t be a killjoy and tell me I shouldn’t be feeding wild birds.
People who say that give me the shits.