Night Vision by Ella West

Author:Ella West
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781743435489
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2014-03-10T04:00:00+00:00

Eleven

I can still feel the warmth of the sun on the trunk of the pine tree, even though it is dark. When I told Dad I was going for a walk, he was struggling with the farm accounts. He won’t stay up waiting for me. He thinks Mum is overly protective, that she shouldn’t worry so much, that I’m tougher than she thinks. And he needs his sleep.

The night-vision goggles are slipping on my head so I have to stop and adjust the straps. There had been a lot in the newspaper article yesterday about them as well – how I go out at night into the forestry, about how the goggles work, about how they give me some freedom to be a kid, about what I get to see in the dark like the morepork I think of as my own, and the possums.

I wander over towards the forestry road where Geoff Harris left the river stone. There is nothing new. No sign of anyone. Just the two possums playing. I think they have made the area their home.

Possums have territories, just like most wild animals, and most people. The young males sometimes travel long distances, usually looking for a mate, but the females and family groups stay put. And they share nests, which isn’t a good thing because that’s how they give TB to each other. The science guys call it a ‘hot spot’. A single male possum with TB will come and live in a new area and sleep in different nests and give it to all the other possums. But what’s really amazing is how the TB is spread from the possums to the cattle on farms. The scientists used to think a possum with TB would cough its germs on the grass, then a cow would eat that grass and then get the disease. That was until they set up cameras in known hot spots. Possums are nocturnal, but when they are sick with TB they get disorientated and go out during the day. Cows are curious and want to know what the furry brown thing is in their paddock. They go and lick the sick possum, even throw it up into the air. They play with it, and that’s how they get the disease. Sheep aren’t curious. They just eat grass and know better. That’s why sheep don’t get TB. And everyone thinks sheep are dumb.

Interesting though, that people have to see things to believe them, to understand them. Don’t draw conclusions until you have all the evidence I suppose.

I hope the two possums haven’t got TB. They don’t look sick.

In a few weeks I will put another ten thousand dollars in my parents’ mailbox.

Maybe, with the money, my parents might do up the house a little, after they get the farm’s mortgage down enough so the bank manager is happy. I haven’t been in other people’s houses; I haven’t been in anyone’s house except our own to compare, but I know ours is old.

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