Giles Watson's poetry and prose
Emus, and other difficulties
I learned fairly early that in wildlife rehabilitation, it is easy to bite off more than you can chew. The emus walked out of their box and into our living room with all the assurance of a pair of aristocrats returning to their ancestral seat, and looked very determined to take up residence. Endearing as they were, they would, of course, have to be moved on to more spacious accommodation before they put on a growth spurt. Fortunately, there were two wildlife parks in Canberra, and these were well equipped for raising larger birds and mammals and preparing them for release, and to one of these they went. I remember their striped heads looking out at me from the top of their box as they were carried away.
There were other tasks which were best undertaken in small doses. My experiences of rearing baby possums and kangaroos were usually limited to a single week, often when I was sick at home. More than this was quite impossible for a schoolboy, for marsupial babies are every bit as demanding as human ones, albeit a good deal less raucous. The most exciting of these was Norman, a young grey kangaroo who, by the time he went on to his next foster-parent, was capable of leaping the fourteen steps to our back verandah in a single bound.
Once, the vet to whom I obsessively apprenticed myself every holiday received a wedge-tailed eagle with a broken wing: far too dangerous a proposition for me to handle. The proprietor of the same local wildlife park and two of his burly assistants were called in to wrestle the bird to the floor whilst the vet examined its fractured wing. I remember the fixed and malignant glare in its eye, and its talons as big as a man’s hand.
Some of the animals that I did take on nevertheless taxed me to the utmost. Amongst these, the friar birds were perhaps the most remarkable. I have already mentioned the unspeakable agony I experienced on more than one occasion after inadvertently allowing a friar bird to grasp my hand with its claws, but after treatment, a new and equally taxing challenge arose. Friar birds are honeyeaters, and are so named because their vulturine heads and necks are completely bald, as though their monkish barber had grown a little overenthusiastic with the tonsuring shears. The exposed skin is black, and the eyes are a deep orange. At the base of the beak, in front of those eyes, there is a knobbly lump. This combination of characteristics lends the friar bird a rather demonic appearance, which is augmented by the bird’s yobbling, subtly human-sounding voice.
The friar bird with whom I grew most familiar was, predictably, christened Friar Tuck – a name which delighted some of my friends, who were just discovering the appeal of spoonerisms – and he had an insatiable appetite for honey, fruit and insects. Honey, mixed with warm water, was tied in test-tubes to the side of his cage, where it could be conveniently lapped by his black and feathery tongue. Soon, I discovered that he was partial to bottled baby food, particularly ‘fruit and honey breakfast’, and shopkeepers began to look quizzically at this fifteen-year-old boy and his basketfuls of baby-food purchases. So far, so good: fruit and honey were in abundant supply. The insects were the problem. Anyone who has worked in wildlife rehabilitation will confirm that insectivorous birds are peculiarly demanding. I had the requisite colony of mealworms, but it was impossible to induce them to reproduce at quite the exponential rate that was required. In any case, friar birds cannot live on meal-worms alone: they require variety, or else they get bad-tempered. My parents invested in a glowing purple blowfly-zapper for their kitchen, and I found myself constantly checking the tray beneath it for the half-fried remains. The bird didn't seem to object to the blackened bits. I turned over stones looking for Christmas beetle larvae and worms, but usually only found red-backed spiders. There were innumerable woodlice, of course, but most birds (chickens excepted) seem to find these distasteful. Soon, I was devising insect traps with all the inventiveness of a trap-door spider, enslaved to a bald-headed bird with evil eyes which gobbled everything I offered, and then squawked expectantly for more.
Perhaps, after all, it would have been easier to take on the emus.
Photo hand-tinted by Leslie Watson, c. 1986.
Emus, and other difficulties
I learned fairly early that in wildlife rehabilitation, it is easy to bite off more than you can chew. The emus walked out of their box and into our living room with all the assurance of a pair of aristocrats returning to their ancestral seat, and looked very determined to take up residence. Endearing as they were, they would, of course, have to be moved on to more spacious accommodation before they put on a growth spurt. Fortunately, there were two wildlife parks in Canberra, and these were well equipped for raising larger birds and mammals and preparing them for release, and to one of these they went. I remember their striped heads looking out at me from the top of their box as they were carried away.
There were other tasks which were best undertaken in small doses. My experiences of rearing baby possums and kangaroos were usually limited to a single week, often when I was sick at home. More than this was quite impossible for a schoolboy, for marsupial babies are every bit as demanding as human ones, albeit a good deal less raucous. The most exciting of these was Norman, a young grey kangaroo who, by the time he went on to his next foster-parent, was capable of leaping the fourteen steps to our back verandah in a single bound.
Once, the vet to whom I obsessively apprenticed myself every holiday received a wedge-tailed eagle with a broken wing: far too dangerous a proposition for me to handle. The proprietor of the same local wildlife park and two of his burly assistants were called in to wrestle the bird to the floor whilst the vet examined its fractured wing. I remember the fixed and malignant glare in its eye, and its talons as big as a man’s hand.
Some of the animals that I did take on nevertheless taxed me to the utmost. Amongst these, the friar birds were perhaps the most remarkable. I have already mentioned the unspeakable agony I experienced on more than one occasion after inadvertently allowing a friar bird to grasp my hand with its claws, but after treatment, a new and equally taxing challenge arose. Friar birds are honeyeaters, and are so named because their vulturine heads and necks are completely bald, as though their monkish barber had grown a little overenthusiastic with the tonsuring shears. The exposed skin is black, and the eyes are a deep orange. At the base of the beak, in front of those eyes, there is a knobbly lump. This combination of characteristics lends the friar bird a rather demonic appearance, which is augmented by the bird’s yobbling, subtly human-sounding voice.
The friar bird with whom I grew most familiar was, predictably, christened Friar Tuck – a name which delighted some of my friends, who were just discovering the appeal of spoonerisms – and he had an insatiable appetite for honey, fruit and insects. Honey, mixed with warm water, was tied in test-tubes to the side of his cage, where it could be conveniently lapped by his black and feathery tongue. Soon, I discovered that he was partial to bottled baby food, particularly ‘fruit and honey breakfast’, and shopkeepers began to look quizzically at this fifteen-year-old boy and his basketfuls of baby-food purchases. So far, so good: fruit and honey were in abundant supply. The insects were the problem. Anyone who has worked in wildlife rehabilitation will confirm that insectivorous birds are peculiarly demanding. I had the requisite colony of mealworms, but it was impossible to induce them to reproduce at quite the exponential rate that was required. In any case, friar birds cannot live on meal-worms alone: they require variety, or else they get bad-tempered. My parents invested in a glowing purple blowfly-zapper for their kitchen, and I found myself constantly checking the tray beneath it for the half-fried remains. The bird didn't seem to object to the blackened bits. I turned over stones looking for Christmas beetle larvae and worms, but usually only found red-backed spiders. There were innumerable woodlice, of course, but most birds (chickens excepted) seem to find these distasteful. Soon, I was devising insect traps with all the inventiveness of a trap-door spider, enslaved to a bald-headed bird with evil eyes which gobbled everything I offered, and then squawked expectantly for more.
Perhaps, after all, it would have been easier to take on the emus.
Photo hand-tinted by Leslie Watson, c. 1986.