Fiction Writing
The Dogs of War
Rajah’s Games continue: she faces her own terror with Lloyd.
Cradling the coffee mug between her palms, she relished its warmth as she walked down the bush track toward the dam. After two inches of rain in two days, she was curious to see how much difference it may have made to the water level. Only a few days ago, she had walked right around the edges of the dam: a most unusual event.
It was the outcome of both a dry winter and the loss of the bore, occasionally used to top up the dam. The bore had run dry; undoubtedly the effect of falling water tables brought about by many more homes tapping into it and three dry winters failing to replenish it.
It would be months before a new one could be sunk and in the meantime, she was very grateful the huge water tank collected the run-off from the shed roof. It would be impossible for her to run out of water — short of having a fire. Every two inches of rain in the rain gauge was half a rung of water in the tank.
Passing by the blackboy grass trees, their spines glinting with raindrops in the early morning sunlight, she glanced up at a tall dead spear of the previous summer.
There had been a magnificent orb weaver there last year: steel grey in colour, her messy web deceptive in its depth and she had decorated her larder with the husks of many beautiful, bright Christmas spiders, carefully arranged in a long row pointing down towards the centre of the web. The spider grew fat and very large.
The words of an almost forgotten poem surfaced in her mind……
Pointed, painted Christmas stars,
flags of white marking off their boundaries.
Red-legged bellies span my early morning walk
with webs to catch my steaming breath.
Gossamer curtains fall in silken folds
to hide tunnel creatures, lurking still and quiet.
Paper-thin crevice dwellers with origami legs
defy me to believe that they are real.
Lloyd, the tabby Persian, had walked with her to the dam and to keep her company, he was not averse to delicately picking his way across the muddy edges. He had already skirted a very large puddle that filled the hollow outside the big shed alongside the track to the dam, calling as he came after her, and she had watched him gingerly tiptoe through some boggy grass where frogs had begun to call at night with the advent of late spring rains.
“Lloyd,” she said, “the last three summers had been wonderful for spiders. The bloody Government stopped funding their dung beetle eradication programme about ten years ago and our spiders have been coming back.”
Indeed, the ubiquitous little Aussie bush fly had begun to reappear along with cheeky little Willy wag tails, their voices like grinding scissors after they barely survived the debacle of DDT poisoning that brought them to the edge of extinction.
“Stupid scientists want to start again, Lloyd. They don’t seem to have any real idea about the food chain. No flies, no food. No food, no spiders. No spiders, no birds. It’s so bloody dumb!” Lloyd replied. He was pretty chatty for a cat and his tone seemed to imply he agreed with her. He also like the idea of more birds!
She loved walking the edges of the dam. The tracks in the mud told their life and death stories: here, a fox had pounced on a bronze wing pigeon as it drank. It had been a quick and easy kill for the fox, and she could imagine it trotting back to its den, head aloft, and the bird’s limp body lolling in its mouth; food for hungry kits.
The long toes of a grey heron left their unmistakable indentations as it had stalked its prey along the water’s edge, where a yabby had cast off one claw in a vain attempt to distract the hunter. Unlike the wriggling tail a gecko will slough off to distract a cat, a discarded yabby claw lies unmoving and is of little interest to a hunting heron.
A splash of white among the exposed sedge grasses caught her eye and close examination proved it to be the skeleton of one of the larger goldfish — fully intact, it had survived the scourge of prowling water birds long enough to die of old age.
As she watched, a white goldfish stirred the shallows, swirling up a mini storm of mud and silt under the branches of a small dead tree that had fallen into the water. Through it swam two very small, very dark goldfish. Almost black. She wondered if this was where the overflow from the road drained into the dam.
She left the top of the dam wall and as she pushed through the bushes to get closer to the water, an unexpected noise in the morning’s silence caught her ear.
Turning, she saw Lloyd had gone to ground, his eyes fixed and his tail twitching. “Lloyd,” she called. “No birding! You will have to get a new collar, bell and bib and try not to lose THAT one!” The cat turned to look at her and slowly blinked.
A tiny snap of a twig brought Rajah to a halt. A rustle of leaves chilled his spine. The slanted eyes didn’t blink as the great beast slowly swung his head to observe Rajah’s presence.
She kept talking as she walked towards him. “Lloyd! We are not here to catch birds! You know that catching birds is not allowed!” Her voice was stern and as she spoke, a small bird fluttered away into the thick shrubbery planted on top of and down the dam wall.
Lloyd rose to his feet and had a long stretch. His pretended indifference was a lie. She knew full well he would have tried to catch the bird, even though it was safe in the depths of the thick and prickly bush. Lloyd’s magnificent coat was part of the protection, because he hated getting prickles in his fur and for a cat that strolled the bush as often as he did, he clearly kept himself out of the thickets.
Having given up on the possibility of a quick play, he followed at her bidding. Indeed, he walked right up to her, stood on his hind legs and stretched his front paws up the front of her heavy, purple dressing gown. He meowed at her. She bent down and stroked his head, curling his long moustache around her fingers. “You are a good boy, Lloyd,” she said. “Yes, I love you, too. I am glad you came with me. Let’s go walking!” and she strode away, swinging the empty coffee cup on her middle finger.
