Owls and nightjars and other animals, passing

We have a pair of tawny frogmouths in the jacaranda in our front yard. Here is a picture of one of them, looking at David the photographer.

Picture David Mayocchi

Our jacaranda is an enormous, sprawling tree that in late spring produces such a riot of purple flowers motorist have been known to stop in the middle of the road and get out of their cars to snap a picture. Tawny frogmouths are masters of disguise. With their branch-coloured feathers and textured plumage, they can look more like part of a tree than a bird.

David had found a few beige and white feathers in the garden for a few weeks late last spring, and on an evening walk, he’d seen a tawny frogmouth on a wire. And then, on Boxing Day night, we nearly ran one over in our driveway. We looked for scat, found gobs of it on the pathway to the house, a white powdery paste peppered with insect exoskeleton. Looking up, we found the makers of the scat/ catchers of the insects, high in the tree. There were three of them then, perching side-by-side, the smallest likely a fledgling. There was no nest we could see—frogmouths build famously shambolic nests, so perhaps it had already collapsed and we’d missed a whole chapter.

It’s coming up for four months later and the tawny frogmouths are still with us, the pair anyway. Their fledgling has either left its parents, or died. On a walk, we found a ball of what might have been downy feathers, not categorically identifiable as owl. I say owl, knowing that frogmouths are not owls and someone will be sure to correct me. They are nightjars, similar but separate evolution, my volunteer taxonomical editor will point out, in a knowing voice. Well, you say potato (everyone says potato), and I’ll stick with owl, not least because I like the word. If it hoots like an owl, potato.

I have been told by those who know that frogmouths grieve, but I have seen no evidence of our pair’s grieving, and because I am a hopeful person, this makes me hopeful that their fledgling has in fact fledged, moved on to an adult life in the fig up near the war memorial, or further afield, to Mount Coot-tha where a nightjar would be safer from at least one of its predators, the motor car. And perhaps what we saw on our walk was nothing more than a balled-up sock.

I spent last year in Tasmania, working on a novel, in a rented house on a dirt road up a hill past farms to forest. I saw more death than such a quiet place might be expected to yield. I cycled down to the sea most mornings to get in the cold water, and I was often early enough to see the grim reaping of night driving, pademelons, devils, kangaroos, and wombats—one of these last that took its last breath as I watched.

There were a dozen or so goats in a paddock halfway down the hill, and once or twice they escaped and charged down the road at speed in front of my bike, heading to a neighbour’s greener pastures, led by an exuberant billy. One day, as I was coming back up the hill, they’d gathered in a tight huddle on top of a mound in their own paddock. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. And then I spied the pair of wedge-tailed eagles, circling the paddock. I looked again and saw that the kids were in the middle of the huddle, the adult goats surrounding them, facing outwards, the billy looking up, horns at the ready. I suppose it’s hardwired in many species.  

I also watched, over several months, an orphaned wombat joey. I hadn’t seen its mother’s body but I knew it was orphaned because it foraged at all the wrong times, on its own. Wombat joeys remain with their mothers for more than a year, and they are not usually more than a few metres apart. On advice from a wildlife carer, and armed with a giant plastic net and a cage, I tried to capture the joey so it could go into care. But it was quick and I was post-injury and slow. After a month of trying, the carer and I decided that since the joey had survived so long, perhaps it would be all right.

Picture David Mayocchi

I don’t know what killed the wombat joey. I found its remains early one morning on my way back up the hill. It had died close to its burrow entry and for some time I could think only of this, that it must have died desperately trying for home, even a home bereft of a mother. I kept expecting to find it again, on the grass, munching, but of course I didn’t, couldn’t, because it was gone.

There was no family to mourn the joey’s passing as far as I was aware, a mercy, I suppose. I stopped at that spot on my ride up the hill for many days, to note that short life and what it had given. At first, I went to a go-to feeling for me, regret. I hadn’t worked hard enough on capture; I hadn’t been vigilant enough. Eventually regret gave way to sadness, even relief. At lease the joey died being a wombat eating grass and feeling the sun and the moon, rather than lived in someone’s house drinking wombat formula from a bottle and learning wombatness from a person.

