Manna for the cassowaries - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 35: Surviving
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Rod Owens
IT'S DECEMBER NOW and ten months have elapsed since my last fruit delivery to Adrian. I am revisiting for another information-gathering mission but this time I carry no fruit. Today, when I drove down the highway, few signs of Yasi's furious attack remain. Trees have regained their apparel but the tips of their trunks rise from the greenery like an army of Zulu assegais. Road signs have been straightened and Mission Beach's garish souvenir shops have re-opened, replenished with a motley collection of straw hats. The tourists, however, are few and just two backpacker pilgrims stand waiting for the Greyhound buses. Pulling into Adrian's driveway, the Cassowary Coast is now facing the advent of a new cyclone season.
‘Hi Rod, it's nice to see you again. Come in,' Adrian says.
‘Wow, what a surprise!' I take in the scaffold of luxuriant green foliage, hastily constructed by nature, sheltering his home from the tropical sun. The forest is still in recovery mode and fractured limbs laced together by industrious creepers litter the forest floor. Entering the passageway, guarded by its brigade of spider sentries, we pass the dining room.
‘Follow me,' Adrian says.
Walking past the kitchen, we come to a space before the bedrooms begin. I screech to a halt. Adrian grins. An imperious cassowary is fossicking in a mound of fecund compost on the forest floor, beneath the kitchen window. Two metres tall, it's clothed in a cape of oily-black plumage. A rainbow of colours flickers from it. Its brilliant blue and purple head and the fleshy red wattles hanging from its neck are stunning. We are a mere two metres away. Ignoring our presence it continues to forage for fodder with its beak. I feel like I have wandered into a scene from Jurassic Park.
‘Don't maintain eye contact if she looks at you. They become very threatened if you do.'
‘Yes, I know,' I reply.
‘Oh, how?' Adrian asks.
‘Once, in the rainforests behind Cairns' Botanical Gardens, I almost bumped into one. I stepped past a tree and we met face-to-face. Simultaneously, the cassowary and I looked away. Fighting the urge to flee, I walked off along the path as if nothing had happened, like a dance floor rejection. I was so scared, I didn't have the courage to look back and when I did it had vanished.' A moment later I asked, ‘Are we safe here?' aware that cassowaries can kill. Adrian ignores my impoverished question.
‘They are amazing birds. See the casque on her head?' I look intently, not sure yet what a casque is. ‘It acts like an air conditioner. Look at the iridescence of the red on her neck - that indicates she's in good condition.'
‘How do you know she's female?'
‘Tail shape.' I make a mental note to Google for more information.
Cassowaries have a reputation as shy birds but this one isn't acting to type. Reaching basketballer heights, their wedged-shaped bodies allow them to race through the jungle. Bouncing off saw-edged leaves they escape the clutches of the notorious wait-a-while vine, with its barbed wire spikes, with consummate ease. Equipped with a three-toed foot, the middle toe sports a dagger-like claw one hundred and twenty-five millimetres long. This fearsome weapon is known to have kicked humans and killed would-be predators.
‘Next door's dogs live in mortal fear of her. If only cassowaries could perfect their cycling they'd be a shoo-in for the triathlon,' Adrian laughs. ‘They can reach speeds of up to fifty kilometres an hour through the forests, jump up to one and a half metres and are excellent swimmers in both rivers and seas.' In the adjacent rainforest a kookaburra laughs, drowning out the gurgling sounds of the flooding creek, hidden from sight by a veil of green creepers.
‘Of course we are safe - they can't climb stairs. The only reported killing was in 1926 when a teenager stole an egg. The bird allegedly kicked him in the neck. Recently Mama Cass here,' - he points, I smile at the sobriquet - ‘killed the banana farmer's Rottweiler. She stomped it to death and then opened its stomach and ate the contents. They love road kill.'
Mentally I recoil in shock, unsure if I want to be this close. Mama Cass' neck darts into the compost, daintily swallowing a sliver of paw paw.
