Making a Soft Purse out of a 'Roo's Rear

Jack was the very first friend I made in Australia. He honored me deeply by giving me a wonderful and touching review of my first published novel, Grumble Bluff. I emailed him a ‘thank you’, we chatted back and forth for a bit, and before I knew it, I had a best friend who lived 10,000 miles away. Sometimes, we click with a person in a way that can’t be explained. Sometimes, it seems as if we’ve always known a person.

I’ve always known Jack.

Not only was he my first friend in Oz, but he was the catalyst for all the other mates I’ve made Down Under. I won’t go into the convoluted strings of events that led me to each of my Aussie friends, or the amazing coincidences which brought us together. But even though Jack has never met my wonderful friend Larry (and they only live an hour or two apart), I never would have found my Quasi Aussie if it wasn’t for my pal Jack. That, in and of itself, is enough to make me grateful for all time.

I was sad on the drive home today. I’d just spent two hours with my ninety-four year old grandmother, who is getting very, very tired. The moon is also full, and those of you who know me well, know I’m a woman whose moods are affected by the lunar cycles. Add to the mix the fact that I only slept for two hours this morning, and you’ll understand, perhaps, why I was feeling a bit melancholy.

My son Eli has been waiting for a package to arrive, so I thought while I was going through town, I would take a quick detour to the Post Office to see if it had arrived. To my delight, there was a parcel for me, instead.

I knew what it was—in part, anyway. I placed it in the passenger’s seat and grinned all the way home. Jack knows me well. Too well, it sometimes seems. And the box contained a gift that he knew would make me smile.

Once home, I didn’t even take care of the groceries before I was tearing into the package. There, to my delight and amusement, was a ‘roo scrote pouch’. That’s right! I am now the owner of a genuine Kangaroo bag!

Oh, don’t go all sour on me! It’s a wonderful gift to get from Australia. Hey, if nothing else, it shows great thrift, and my pal Jack is nothing if not tight. He is, like me, a cheap son of a gun. The man carries a shoe horn in his pocket just so he can get into his wallet. Naturally, he would be in favor of using every last bit of an animal, leaving nothing to go to waste. (Forgive me for being curious, but I’ve a yearning to know how the contents were used…)

Yep… I have a soft and seamless pouch which once contained the family jewels of a marsupial from Oz. That is—in my opinion—just too cool for words! But since I’m a writer, I’ll make every effort to express them, anyway.

There was a surprise in the parcel. Not only was Jack my first friend from the southern hemisphere, but one of my very first GAG postings was about Australia’s cane toads. Contained in my box was the tanned hide of a Bufo Marinus, a creature which was introduced to Australia to kill the crop-damaging cane beetle, but which rapidly became one of the leading non-native, invasive and destructive pests on the continent.

How exciting! The little bugger looked just like the photos I’d seen! And he smelled very toady, too! I opened the letter that accompanied my gifts, and absorbed the words scrawled in Jack’s distinctive (and fairly wretched) handwriting.

“What!?” I looked up at Josie, who was hovering over my shoulder as she and Eli watched me behave like a tot on Christmas morning. “Jack sent the cane toad for YOU!”

She pulled back in mild revulsion.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Dang it!”

Relief flooded her expression and she patted my shoulder.

“It’s okay, Mama. You can keep it.”

“No… no! It’s gift for you. And that’s nice! Jack says every teenager should have a cane toad purse.”

She fidgeted. She could see the potential for an active social life going down the tubes.

“Tell you what. How about… we share it?”

“Deal!” I grinned and snatched the cane toad and the kangaroo scrotum off the table before she changed her mind. The first ‘turn’ was mine. Josie can have the next twenty years. By then she, too, will think it’s ‘cool’ to own the processed hide of a lethal amphibian.

To some of you, the value of these gifts might not be apparent. But the Aussie friends I’ve made have become a vital and valued part of my life. Any little bit of their homeland that is shared with me makes me feel closer to them, and that’s important, for there aren’t many places on this earth that are much further away than that vast continent.

I shall treasure my scrotum, and ‘our’ Bufo Marinus, as ugly as the bugger is to look at. And I will keep them safe, so that they last a long, long time. The trick will be to keep them out of reach of Stevie, Eli’s tom cat, who took an immediate liking to the ‘roo pouch, particularly. He really, really wanted to gnaw on that kangaroo skin. Idiot cat. He simply doesn’t know how to treat fine leather.








I do.

Thanks, Jack. For the gifts and the grins.

TMKBP, FOASS.