Together, she and the cat wandered towards the back of the dam, leaving the muddy edges and walking up the slope towards the fence. The right hand side of the dam was impassible now, with sprawling, spiky plants making a barrier that not even the cats would try to explore.
She had been glad of that dressing gown as she forced her way to the water’s edge a few minutes earlier, where the bushes were not so thick, to investigate near the small dead tree lying in the water.
Near a couple of small gum trees between the firebreak and the dam, she remembered the huge orb weaver of the year before last; a lucky glint of light off its golden web strung between them had caught her eye as she walked the fence line, and she took several photos to share with her family away overseas. Lucky indeed: when she came back that same afternoon, there was a huge hole in the middle of the web where a bird had taken the spider while still on the wing.
With the housemaker no longer home, she had ventured closer to the shattered web and seen the debris of the Christmas spider cousins arrayed in a messy heap and hanging by a single thread or two.
Many more Christmas spiders had been busily repairing their own webs on the fringes of the tangle, while male orb weavers with their much smaller bodies and palps like little boxing gloves were wandering around the edges of the web in relative safety.
She giggled to herself as she thought about their dating and mating ways: when he would spin a little web package and ejaculate his sperm into it. Then, when the dance was done and he thought it safe to place his seed within his mate, his palps would ejaculate the sperm from the package into her.
She had wondered how many, if any, of the surviving males had danced the dance of death and escaped. This morning, there was no golden web — not yet. But it was still a little early and summer would undoubtedly bring them again.
“Hey, Lloyd,” she said. “Those orb weavers are wankers and practicing non-artificial insemination. I suppose most spiders are, come to think of it. How about that?”
She laughed out loud. “here’s a haiku for you, Lloyd.
Randy frogs moaning ~ punctuating my pond ~ with tiny commas
Even the goldfish are at it, mate! But there’s nothing for you and me. You can’t and I am not allowed to. Well, not until Rajah gets back, at least! Them’s the rules!”
“I love you,” he said softly. “Where were you?” she asked, gently. “I was in country,” he said lovingly in reply. In country.
Those two words told her all she needed to know and far more than she wanted. So, he was still playing Rajah’s game.
They reached the back corner behind the dam and began to walk down the fence line. The firebreak to the other side of the block was inviting; Lloyd was usually up to a good walk around the block and he would talk the whole way. After two days and nights of constant rain, the air was clean and crisp but the fragrance of petrichor had been overcome, drowned in the deluge. “Come on Lloyd,” she called, encouraging him to follow.
The bottom firebreak would often tempt him away into the bush next door and he would last be seen, his plumed tail waving like a great feather, marking his journey through his own landscape.
Suddenly, they heard a wild flutter in the sprawling bushes that grew in a great ramble from the firebreak right down to the back edge of the dam. Nothing could penetrate there. Spiny, thorny, prickly, hard — she wouldn’t even dream of trying to enter them. A flash of green; a yellow ring around the neck; a mess of sodden feathers.
“Lloyd,” she yelled. “No birds!” — even though the chances of Lloyd penetrating that briar patch were slim indeed. Again, the fluttering and the little 28 parrot almost cleared the scramble of leaves and branches, before it fell back again out of sight. It was a fledgling. Too old for the nest; too young to fly; dependent upon its parents to continue to feed it until it could fly on its own.
The rain of the past two days had drenched it and it was struggling to find any respite amongst the thorns and rough leaves in which it was sheltering. Her mind went back to the fledglings she had seen in the past in her own garden. It was always a wonder to her that any bird survived these precarious few days of their lives.
“Lloyd!” The cat hunkered down but was reluctant to try and enter the spiny jungle of leaves. He looked at her and she waved her hand towards the house. “Come on,” she said. “We are going back to the house for another coffee and a hot scone. Come with me, like a good boy.”
He sat bolt upright, ears laid back, eyes huge and his head turned to look behind her. Across the road, a neighbour’s two big watchdogs had come to their fence line, and one began to bark at them. A Rhodesian Ridgeback, he was enough to keep her from even walking on the road when he was in full bay. Never mind that he was two fences and a roadway distant — he scared the living daylights out of her.
He was big and aggressive in his behaviour towards anyone who walked down the road when his owners were away. His partner was smaller and less bossy but now they had spotted Lloyd, they were both barking.
“Come on, Lloyd. Let’s go! I hate those dogs!” she called. The barking got louder. Lloyd froze as she walked towards him. He waited until she was level and then turned and bolted to the top of the dam wall on the other side. He paused to make sure she was behind him.
Her emails were screaming at her — not the least of them being the one forwarded to her by someone she didn’t know. It was from the Department of Immigration, announcing that they were co-operating with authorities in Thailand over reports of an Australian citizen possibly being involved in the deaths of a Swedish industrialist and a tuk tuk driver in Bangkok. The report said it did not appear that the Swede and the Thai national had any direct connection.
“This is a tough time to be a fledgling bird, Lloyd, “ she said. His eyes were fixed on the dogs. The baby parrot forgotten, he was totally focused on keeping the dogs in view until he was sure he was safe and together they ran back to the house with the dogs howling behind them.
“Phew, home safe and sound, Lloyd,” she said. “I’ll bet Rajah will think we are a couple of wimps — running away like that. I bet he wouldn’t have worried about those damn dogs of war!”
She laughed as she scooped the cat up and went inside. She would tell him all about it, tonight.
