Grey Ironbark

11. Animal crackers 
 (for Henry, Eliza and Oliver)

While we supped the soup, my mind was wandering as usual,

only fragments of conversation catching my attention.

I heard her say ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ as I 

looked through the window to see two honeyeaters in the grevillea.

I was about to remark on the coincidence

 

when ‘pulled a rabbit out of a hat’ slid into my consciousness

and I saw a bunny pop out of a hole and begin to nibble at the lawn.

I was admiring this pleasant faux pastoral scene when I heard 

‘cunning as a fox’ and saw with dismay 

a fox slink out of the pines and bound towards the rabbit—


which luckily was just able to fold his ears and slip back into his hole 

in time. After my heart stopped thumping, I tried again to focus 

on the flow of words, caught ‘elephant in the room’ and smiled to myself, 

for there wasn’t room to swing a cat in our dining room.

But then the whole house began to shake. I raced to the front door


and before me was an elephant rubbing his rump 

against the entry columns while thumping the door with his trunk.

‘Gracious me’, I said, and ran for the elephant gun, then stopped suddenly,

asking myself, why would anyone need an elephant gun in Sydney?

Just then, the shaking ceased, and I saw


the would-be-intruder bumbling down the track from the house.

‘Let’s stop all this talk about animals’, I cried. ‘It’s driving me crackers’.

‘Ah, the getting of wisdom’, hooted 

the stuffed owl on the table as he stared at the mechanical

globe of the world, rotating in slow motion before his wide open eyes.


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