Mountain Tails by Sharyn Munro Page B

kilter with the way of the world, like being told lollies are good for you.
    For the amount of tabbouli I make at a time, the food processor is the most efficient method. The cracked wheat, or burghul, was soaking; thespring onions and the herbs from my garden were washed and nearly dry, waiting in the colander; the lemons were picked and squeezed; the bottle of golden-green olive oil standing by. There was such a lot that I’d have to process the herbs in batches so they didn’t turn into a paste. I was ready to go.
    The pusher part of my machine is hollow, quite deep, and beige, not transparent like the container itself. I don’t know why I looked into the pusher as I removed it to put the parsley in the chute; I don’t think I usually did. But sitting cramped down there at the bottom of the pusher was what looked like a large cream-coloured blob, staring up at me with two big dark eyes.
    Not being able to see clearly without my glasses on, I squealed anyway. Whatever it was shouldn’t be in this indoor thing, this clean, kitchen-type non-animal-habitat plastic thing! Rushing it out to the brighter light of the verandah, I tipped it up. Nothing emerged. I tapped the base firmly and out plopped the occupant—a frog. A big one for here, sort of putty-coloured, with two fine black stripes running backwards from its eyes.
    â€˜How the hell did you get in there?’ I asked. ‘And why?’
    No doubt still in shock, the frog said nothing, took a few plops to the verandah edge and disappeared into the greenery.
    From the photos and known distributions in my frog book, I think it may have been a Whistling Tree Frog. The description said that the call is ‘a loud whirring’.
    The fanciful idea occurred to me that my frog was a female who’d heard my food processor whirring and, thinking it was a very virile male, hopped in through the open window one day. She’d waited until all was quiet again, sought her ideal mate in the now-dormant food processor—and got stuck in the dead-end pusher, unable to launch herself back up and out. As I didn’t know which day she might have come in, I didn’t know how long she’d been languishing in there.
    Having been so seriously disappointed in love this time, I wondered if it was her first ‘crush’, and if, after that romantic adventure, she would be satisfied with a male of lesser whirring ability to fertilise her next batch of jellied eggs?
    Was it love or lust? Aren’t they both subject to a blind rush, beyond rationality, objectivity, judgement, and often, self-control?
    I’m told that the image of the object of first love, lost but forever enhanced and romanticised by time and wishful thinking, can spoil the chances of any subsequent suitor meeting such unrealistic standards. So for her sake I hope it was lust, which has different, less fanciful mechanisms for rekindling itself, driven by biological urges—like the need to reproduce the next generation of tadpoles.

POOLSIDE LOUNGERS

    Apart from being frog and snake heaven, my little dam is a drinking hole for many who don’t even get their feet wet. It’s not far from my house, so I see a variety of animals there daily. The larger marsupials prop at the edge, lean forward and steadily siphon up water for a very long time, only glancing about occasionally. They rarely just fill up and leave, for they seem to like lolling on the grassy bank, sunning themselves by the pool.
    While I have many Eastern Red-necked Wallabies, I share my place with small groups of other hoppy marsupials, or macropods, and it is at this dam where I most often see them.
    Perhaps I should explain that all Australia’s main native hoppy creatures, like wallabies, wallaroos, kangaroos, potoroos, bettongs,pademelons, quokkas, etc., are macropods (macro = large, pod = foot) that is, they all have big hind feet, for hopping. These macropods are all vegetarians, or herbivores,