Quoll Troubles

Our little brood is down to 12.

4am two nights ago Elsie and I were awoken to a noisy scuffle in the chook pen. Elsie had been up and heard something frightening, so came and woke me up to check it out. She thought it may have been one of her precious pussy cats (but I knew they were asleep on Tildy's bed). So out we go in our sleepwear, bare footed, into the misty night armed only with a small torchlight. I was nearly too afraid to look into the cage for fear of what I might have seen. Finally, I summoned the courage to look. Feathers everywhere. Chooks running around madly, and one sounding like it was still being strangled. We assumed it was a quoll, even though we had not seen it at that point.

As I shone the torch down into the cage a face jumped up at me! Got the shock of my life. A quoll stared back at me as if he was annoyed that I'd interrupted his little banquet. I grabbed up a rather large stick and started beating the pen for all I was worth. The little 'blighter' was still going for my girls and I didn't know how to stop it. So I'm yelling and banging (every sound echoed eerily in our misty valley), telling this 'murderer' what I'd like to do to it.

A plan was formulated. We placed a large branch strategically so that when we poked and frightened it out of the corner in which it had hidden, it would run up the stick and out the trap door. It worked...eventually. As he made his final leap out of the cage I gave an almighty swipe with my very hefty stick and made it clear to him not to show his face around here again.

As can be imagined, the noise woke up the whole household. Everyone was very interested in what was going on. The clock showed 5am, and first light was arriving. As I washed up, Elsie got the fire going, had the kettle boiling and a pot of tea made. We all sat around the fire discussing the incident for some time but gradually, one by one, the children and then even I, slinked back to bed for a little more shut eye.

Josiah was very brave and buried the dead chooks, cleaned out the cage of all feathers, and supplied fresh bedding for them. We all worked on securing the cage and spent a lot of time talking to 'the girls' to let them know how sorry we were for their loss.

A sad day for Wallaby Scrub.