“All the world’s a stage” said Shakespeare and he might well have been talking about the daily drama that takes place on my garden lawn.
Among the players are Scruffy the pademelon, a wallaby known as Billy and a forest raven who goes by the name of Gloria. There’s also a turbo-chook I call Speedy. And this winter the cast of characters was joined by a troupe of grey and black currawongs down from the mountain who dodged being given stage names.
Although some conservationists are critical of feeding wildlife in suburban settings, I argue it has its benefits. Not only does it provide me with a theatre of screams if the sulphur-crested cockatoos also arrive, it gives the local wildlife a safe haven from the dogs and cats that invariably invade their space.
In the wallaby’s case, it keeps them out of harm’s way at a busy time when the street on which I live in the Waterworks Valley is busy with traffic in the early morning, with people going to work or parents taking their children to school. After spending the night either in my garden or along the Sandy Bay Rivulet, which forms the other boundary of my garden, the Bennett’s wallabies and to a lesser degree the pademelons cross the road as the sun rises to go in search of warm spots in which to bed down by day.
Meanwhile, there’s a scramble for the food my wife and I put out, mainly scraps from the evening meal and fruit. And cheese for the birds.
The currawongs might run off with the odd slice of apple, but it is the cheese that leads to theatrics, with Gloria the raven’s formidable bill used as a sword in not-so-mock combats. Scruffy the pademelon felt it once when, seizing a piece of cheese, Gloria bit him on the nose.
It’s unusual, though, for the macropods in the garden to show an interest in cheese or, of course, any food related to animals like fat cut from steaks. Meal time is usually neatly divided in a choice between vegetable and fruit titbits and animal matter.
In the latter, Gloria rules the roost, although in winter the currawongs – the court jesters in Shakesperean fashion – will make a meal of anything.
Although my own theatre can’t compete with Shakespeare’s Globe in London which I visited last year, it’s all very entertaining for those in the cheap seats, in my case eyeing the performance from my second-floor kitchen window. Generally, it can be classed as a comedy of errors when a wallaby picks up a bit of steak, or Gloria’s heavy bill gets entangled in a strand of spaghetti. And it even has a Macbethian villain. In the wings lurks the feared brown goshawk whose appearance silences both cast and audience alike.