Member-only story
About Me — Heather Ewings
Author of Speculative Fiction
This morning a currawong ate out of my hand.
Let me be more specific, this morning a wild currawong ate out of my hand.
There are two of them. One is shy and hangs back, the other has always been bold and comes close, but today is the first time it's eaten of my hand.
I'm fairly certain they have a nest nearby. We could see it last year, high up in a tree, further down our slope, which put it almost at eye level to our deck, though still some distance away through the eucalypts.
In Summer we are visited by echidnas. Again, these are wild echidnas. Last year my daughter and I sat outside and watched one snuffling among the grass, looking for ants. It wandered straight up to my daughter, and then came over to me, bumping my bare foot with its long snout before ambling away.
Every night wallabies gather on the lawn, and if you head outside to see the milky way, you hear them thumping the ground as they bound away. Possums live in our trees, and if they can figure out how, they break into the orchard to eat our fruit.
See, not all animals in Australia want to kill you.
Occasionally we are blessed by wedge-tailed eagles flying low, and, rarer still, white-morph grey goshawks…
