Mountain Tails by Sharyn Munro

visit from a Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo mother and child. I get groups of these big cockatoos in damp weather, but this time there were just two of them, sitting in the branches of the large stringy-bark uphill from the toilet.
    Set amongst the rocks at the foot of this stringy-bark I keep an upturned triple-decker old ceramic insulator full of water, so thirsty birds there often provide a little entertainment and aid contemplation for toilet-sitters. The toilet deliberately has no door; it is fully open on its eastern face, as little weather comes from that direction, and the morning sun is pleasant on bare knees in winter. Privacy is one of the great benefits of not living in suburbia; there’s no one to peep over my fence.
    These two cockatoos didn’t look much different from each other, dark brownish-black, with lemon cheek patches and tail bands, but Irecognised that forward lean of the body, that whining tone. One of them had to be a young one, and it sounded like he was sawing down the tree without taking a breath.
    I’ve just realised that I keep assuming these demanding young birds are masculine. As I wouldn’t want to be accused of sexism, let’s say it’s just a convenience: ‘it’ sounds too impersonal, and ‘he or she’ is too unwieldy.
    While the baby boom lasts, I greet the oft-given comment of how peaceful it must be up here with a short and bitter laugh. ‘Huh!’ I say, quoll spots passing before my eyes, and outside the juveniles start again, ‘Hah, hah, hah, hah...’
    But once it’s over, the frogs quieten down and the wild-child rearing should be done for the season. One year I was thrilled to spot eight White-headed Pigeons fly up from the rainforest gully and land just outside my gate. I’d seen one or two before, but this was a rare sighting. Through the binoculars, one of them seemed a little greyer than the others’ strong white and iridescent black plumage.
    As I noted the event in my bird book, I heard a noise at the low window. I turned. There on the sill was the greyish pigeon. A young one? I checked the yard. All the grown-ups were gone, so I assumed the word about the playpen had spread to the rainforest. Since I never saw the young pigeon again, it must have been only occasional care they were needing for that day.
    Next year it was back to the regular enrolments, which are more than enough. I’d close the books except that you never know what unusual new mum might venture in. She could be an excitingly rare animal or bird—and her youngster just might be a quiet one.

A BATHFUL OF TADPOLES

    I don’t have a bath for myself to use, as I still don’t have a bathroom. I do yearn for the relaxing luxury of one, and take advantage of friends’ tubs if I happen to have time when I visit, soaking and steaming in perfumed bubbly bliss, with a book and a glass of wine within reach. Unfortunately the indulgent pleasure is marred these days by my glasses fogging up, as I can’t read without them.
    The only bathtub around here is outdoors, cold water only: it’s the ’50s-style toothpaste-green tub that serves as the horse trough in my yard. One day in late summer, after rain had caused it to overflow, I noticed it was full of tiny brown tadpoles. The water level is usually well below the rim, but some misguided frogs must have taken it fora pond in its brief overabundance, and made a joint deposit for the future.
    Tadpoles conjure up primary school memories of jarfuls of the poor little prisoners on bread and water, as we watched legs grow and tails diminish. I was mostly fascinated by their transparency, by being able to see inside to what we called their stomachs but I suppose were intestines. And of course the end result was interesting too, in those squiggles of ‘waste matter’ that the nuns wouldn’t let us call ‘poo’.
    I don’t know what the tadpoles in my tub were eating