Victoria Brown Poet

On the death of family pets:

Farm kids are brought up with death from a very early age. They see sheep die out in the paddock from fly strike. They see casualties at lambing and cancerous ewes that need to be put down. On one occasion, as we checked the lambing paddock, our children watched as an eagle suddenly swooped down out of the sky and carried off a weakened lamb from right under its mother’s nose. The ewes cries of protest were pitiful to hear and we could do nothing but watch. We couldn’t do a thing.

Then there’s off the farm death in the form of roadside carnage passed on the weekly trip into town.

We had two types of ‘dead’ as our kids were growing up. There was ‘Dead’…..and there was ‘Flat Dead’, depending on how many times a vehicle had run over the carcass on the road. The kids didn’t express much of an interest or emotion in the dead animal at all. It was just a fact of life. They were very complacent about the whole thing, and usually very together when it came to the death of family pets.

I particularly remember a phone call we made to the children while we were away sailing in Ireland one summer. They were being looked after on the farm while we were away, and we rang every couple of days for a catch up on their news. This particular morning we managed to get hold of eight year old Will first.

“G’day Will. It’s Mum. How are things on the farm?”

“Yeah, good thanks, Mum. But I think the rabbit’s dead.”

“What do you mean you think the rabbit’s dead?”

“Well we found the head in the carport.”

He was quite matter of fact about it, but this is hardly surprising. We’re talking about a child who, having buried his pet guinea pig a few years earlier kept discovering the carcass as the family dog exhumed it on a daily basis. It became a bit of a game for the family. Each morning after breakfast it would be a case of ‘find the carcass’. A good nose was essential of course. It would turn up under hydrangeas, on the verandah or in the vegie patch. After six days it resembled a very small toupee, but mercifully as the decaying smell diminished, so did the dog’s urge to exhume it. Eventually Brownie did get to rest in peace….or was that ‘pieces’……?

We had a pet kangaroo for a few months. We had found her on the roadside still in her mother’s pouch after the poor thing, dazzled by the car’s headlight’s, had leapt straight in front of our oncoming vehicle. She was doing so well and we loved her dearly, but one day she was inadvertently run over by a reversing vehicle. The mortified driver didn’t realise that Missy was directly behind him. We decided to bury her with the other pets in the orchard. It was in the middle of harvest so we were pushed for time, an undertaker and a decent service. The husband rushed in for lunch and a swift burial, and we all clustered around as he speedily (“got-to-get-back-on-the-header”) dug a hole. The only problem was that in his haste he didn’t realise he was digging over the burial site of one of the guinea pigs. There was a strangled “Oh…” as the digging ceased. “I seem to have dug up someone else” he said. He moved three feet to the right and the burial resumed. The children didn’t miss a beat and just shifted all their flowers to the new site.

I don’t mean to be flippant, but death is such a part of life here, though not every pet death has a black humour story to accompany it. Three years ago we lost our beautiful black pony, Zipper Mouse. It was a cloudless, clear blue skied December morning after a storm the night before. One of many that cross our farm during the summer months. We were about to leave for Tiffany’s Year 12 graduation dinner in Perth. Zipper was Tiffany’s beloved first and only pony. We received a call on the two-way as we were about to pull out of the farm.

“You’d better get back here and over to the goose paddock,” said our workman, Kris, “and you’d better bring a gun, Tom.”

I knew it was one of the horses immediately. I wondered which one of the three it might be, the relatively new chestnut mare, the old buckskin mare or the much loved high spirited black pony, Zipper Mouse. The last pony my mother had broken in before she died. The first pony the children had ever sat on.

To my horror it was Zipper, fatally struck down in the paddock by lightning the night before. A freak accident. She lay so still that I knew she was, mercifully, passed the gun. She was quite stiff and cold. A small trickle of blood oozed from her nose. The only sign of the lightning strike was a section of her mane that was frizzled as if caught on a gas burner. Death would have been instantaneous.

She had been a fiery pony in life, difficult to break in, but an amazing jumper and performer when you had won her confidence and trust. Her bond with Tiffany was very strong. High-couraged and sometimes unpredictable, she had lightning speed in life, and had certainly made her exit from this world with a bang. That was the nearest we could get to any humour to alleviate the sadness of losing this furry friend. It took us until last weekend to go through her rugs and ribbons and pony gear that had been stored for the last three years in the tack room. We made a pile of her things to sell or give away. They sit on the verandah as I write.

Some family pets leave a foot print indelibly etched on your heart. Zipper was one of those. We miss her so much.