Archive for January 25th, 2008
Flora, fauna, and victory for me!
January 25, 2008When you’re new in a country, as we are here in Australia, lessons can come from any direction. Even from the trees or a power line, as is the case when you look up and finally get to link a bird call you’ve been hearing for months with the type of bird that makes it.
Suddenly you know a tiny bit more about the neighborhood. I have learned to recognize the call of a Fig Bird.
Another thing I learned today came from our friend Peter. He told me the house for sale for $780,000 on the back or park side of our block used to belong to an elderly woman who could put two fingers in her mouth and whistle loud enough to cause a taxi driver to stop on a street 50 meters away.
That, it turns out, is as far as you can legally move an Australian possum.
This new information came from my reading Jane Fraser’s column in the “Weekend Australian,” and it confirmed for me the wisdom of my decision last week to spend $60 for wire mesh that I have now unrolled and attached to a section of trellis over the patio of our small house.
For a couple of months now, my bougainvillea plants have been doing their damnest to grow up to the boards of that trellis in order to proceed across them and fulfill their purpose in life by providing us with shade and beautiful blossoms.
Somehow, though, no green was getting much above the patio wall a couple of feet below the trellis. Why? Because the new, tender shoots at the growing ends of my bougainvilleas were neatly nibbled off.
Neighborhood possums use our fence tops as a highway at night. They don’t touch mature bougainvillea leaves and I’ve never seen one of them actually nibbling the new green, but I did espy possum droppings on the wall, right below the scene of the crimes against our vegetation. Felony convictions have hinged on less.
I toyed with the idea of capital punishment only briefly and it’s just as well Read the rest of this entry »