The spiritual meaning of tawny frogmouths coming into one’s life is camouflage, apparently, teaching us not to give everything away, useful to a novelist, trying to hide the truth of a thing until the end. Their other meaning is nature, reminding us of nature in our lives. I see the tawny frogmouths in the tree most days now. Sometimes, one of them looks down at me, like in the photograph David took. I feel not so much judged as seen.

I have watched them fly off in the early evening on their silent wings. And from my bed, I have heard them call, just before dawn, when they return from their night’s work, checking on one another, perhaps, or reaching for what’s gone.

Spike

Photograph DAVID MAYOCCHI

It is not quite a week ago, and I am driving home to Brisbane from south west Victoria to help my husband David and son Otis who have been carrying a load, and to be with our dog Spike in her last days—although I don’t know that yet.

I was heading to Tasmania to finish a novel, hiking the fourteen-day Great South West Walk en route. On the Monday morning, following a few days without signal, I emerged high above the Glenelg river to learn from David that on Sunday, Spike had fallen over in the kitchen and couldn’t stand up. She’d been tired on walks for a couple of days before that, and hadn’t eaten, which was rare. Assuming it was a tick, David and Otis had taken Spike to the animal hospital. The on-duty vet team thought it more likely she was in heart failure—a murmur had been detected earlier in the year, our own vet had detected it recently, and we were booked to see a cardiologist in January. The hospital staff delivered clinical information neither David nor Otis understood, asked them to decide if they wanted Spike resuscitated, and then whisked her away to an oxygen cage, saying her status could ‘change quickly’, sending my twenty-one-year-old son home certain they would be calling in the middle of the night to say his companion of fourteen years had died. They put Spike on a medication to make her heart work more efficiently, and a diuretic to clear fluid from her lungs.

After the call, I walked the fastest route, road not trail, into the little town of Nelson, to find transport either to an airport or to my car seventy kilometres away. When I mentioned heart failure, Ronda at the visitor centre—who’d lost three dogs, one in her arms on the way to the hospital—told me I wouldn’t get there in time. ‘But of course you’ll try,’ she said, kindly. Ronda gave me the number for Gary, who runs the All About Us Bus hiker service. ‘If you can’t get Gary,’ Ronda said, ‘I’ll drive you to Mount Gambier when I finish work and you can fly from there to Adelaide or Melbourne and on to Brisbane. I know the flights,’ she added. ‘I used to work for Qantas.’

And then, hope blossomed in the form of Dr Elizabeth, an internal medicine specialist who’d cared for Spike (and us) a few years before, to check something that turned out to be a seasonal allergy. Elizabeth told Otis they had a better quality scan this morning, and she wasn’t sure heart failure was the cause of Spike’s collapse. Maybe it was her old back problem, revisiting. And Spike had a history of pancreatitis, so maybe that was involved. Otis and I turned this into hope; Spike’s back could be fixed, and pancreatitis could be managed. I called Gordon from the Great South West Walk friends group to confirm there was telephone signal in the second week. ‘And if you need retrieval, you can call me,’ Gordon said. ‘We help in emergencies.’ So on Monday, the bad day that quickly became good, we hatched a plan that I would continue my hike back to the car and decide what to do after that, once Spike was out of hospital.

Kate and her friends had canoed down the river I’d hiked alongside—we’d shared a campsite on their first night and then called hello a couple of times during the days—and they came into Nelson just after me. They told me they’d pray for Spike. Melissa, who I met at the caravan park where she was staying with her husband, four daughters and a Cavoodle named Charlie, brought over a bowl of roast potatoes, just because, and brought Charlie. My friend Kim, who’s lost two loved animals recently, was by my side on text, and Louise, who is always there by phone and who knows things, said it might be time to let Spike go soon. Yes, I thought, far in the future.

