10. EUROPEAN RED FOX (VULPES VULPES)
the black and white rooster whose tail feathers blew like emergency streamers,
puffed out his chest for the nervous hens and crowed all the short afternoon,
there was a starving fox prowling around, night comes so soon in august,
rock and tree sundials predict the short day ahead, hens go to the sheds early,
the ice that blows off the snowy mountains is a cool wind clock,
the european red fox was first released near melbourne for recreational hunting,
it is hunted still, hounded deeper into the inland from the snowy country,
in fifty years it was in western australia, driven towards the edge, widely spread,
slimline, on the red trot, like a ribbon blowing between trees and roots,
vulpes vulpes throughout the lightly wooded areas, rarely a life beyond four years old,
trapped, shot, run down and a lack of prey, they are exposed to this life in the full,
born to be hounded for four years, four years of the great disappearing act,
four years of flooded silence, four years of sunsets, aridity and drought,
they bring in their bright-eyed cubs to face the small term, in a land that is hostile to foxes,
that striking red coat is one year into its sentence, it's hunger inland on legs,
as it makes its way towards the desert marsupial, chook pen, the wild fruit, the dying lamb
and roadkill carrion, it makes its way towards a darkness greater than sundown,
it has learnt to be adaptable, by keeping its secrets close to the crumbling edge,
in a land ruled by the minds behind machines that harvest wheat and cattle,
it slithers along the same routes taken by the rainbow serpent, prisoner to an island,
vulpes vulpes watches the extinction of the numbat and the black-faced rock wallaby,
it is witness to them being chopped up into dirt by transnational co-oporations,
economical compost for big crop growers and animal harvesters,
one fox is blamed for the extinction of a nation's wilderness, yet it will soon join them as nil,
as we turn everything into meat, the meat for us to eat and shit out,
it comes red with blood from ripped haemorrhoids, soon we are busily shitting out foxes,
we bring in our buckets to the government offices, for the payment of a bounty,
when proof of death is provided, the more elusive variety are poisoned with 1080,
poisoning campaigns are carried out by the politically correct, the greenie,
biological control combined with conventional control, animal murder is conventional,
for vulpes vulpes, slim red dogs, with soft white bibs, a long way and time from europe,
one half-grown cub was curled up in the middle of the road mid-morning,
an unsealed back road that no car had driven along for at least that day,
there is something about a pristine road that no-one has driven along,
that warm red dust that hasn't been disturbed, that an australian red fox can curl up on |
