The antechinus wars, Part II
JUST before the end of last year I reported on the antechinus wars, part I.
It’s now my solemn – and sad – duty to report the antechinus wars, part II.
An antechinus is like a mouse with a pouch. A uniquely Australian creature with teeth like a cat’s and back feet like Charlie Chaplin’s. This might be the reason they have an identity crisis where I live. They think they’re human.
That is, they like to live like humans. They want to sleep in my bed and stroll across the carpet while I’m reading the paper.
I’m a human and I draw the line at pooing on the towels in the wardrobe, but it seems to amuse them.
But they are dissimilar to humans in this respect: they don’t eat human food; which means you can’t trap them as you would mice, with peanut butter or chocolate in a trap. That’s just as well because, being a native Australian animal, they’re protected in Australia, which means you aren’t allowed to kill them. Strictly speaking you’re not even allowed to move them.
And I didn’t! As I reported at the end of last year, I have a grudging admiration for them, which is why, when I finally came to face to face with them, I wished them a Merry Christmas and closed the cupboard door.
Not any more. I thought we could live in peace and goodwill (it was Christmas then) but when something runs up your wife’s leg (even if it’s nothing more lecherous than a mouse with a pouch) enough is enough.
It ran up her leg, her waist, her chest and sat on her shoulder. On Monday. It then leapt an amazing distance, aided, I think, by the hellish blast of my wife’s scream, which could have sent North Korea’s missile to Mars.
I was there. In the hallway, just behind her. I watched it go. It ran into a bag and I knew we had it trapped. We are not unintelligent, my wife and I. Our IQ used to be above average, but we were younger then. Even so, we have brains about the size of a tennis ball and an antechinus probably has a brain you have to search for with a microscope.
I grabbed the bag, and closed the opening. “Go and open the front door,” I said to my wife. “It’s finally outstayed its welcome.”
She did, and she and I took the bag outside and emptied it on to the veranda.
It ran back up my wife’s leg (maybe it was a male – they’re known to be extremely randy) and she screamed again; then it ran back indoors.
And again, I watched it go – back into the cupboard in the hallway.
Enough is enough. I found a plastic container and together we systematically emptied every shelf, and every bag on every shelf, we unfolded every sheet and every towel on every shelf. We closed all the doors and we built a barricade of boards so that, even if it escaped the plastic container, it couldn’t escape the hall. We do not have brains the size of tennis balls for nothing.
My wife was whimpering by this time, and my pulse was racing. I was panting. It shot past me. Slam! Missed it with the container. It ran up my wife. Scream! Leapt off her shoulder, over the barricade. I leapt after it and blocked its escape. It ran back up the barricade and over it, to my wife’s side. I don’t know how the antechinus felt about the screaming, but it was giving me the willies.
It ran from empty shelf to empty shelf, out of the cupboard, down the hallway, halfway up the walls; down again. Slam! Slam! Slam! Slam-slam-slam! Scream, scream.
I got it. It triple-bluffed and I was so slow that I was still waiting for it in the corner, and it was under my plastic container, which I sat on.
I was shaking; I was gasping. My wife was rocking back and forth and whimpering. It was very quiet and the evidence of war was everywhere. Clothes and towels and clean sheets (apart from the antechinus poo) scattered everywhere. There was blood on a door frame where I ricocheted off it in the chase.
I don’t believe our ancestors brought down woolly mammoth with nothing more than cudgels and rudimentary spears. It can’t be done. Have you seen the size of a woolly mammoth! And their brains must’ve been spectacular. True, they were unlikely to run up your wife’s leg, but I’m sure they were fearsome in their own way.
We had won a victory. But at what cost? I had shortened my life by as much as 10 years, and my wife’s tennis ball-sized brain was in a state of deep trauma.
The antechinus, when we took it outside and let it go, stopped to say goodbye before it scuttled into next door’s garden, heading for front door.
At 3am the following morning I was woken by my wife, who could hear something skipping across the room. I turned the light on.
“It’s over here,” I said. “But it’s not the same one. It’s smaller; a lot smaller.”
“It’s smaller,” she repeated. “But it’s not over there. It’s over here…”
Maybe the mother wanted to move on. Maybe she felt she’d outgrown her children and it was time to change houses.
I feel the same way.