Page 8 of Wings Above the Mallee

‘Luck is on the fox’s side, I’d say,’ Heath responded with what seemed a grim effort at humour.

‘Fox? That was the screaming?’ Amelia said.

‘Depends what you heard,’ Sean said, when it became clear Heath had no intention of acknowledging her question. ‘There’s a vixen out there now calling to her cubs. But before that, she took a couple of rabbits, and they let out a hell of a squeal.’

Amelia nodded, irritated with herself for the relief the prosaic explanation provided. ‘I heard all of that. And then someone coughing. You, I guess?’ She tried to force Heath to join the conversation. Not that she had any more interest in chatting than he did, but because she appreciated a challenge. Tell her she couldn’t have something, and she’d find a way to make it happen. Anything, except that which she wanted most in the world. ‘Though it sounded like you were moving around really quickly in there,’ she continued, deliberately interrupting her own train of thought.

Again, it was Sean who replied in the face of Heath’s brooding silence. ‘Foxes move around, letting out a bark to test whether there are dogs nearby. If a dog arcs up, the fox will move on. Clever little things.’ His tone held begrudging admiration. ‘But does this mean I have to reassess my guess that you’re country? Heath, Amelia,’ he added belatedly, waving a hand between them.

Heath favoured her with a nod.

She folded her arms across her chest. ‘No, you got the country bit right. But we have more dingoes than foxes where I’m from.’

‘That far north?’ Sean’s tone held a concerning amount of interest and Amelia knew immediately that she’d have to tread carefully. He gestured toward the farmhouse, invisible over the crest of the hill. Only moments ago the sun had been sinking in that direction, but now clouds purpled the sky like gentle bruises. ‘Come on down to the house; we’ll get eaten alive by mozzies out here. You should have seen them the past summer. Big as dragonflies.’

Amelia caught Heath’s sudden stiffening, although she was careful not to look at his glowering countenance. ‘No, that’s okay. I’ll just tuck up the Jabby and wait for Taylor to arrive,’ she said.

‘Taylor? That’s your doctor, Dad?’ Heath said.

‘She’s meeting me here to give me a ride back to town.’ Amelia responded as though his rudeness had gone unnoticed. If he was intent on being a surly bugger, she was happy to irritate him.

‘We’ll help with the plane,’ Sean said. ‘Then you come on down to the house and have a drink.’

‘A drink?’ Heath barked.

Positively verbose now, Amelia thought snidely, though his words seemed to hold a rebuke.

‘A cuppa,’ his father said firmly. ‘Looks like you could do with one. And there’s no point Amelia waiting for the doc out here. She could be hours.’

God, Amelia hoped he was wrong.

By the time they’d wheeled away the Jabiru—Heath lending a begrudgingly silent hand—the last of the sunlight had bled from the land, leaving it barely light enough for them to pick their way across paddocks that alternated between fallow fields stubbled with the remnants of last year’s crop and acres of sandy, furrowed trenches waiting on the rains before they could be seeded.

As they reached the rocky ridge that cut a dragon’s spine across the property, a flock of sheep ambled diagonally across their path, following a well-worn, narrow trail to the stock trough.

‘Oh, they’re goats, not sheep?’ Amelia said as she got a better look at the sleek black-and-white animals.

‘I’m not much of a farmer but, no, they’re sheep right enough,’ Sean replied after the momentary pause that she suspected was his invitation for his son to join the conversation. ‘Dorpers. They have hair like goats, as well as some low-grade wool.’

‘And cute tails.’ Amelia grinned as one of the sheep jumped sideways, all four legs stiff, then frisked the long tail that hung to its hocks.

Heath paused, leaning one hand on top of a rounded granite boulder. Amelia wasn’t certain if he was giving the sheep time to wander past rather than upset them or if he was favouring his bad leg. While they were putting away the Jabiru, she’d noticed that he walked with a limp and grim determination, but whether they were linked she couldn’t say.

‘Even with lambs about, it seems a shame to shoot the foxes,’ she said, determined to force him to converse.

‘Does,’ Sean agreed before Heath had a chance to respond. Not that he seemed inclined to. ‘But the lambs aside, the foxes take out about three hundred million native animals a year.’

‘They also clean up rabbits, which are introduced. Domestic cats are far more of an issue than foxes.’

Heath’s sudden input surprised Amelia. ‘Surely cats aren’t as widespread as foxes? I mean, they’d be a backyard kind of deal?’

‘Unfortunately not. I was on the Trust for Nature board in our previous town. The figures we had were that a feral cat will normally have a range of around ten hectares, but they’ve been recorded covering three hundred.’

She’d have to look up that organisation. While she was fully in favour of animal rescue and conservation, her experience had been that members of some organisations were either overly militant, lacking in commonsense, or more invested in using social media to paint themselves as saviours than they were in getting down and dirty and actually caring for the critters. ‘But that means there’d only be one cat in a vast amount of land. So their impact would be minimal.’

Heath pushed himself off the boulder and Amelia caught the wince as his left leg took his weight. ‘Their range enhances their opportunity to breed. The cat and fox population are basically identical, with one animal every four kilometres squared if you include both domestic and feral cats. Those cats kill around two billion mammals, birds and reptiles a year. Foxes account for less than six hundred million.’

‘Still, hardly a nominal number.’ She felt a little like she’d been chastised for her ignorance. ‘In any case, we’re basically arguing the same point: foxes get a tough rap.’

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