Elizabeth told Otis that Spike had something happening in her kidneys of concern, and diarrhoea, and they took her off the diuretic and kept her in hospital for three days. When she came home, on the Wednesday, I was on the trail again, but it soon became apparent to Otis and David that Spike was still unwell, little appetite and breathless on short walks. I checked in whenever I had signal but Otis bore the brunt of care and talking to vets while David was at work. On Friday, Otis asked me to come home. I called Gary who, within the hour, picked me up in a carpark three kilometres from a campsite on Cape Bridgewater, dropped me at my car in Portland and charged reasonably when he could have charged whatever he liked. On Saturday, before dawn, I started this three-day drive home.

When I arrive on Monday, it is both not so bad, and worse than I could have imagined. Spike eats the steamed chicken and rice I cook, and it makes us happy to see her eating again, but she cannot walk more than ten metres on flat ground without becoming puffed. We take her to our local vet clinic at Red Hill where Fraser, Steph, Bonnie, Marie, Mel and their colleagues have cared for Spike since she came to us at eight weeks old. Spike failed puppy school here, spending the classes hidden between two bags of food on a shelf while the others rollicked around on the floor. They gave her a certificate but she didn’t learn much other than that DOGS ARE VERY DANGEROUS and she was DEFINITELY NOT A DOG. Spike is afraid of everything except the humans she loves, and especially their food, her lifelong passion, and all the vets have treated her for some sort of contraband eating, chocolate from a dining table when no one was looking, macadamia nuts because we didn’t know, sultanas from the floor.

Today, we see Steph, who learned early that a constant stream of treats made Spike less nervous about visits to the vet. Steph says she doesn’t think fluid is building up in Spike’s lungs, which is positive, but the heart murmur is more pronounced than in November—I register the surprise on her face when she puts the stethoscope disc to Spike’s chest—and there is still something off with Spike’s kidneys. The next day, we return, as Spike’s resting respiration rate, which Steph has told us to measure, is too high. Steph keeps her at the practice for the day, initially intending to flush fluid from her lungs with a diuretic, using IV fluids to protect her kidneys. But Spike’s respiration rate comes down at rest later that day, and Steph thinks the higher rate might be upper respiratory tract congestion. The kidneys are still a problem, but Spike has a urinary tract infection, and maybe that’s the issue, so Steph prescribes antibiotics. Spike ate some chicken, Steph says. I rekindle my hope, telling myself that once the infection is better, Spike will be too. That evening, when Elizabeth calls for an update, I tell her the news is good—‘Give Spike a pat for me,’ she says at the end of the call, and means it. We will know more when Spike sees the cardiologist next Monday.

Spike’s resting respiration rate remains low that Tuesday night, but on Wednesday, it goes up again, and it doesn’t come down at rest. We begin to understand—Otis first and then David and finally me— that Spike is mortally ill. She wags her tail rarely, and only weakly, when one of us returns to the house, or when our former neighbours Gail and Adrian visit. She eats hardly anything. She doesn’t get up on the beds, preferring to be on the floor on her own, often moving away from us, something she would never normally do. She can’t walk more than one house front before she needs to be carried home.

We start to talk about how much suffering we will let Spike endure. We know she hates being in strange places among strangers—once, we had a call from a night nurse at a hospital when she’d been in for something minor and they’d intended keeping her overnight because of the anaesthetic: ‘Can you come and pick up your dog?’ the nurse said flatly. ‘She’s upsetting all the other dogs, who actually are sick.’ Spike has spent three of the last seven days in hospital, and then another at the vet. The list of drugs she is on has grown from one to three then five then seven. On the next Monday, she will be spending still another day away, with the cardiologist.

On Thursday during the day, Spike’s respiration rate goes up further and breathing starts to look as if it’s an effort for her. We are pretty sure her abdomen is swelling up. I watch her pull air into her lungs. It happens so quickly. At some stage, we decide Spike will not be going back into hospital, and then, that if she is suffering, we will let her go. None of us is sure we’ll be able to manage it, just that all three of us have come to that place. It’s hard when medicine seems to offer hope.