‘DERM, according to their web site, set up one hundred and five feeding stations after Yasi but in reality it was more like twenty-six.' Adrian fills me in on what has occurred since my last visit.
‘They only have two staff so one hundred and five was an improbable number. We were feeding thirty-eight birds immediately after Yasi but it's down to twenty now. Woolies at Wongaling Beach supply some seventy kilograms of unwanted fruit weekly and we disperse it to the remaining twenty-six stations.'
‘Where have the others gone?' I ask. Sitting now in my allotted chair, I am in thrall as Adrian recounts the details of the rescue mission. Mama Cass has moved around the house and positioned herself as the passive observer. My senses are on hyper-alert. She is not two metres away, reclining in a bower of newborn groundcover listening intently.
‘Not sure - just wandered off. They are very solitary birds and enjoy their own company. Some, mostly chicks, have died. If we can keep the sub-juveniles alive, however, for the next six months many of them will survive.'
The phone rings. Adrian fields the call unsuccessfully. Telstra is due to repair Adrian's water-damaged line so he rushes inside to find another phone. Sitting in the presence of Mama Cass feels like an audience with royalty. There is a gentle patter of raindrops on the iron roof. The patter escalates, becoming a furious avalanche; sheets of water cascade off the roof like a giant waterfall. The rainforest's cicada orchestra is drowned out in the tumult. Mama Cass sits unmoved. The rain bounces like river pebbles off her satiny plumage.
Adrian returns, sighing in frustration. I ask, ‘How much do they eat?'
‘They need five kilos a day and Mama Cass gets two from me and then she has to go into the forest to find more. You know it's illegal to feed them? The forest is still only producing twenty per cent so it will be next autumn before it returns to full production.' Mama Cass, her beak wide open, stares pensively into the forest.
‘What fruits do they like best?'
‘They love grapes particularly but anything really. The only thing they're not keen on is citrus but they'll eat that at a pinch. The Botanical Gardens in Cairns were sending down rainforest fruits but then the courier started charging exorbitant rates and we had to cancel.'
‘So your symbiotic relationship with Mama Cass is determined by the amount of food you put in the compost every day?' I grin.
‘Absolutely, but it's important that she goes into the forest and forages. She has been here three months now. There was a male here for a while, after Yasi. He disappeared though after the vet tranquilised him to fix an infection on his foot. Sadly he was found dead a few days later at Garners Beach, just south of here. The vet conducted an autopsy but it revealed nothing.' Sadness wells up in Adrian's eyes. ‘Before Larry we had about two hundred birds. Then, from either hunger or infanticide about seventy died.'
‘So, how many died after Yasi?' I ask.
‘Probably the same number as with Larry, mostly chicks. When food is scarce they practice infanticide, spearing their young through the oesophagus. We know for certain we lost at least three like that after Yasi,' Adrian reports.
‘So there are only about seventy left now?'
‘Yes, but that is probably the optimum number for a sustainable population. According to a recent PhD study, there was only that number a hundred years ago. Then with the arrival of banana farms they acquired a reliable food source and their population increased significantly.'
‘So, if a population of seventy can be maintained, the species can survive?' I ask.
‘We are ever hopeful. It would be nice though to have a captive breeding program like they have in Wau in Papua New Guinea. They've been running it for years and they now have a wealth of empirical knowledge,' Adrian says.
Sadly, once again the time comes to leave. Mama Cass continues to stare into the forest and does not rise to bid me farewell. Climbing into my car I thank Adrian for his help and enthusiasm. His phone rings. The call is from a friend in Nicaragua.
Meandering back over the hill, I see that the banana palms have grown new hands. The pendulous fruit is protected from the diminishing number of cassowaries by arctic-blue plastic bags. It is an incongruous image, set against the backdrop of a turquoise ocean.
Driving home, the images of Mama Cass are pellucid and resilient. I ponder on how the cassowaries will cope if another cyclone of Yasi's magnitude appears and what Mama Cass thinks of Adrian's efforts to save her species. When the first cyclone of the season approaches I shall monitor the Bureau of Meteorological website with unease.