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Top photo of a kookaburra copyright by Jack Ramsay

Nature Knows Best

I nearly stepped on a toad last night. And that got me thinking…

I love toads. Call me silly if you will, but I love frogs, too. One of the most anticipated heralds of spring is the sound of yearning and cajoling peepers echoing across the fields and bogs at The FARM. Every year the kids and I search the vernal pools and spring holes for the results of those cool weather rituals, and we keep a close watch on the beaded strings of toad eggs, and those more compact masses belonging to the frogs…watching and waiting for the pollywogs to emerge. We follow their progress as those tadpoles grow and develop legs, as they grow larger and lose their tails…until at last, those amphibians leave their liquid home to breathe air as we do–unfiltered through gills.

The best thing about toads and frogs, of course, is that they eat mosquitoes, black flies and midges.

I hate mosquitoes, black flies and midges.

As beneficial as our common, local species of frogs and toads are, though, I’ve recently been educated about a type of toad that is NOT beneficial. Nor, I’ve been told, is it loved.

Apparently, in the 1930’s, the Australian government imported cane toads from Hawaii in an attempt to biologically ‘manage’ the cane beetle. Of course, as is often the case, no one took the time to inform the cane toads of the duties they were required to perform. Nope, the buggers were just set down in a cane field and left to their own devices, much like letting children out to play at recess with no playground monitor. Any good parent could tell you the likely outcome…chaos would reign.

I’m not finding fault, here. Oh, no. For I almost made a similar mistake, once. When we first purchased The FARM, we talked constantly about digging a pond. Something good-sized that would allow us to swim on lazy summer afternoons. A pool that was large enough to encourage migrating Canadian geese to settle and raise their broods, and something to provide fire protection, too, as we are many miles from the nearest fire department. But such an undertaking was not only expensive; it involved a whole king-sized roll of red tape. LURC most likely would have to get involved, as well as the DEP, and maybe even the Army Corps of Engineers. It was a bit mind-boggling.

One evening, my husband voiced his thoughts aloud.

“You know what would be great? If we had a beaver or two move into the brook! They could build a dam and MAKE us a pond…and it wouldn’t cost us a cent!”

Well, I love making my husband’s every wish come true! And I had a bit of an advantage. As the daughter of a retired game warden, I knew several of those local game management experts! And so, the first time I ran into an old friend in uniform, I made my request.

“Dennis,” I said, “the next time you trap some beavers to relocate, can I have them?”

Dennis blinked at me in surprise. (Apparently, he thought the plural of beaver was beaver [much like moose and deer], and was in awe of my grasp of the English language as I added that ‘s’ to the word…)

“Well, yeah…I guess so…”

“Great!” I gave him a cheeky grin and thanked him. I couldn’t wait to tell my husband of my excellent work.

After supper that night, I sprung my surprise on Mr. Grumble.

“Hon, guess what I did! I got us some beavers!”

Another blink, another man who wasn’t up on the plural spellings of our local fauna.

“Huh?”

“Beavers! Dennis is going to bring us some! We’ll have our very own pond in no time!”

I waited for the grin, the hug, the ‘Holy smokes, you are SOME kind of wife!’ But instead, I got a wrinkled brow and a cocked head.

“Karen?... How will you tell these beavers where we want our pond?”

“Huh?” It was my turn to sound sharp and intellectual.

“Well, what if these beavers decide to build right below the house? We’ll be flooded out! Or what if they choose to make their dam across the road and they block the culverts? That would wash the road out.”

Details, details! Why was he being so…

“Huh?”

“I’m just saying, Karen…you can’t tell a beaver where to build his dam!”

Dam!

“But, you said…” I whined.

It’s impossible to make these men happy. Simply impossible.

Chagrinned, I had to track down our local game warden–and fast–before he hauled his live traps over to Lexington Township. I had to explain to a grinning Dennis that I’d changed my mind. That I didn’t want any beavers. That I didn’t even want one single beaver! Because, after all, they do not follow instructions. Once they’re let loose in a new environment, they make their own decisions. They don’t give a dam what we foolish humans want them to do.

And I guess the same is true for the cane toad Down Under. Unlike our indigenous toads, though, the cane toad is poisonous. They are also picky eaters. They ignored those cane beetles and sought other, tastier treats. And in the meantime, they’ve wreaked havoc on many of the Aussies’ native animals, since ingesting the toads' poison is fatal.

It’s a hard lesson to learn. Nature knows best, and man (or woman) would do well to remember that. You can’t force a cane toad to eat a beetle, nor can you easily confine him to a cane field. You can’t make your pets leave them alone. And… you can’t tell a beaver where to build his dam.

Dam.