Free Mountain Tails by Sharyn Munro Page A

mystery it offered for a child’s fantasies.
    But now I treasure each instance of that biodiversity in my wildlife refuge. If there’s one member of a species here, there are probably others—like my bandicoot, but hopefully with tails and hearing intact.
    There are other instances of damaged animals taking deeper refuge, closer to the house. A possum once wandered around here in daylight for about a week. Possums don’t do that; they are nocturnal, seeing well only at night. Assuming it was blind, I put out fruit, which it ate, but it also seemed confused, as would be natural. It must have been blinded recently or it couldn’t have lived to that size and age.
    Quolls eat possums, and this one would have been easy pickings. It disappeared.
    Life’s tough in the real world here.

JACKY DRAGON

    The cutest creatures here, in my opinion, are the Jacky Lizards. Spade-shaped heads always up and bright eyes on the alert, they are seen either as fixed statues or fast-moving flashes.
    Their elegantly patterned camouflage coat—taupe and brown, grey and white—mimics lichen-dappled bark or rocks. They have the most delicate feet and toes, especially the elongated rear ones, and a ridged spine like a small dragon, leading to a tail that narrows to a fine point.
    But it’s their perky attitude that I find most appealing. Naturally, being lizards and thus cold-blooded, they love to sunbake. I suppose there are lots of them here, all looking the same but only seenindividually, yet I feel as if it’s just the one, my little mate, whom it won’t surprise you to hear that I call Jacky.
    About 20 centimetres long in total, he chooses exposed spots for sun-soaking, like my steps or my woodheap cover or my favourite round boulder in the garden. I’m always passing close by and he usually doesn’t take flight. ‘Hey, Jacky!’ I call, or ‘Hello, little one!’
    When he does run, he elevates himself like a Citroën to his highest leg position, holding his tail rigidly straight out behind him. I read that, when cornered, the Jacky Lizard will puff up and open its mouth to display a bright orange interior, but my Jacky hasn’t done that yet. Well, I wouldn’t knowingly corner him, so I probably won’t see him do it; just as he probably won’t see me lose my temper, a behaviour of which I am capable if required. Actually he might; for example, if the brushcutter won’t start, despite my doing everything by the book and still missing that elusive compression point I keep being told about.
    Recently I saw Jacky on a chimney. Not my chimney, which isn’t a ‘real’ one, just a stainless steel flue from a slow combustion heater, but the stone and cement one on the little cabin my sisters and I made for my dad’s last resting place. Jacky was right at the top of this circular tower, his head above it, as if on lookout duty, his tail draped around it and his muscular little legs gripping it tightly.
    My dad would think it a good joke to have a miniature dragon guarding him.
    As usual, Jacky ignored my approach, but his eyes followed me. I went for the camera and when I returned he had moved around the chimney to face where I’d been. I was walking about to get a good shot, but he would not change position when I was there. He must have thought he was so well camouflaged that if he kept still I wouldn’t notice him.
    As if a dragon on a chimney is normal!
    Or perhaps it’s just that he knows I won’t harm him?

MACROPOD MOTHERS’ CLUB

    Many groups of wallabies graze around the clearing in which my house yard is sited. It’s rare not to see several wallabies at any given time, at the very least a mum with an older joey in tow. As they appear quite uninhibited by my presence, I am given the opportunity to be a fascinated voyeur of macropod social and family lives, which are very busy indeed.
    Like that of all macropods, a