I call Red Hill in the afternoon and speak to Bree, a recent addition to the practice who hasn’t treated Spike, and she gives good advice about making sure we check Spike’s respirations in deep rest, which we do; it’s not reassuring. Spike doesn’t eat during the day at all, but Steph had started an appetite stimulant, and I am grateful for that, because just before bed, Spike eats some mince, with at least a shadow of her old gusto. Her breathing gets shorter, more laboured, and all through that night, on the floor of our room, she is wakeful at times. We sit a vigil with her, carrying her when she wants to go outside to the back yard as she can’t keep her legs up on the slippery wooden floorboards anymore. She stands on the grass unsteadily, does a wee, tries to walk around and then we come back in. I am most frightened she will become distressed if her breathing becomes too difficult. I call the hospital in the wee hours and ask if there’s any more we can do to make her comfortable at home until we can contact our vet, but the person on the desk tells me there’s not and I should bring her in for assessment, confirming, when I ask, that Spike must be taken away on her own, which we have said we will not do again. After the call, I realise that all I have on hand is the cough mixture with codeine that Steph prescribed. If it comes to it, I decide in those dark, dark hours, I will give her as much of that as she’ll take.

By dawn, Spike is holding her head up, extending her neck, trying to find the air. With the sun, she settles on the back verandah, and David sits by her, stroking her gently whenever she wakes and lifts her head, seeing her back off to sleep, the deep wisdom of his own body guiding him. I call Red Hill when they open at seven. Bonnie, the vet who cared for Spike after one of her culinary adventures led to pancreatitis, squeezes us in on a fully booked morning. On the way in the car, Spike surprises us, raising her head out the window to feel the warm sun and wind on her face, one of her favourite things. We drive around the block a second time so she can feel it again, fast down the hill so the wind is strong. When we tell Bonnie we think it’s time, she says that animals can trick us for a long time about how much pain they are experiencing, but once they can’t, it’s awful. We’re not there yet with Spike, she says. You are doing the right thing, however hard it feels. Bonnie gives us strength we don’t have, and we will remain grateful to her.

Bonnie takes Spike away for just a few moments to get her ready, which Spike hardly notices, and when they return, she lays Spike on the bench on her side looking at David, all three of us with our hands on her. She’s still breathing those ragged breaths, and then not, and it is as close to perfect as a death could be. Bonnie leaves us alone with Spike’s warm body, telling us to take as long as we need. A few moments later, Mel from the practice, who cut Spike’s hair, knocks on the door and asks if she might come in to say goodbye. She pats Spike so softly. I love you, she says, tears in her eyes.

I am in that netherworld of grief now, disbelief peppered with jags of tears, and guilt—should we have waited, gone one more round with the hospital system?—but mostly what I feel is shocked sadness. Spike will never jump up on the bed again, using, in her later years, the step stool Otis built for her. Can that be true? She will never eat our underpants again, or possum poop, or pull so hard on the lead on the way up the street to get to dinner she almost chokes herself. She will never again sniff under Otis’s door on the way in from a walk to check he’s in there safely. She will never set herself up under David’s desk on a Saturday. She will never wander over and sit on me to demand a pat when I’m doing yoga. I pushed her away sometimes. I can’t believe I did that. I’d give up yoga altogether for just one chance to abandon the mat and spend the hours with her.

Spike’s life was a gift, to us and to Gail and Adrian and Ellen and Fin and Georgie and Kim and Astrid and Luka, and many others. I want to thank her. I want to say I was only strong enough to let her go because she taught me what love is, the one, consistent, unconditionally loving creature in our house, with a great fondness for young people and their smells. And food.

To all those kind strangers who carried me home to be with Spike, you have my gratitude, and to the people who helped Spike pass from life, and those who helped us in her passing, thank you from our whole family.

Vale Spike MacColl. Come back as a dog. You were ace at that.

Music for Sunday

You could start the morning with King Stingray, the band that won last year’s ARIA for breakthrough artist, as they are probably the most recent in the line, or don’t even worry about the line, just listen to their debut, self-titled album for what the band members call Yolngu surf rock, its energy and exuberance of happy people by a happy sea enough to soothe a soul in need of soothing. You won’t be able to help but sing along to ‘Get me Out’ (of the city). ‘There’s a place where you live and a place where you grow,’ Yirrnga Yunupingu assures us. Songs about long highways and loving life and home, the line you are exploring could be music from Arnhem Land, where music has been made for at least sixty thousand years.

