“Will get the best possible care at the vet’s,” she said firmly, putting the carrier on the back seat and then securing it before putting a call through to the surgery.
“He’s not looking too bad,”the vet said when she got the koala out of the carrier. The animal made a raucous sound of displeasure. “Some signs of heat distress, but he doesn’t look too far gone.”
That’s what I needed to hear. A sigh came rushing out of me. My hands were shoved in my pockets lest they reveal just how relieved I was.
“We’ll put him on a drip. See if we can get him to perk up,” the vet continued.
“And not release him until after the fires.” If I was all nervous tension, Charlie was laser focus. “Doc, he can’t go out into the forest?—”
“He’ll be released after the bloody heat wave is over,” the vet assured us. “Now, let’s get our patient comfortable…”
“We’re going out again, right?”I asked Charlie as we walked outside. “Charlie?”
She stopped and squinted as she stared at me, then smiled. Just a little thing, but it helped.
“You get it.”
“Get what?” With a sharp shake of my head, I forged on. “That there’s a whole damn forest out there, baking in the hot sun and all those animals…” You didn’t see a lot of wildlife when you drove through the trees, but tracks, chewed leaves and animal scat made clear plenty lived there. “How are they going to survive the next week? Charlie?”
I hadn’t given her a chance to answer, so she climbed into the car, forcing me to do the same.
“The way they have for thousands of years,” she said, turning the engine over. “A lot of kangaroos will cluster around the watering holes, for as long as they remain full, and that can bring the wild dogs.” A glance my way, she looked me up and down, as if gauging if I could cope with this information. “They’re often the biggest threat to our wildlife. Native animals have evolved to deal with the heat.” Peering through the windscreen, she shook her head at the relentless sun. “Though not as hot or as long. But feral dogs? They are a more recent thing, and so the animals don’t have a lot of defences against them.”
“So we need to do something about that, too. I know Aussies don’t have the same gun culture, but surely?—”
“Can’t hunt wild dogs,” she replied, easing the car out onto the road. “They’ve interbred with native dingoes and so they’re protected.”
“Then how…? What…?” Flopping back in my seat, I watched the roads flash by. “So what do we do?”
“Same thing we’ve done thus far,” she said, driving down the road and towards the forest. “Look for injured or stressed animals and bring them in if they’re too far gone to leave.” Her eyes slid my way for just a second. “I can drop you back to the farm. There’s a lot of work that needs doing at the shelter.”
“No.” I straightened up, feeling something go quiet inside me. “If filling up water bowls and finding hurt animals is all we can do, then I’ll be right there with you.”
“Knew you were the right person for the job,” she said with a wink, then flicked on the indicator to alert anyone behind us that we were heading down the dirt track that led into the forest. “Now hold on, because this road is bumpy.”
Hours later, when the moon was high, we walked away from the vet’s for the last time. Several koalas, a dull and listless looking kangaroo joey and a baby possum that had been abandoned had been delivered into the hands of the team for them to care for.
“We should go out again,” I said, eyeing the dark sky.
“Mackenzie…” Charlie replied with a sigh.
“You’ve got spotlights on the car,” I said. “Or I could hold one up and we can do another sweep of the forest.”
“This is the thing about being a wildlife carer,” she said, the car engine idling, but not moving forward. “Australia is a tough country. Tough on people, tough on wildlife, but all you can do is help the animals you can. Right now, that means feeding the critters that depend on us at the rescue.”
“Shit, it’s past feeding time!” I gasped, because our schedule had completely slipped my mind.
“It is, so we need to go and sort that out, then…” She yawned so hard her jaw cracked. “Get ourselves some food. Thank Christ you cooked that big pot of chilli, otherwise it’d be toast for dinner.”
When we arrived back at the farm, Nugget greeted us by bunting his head on the rescue gate.
“I know, I know, you stubborn little prick,” she said as she stomped over, letting him through the gate. Following her inside was a relief of sorts. Here we could control the air moisture; how much water remained in the leaves of the trees. The animals were safe, contained.
But that was not the long term future any of them wanted.
The idea of the rescue was to get the animals strong enough, well enough, to release them back into the wild. I picked up my knife and started chopping, feeling like that was at least a small step towards that goal.
“OK,a long, cold shower and then bed…” Charlie groaned as we staggered inside. The kitchen sink had a pile of neatly washed dishes drying on one side, which told us the guys had grabbed dinner and gone again.