You could move from King Stingray to Gurrumul, particularly if you have reason for tears. You might start with ‘Bayini’, from the second album Rrakala, perhaps the version with Delta Goodrem. ‘It’s all about life,’ she starts on her own after the first refrain, ‘and love for the land,’ giving us a lesson in what Gurrumul’s music is teaching, before they sing together, in one of his Yolngu languages, her passionate low register with his soaring melody. If that doesn’t bring tears, nothing will.

While we’re on the tears, you could watch the documentary about Gurrumul’s life. He rarely sang in English or spoke on stage and even in the documentary, he’s not interviewed; director Paul Damien Williams is a fly on the wall in important moments: here, the singer, blind since birth, on a tour bus, tilting his head and listening to the world around him; here, in a hotel room, laughing with friend and musical collaborator Michael Hohnen, who’s shaving him; and here, in another hotel room, a telephone on a side table, on the line to family back on Elcho Island, so they can hear him and he can hear them.

The wry humour shines. When Gurrumul is working out how to make sense of Sting’s song ‘Every Breath You Take’—which he is to perform in just a few hours with Sting himself at Sting’s personal request—calls are going back and forth to Elcho Island to try to find a way through so the song sits right for Gurrumul’s family and culture. At one stage, time getting on and his team increasingly worried it won’t come together, Gurrumul walks into the room, singing, ‘Every breath you take, I’ll be watching you, except I can’t because I’m blind.’ The final performance is just all Gurrumul, transcended by his calm presence, and that voice. Sting comes to the dressing room afterwards to thank the singer and I mean no disrespect to Sting except to say he is irrelevant and looks as if he knows it.

You would do well to stay a while with Gurrumul, because while his passing at the age of just forty-six in 2017 was a tragedy for the entire world, his music, his gift to that world, is still with you. If you end the session with his last album, Djarimirri, Child of the Rainbow, you might find some anger but also soaring joy. He spoke hope for a world, even a hopeless world.

You might finish the Sunday music with the eighties band Gurrumul played in and King Stingray hail from, Yothu Yindi, whose foundation members Dr M Yunupingu and Stuart Kellaway are family to King Stingray members Yirrnga Yunupingu and Roy Kellaway. The song ‘Treaty’ was a number one hit in 1991 when your generation was twenty or thirty-something. You had no clue then. You still don’t.

You removed yourself for the last week to a cottage made of stone and wood in Warrabah national park, warrabah the name of a local turtle, and the cottage, Muluerindie, the name of a local river. On the way, you stopped in Glen Innes where outside the polling place, you happened upon a band of four women with t-shirts matching yours. An older fellow asked them where the no supporters were. They should be here, he said. You’re dividing the country, he added. The yes crew, Anna, Margie, Margaret and Rose, tried to engage him, curious, polite, kind. He wasn’t interested and soon left. What courage they had, you think afterwards, courage you wish you had too.

In the week away, you have seen a superb fairy wren, and every morning when the sun is just right to make the big windows overlooking the river reflective, the tiny bird throws itself against the glass with all its might, its beak making a rat-a-tat against the pane. You wish it would stop, as it looks as if it will hurt itself. Perhaps one day, it will break the glass. You also see the critically endangered regents honeyeater, which you don’t realise is important until it flies off, and a wedgetail eagle, perched in a tree. Yothu Yindi is a Yolngu matha term meaning child and mother. You have thought of your daughter often, the one you gave to strangers, as the grief and longing of a country have ebbed and flowed.

The song ‘Gurrumul History’ from Gurrumul’s first self-titled album is one of the few songs that’s partly in English. ‘I was born blind,’ he sings, ‘and I don’t know why. God knows why, because he love me so. How can I walk, straight and tall? In any society, please hold my hand.’

Vale.