All Creatures Great and Small
When I was a young minister freshly graduated and ordained, my first ministry in the 1960’s, after seven years of the slums of Newmarket, was in a small country church, in the small country town of Ararat, gateway to the Wimmera in Western Victoria. There I learnt the difficult art faced by all city bred ministers, of becoming a country parson.
One of the most delightful aspects of ministering the country is that very soon you become involved with the creatures of the farms and the community about. It seems strange but if you have one or two small children your home seems to attract creatures. As we settled into the cold wooden old manse at the Church of Christ in Ararat it wasn’t long before we discovered way down through the long grass in the backyard there was a chook shed. Soon I had the netting fence repaired and some roosters and chickens in residence. Then came some ducks hatched in a box in front of a radiator cheeping away all night as we struggled to keep them alive and warm through our first cold winter. Then a tortoise literally wandered into our house wandering up the centre of our driveway and became a regular member of the family.
Some yabbies came home from the dam in a tin and went into a pond in the backyard where they survived in spite of children’s delight in taking them out of the water to look at their big claws. One white mouse would have been enough, but we made the mistake of getting two and soon there were 65.
We had a white rabbit who became my daughter’s dearest pet and we have many photographs of the little girl with the long curls and the ruddy cheeks on a cold winter’s morning walking across the frost covered grass with three jumpers on holding onto a pet rabbit with her arms wrapped around the poor rabbit’s stomach with most of the rabbit hanging down underneath her arms looking most uncomfortable. A dog and a cat were added and over the years stumpy tailed lizards, blue tongued lizards, a whole range of native birds, budgerigars, pheasants, a snake and many other two and four footed creatures including just about everything imaginable with fur and feathers came into our house.
But in those early days in the small country town of Ararat there are four creatures that come to my mind.
The first was Laurie the Lamb. I was out driving with Geoff Judd around his farm one day at lambing time. Morning and afternoon he travelled around the several thousand sheep looking for every ewe as it was in advanced stages of pregnancy and helping deliver lambs, and perhaps a sustaining a ewe that was half way through birth, bringing the lamb into the world with steady pressure and then wiping the ewe’s nose into the wet wool of the lamb so that the bonding took place between mother and offspring. Sometimes there were twins born and occasionally the weakest would be lost from its mother and would need to be settled in with a foster mother who had perhaps lost its own lamb but was still in milk. Geoff seemed to have a wonderful way of caring for the orphan lambs and the ewes in trouble.
One day while we were driving very slowly around the paddocks Geoff checking every ewe, I saw him frowning and staring at a far corner of the paddock. I looked but could not see anything near the clump of trees. All the sheep were down this end of the paddock and there were obviously none up that end. But Geoff saw something that troubled him. On the ground underneath the trees there were a large number of black specks which he recognised immediately as crows. Geoff knew that there was a sheep or a lamb in trouble up there behind the fallen log. We drove straight to the place and the crows hardly moved out of the way of the car. They were not leaving their dinner for any farmer.
Geoff jumped out angry because he knew what crows could do. He hoped he wasn’t too late. We moved around to the other side of the fallen tree and there was the centre of the crows delight, a ewe had slept on the ground and when she went to get up had rolled into a slight depression caused by the feet of many sheep walking around behind the tree log. That slight depression was enough for the ewe to be caught on its back. She was in the last stages of pregnancy, heavily swollen with twins in her womb. She had been there since yesterday, lying on her back unable to get up. The crows immediately sensed a helpless sheep and had moved in. They had picked out the sheep’s eyes, most of the sheep’s tongue and picked a large hole at her vagina. Sensing the movement inside her hard belly they had picked at the skin until they had opened up her stomach and womb and had been feeding on the unborn lamb.
The ewe was in a terrible plight. There was nothing that could be done to save her. Geoff really hated to lose one of his faithful ewes and was deeply angry with himself that he hadn’t realized that one was missing from the thousand or so in the mob when he did his rounds yesterday afternoon. I said little because I knew Geoff was thinking much. He undid the large blade on his pocket knife which I knew from experience was razor sharp and one of the most useful tools on a farm. With that pocket knife he had skinned rabbits, cut the twine on bales of hay, trimmed the skin from a sheep that he had slaughtered for meat, and know with one swift stroke, slit the throat of the mother ewe to put her out of her misery. The crows had won this battle. Then he slit open the rest of the womb, reached inside and pulled out the remains of the half eaten lamb. Strangely enough its little heart was still beating.
He then put his hand deep inside the cut in the side of the ewe and grasped the twin completely untouched by the crows. He pulled it out, cut the umbilical cord, and tied it in a knot. The little fellow was an orphan, his mother dead before he was born and his twin half eaten alive. I asked Geoff what he would do with the little fellow. “We’ll take him back and see if I can find another ewe that has lost one of her own and who might take it. The trouble is I haven’t had anyone that’s lost a lamb recently and those who have got older lambs won’t take this new born one and those whose milk has dried up won’t take it either. If I can’t find a ewe it will only die before nightfall.”
As we got back in the car and started the rounds around the flock we looked for a ewe that might take the recently born lamb, still covered with blood from the placenta and needing some mother to lick it clean in the act that creates the bond between foster mother and new lamb.
But there were no ewes available. I said to Geoff “Do you think we could bring it up with a bottle?”. Geoff replied “You can try if you like, but it is a lot harder than most people realize. Many city people think they can bring up a lamb easily with a bottle and they usually look at a lamb that is two or three weeks old on a bottle and see them as lots of fun, but when they are only a few hours old it is a very dicey business and very demanding.” Beverley and I fell in love with the little fellow immediately and agreed to take it home and feed it with a baby’s bottle and teat.
That baby lamb was more demanding than any of the four children we have had. Every hour on the hour, day and night, twenty four hours he demanded to be fed. He was a greedy little thing, but after he got the hang of the bottle he took to it as if Beverley was his real mother. As soon as he started to walk he wouldn’t stay put in the warmth of the kitchen, the only warm room in our freezing old house, and would set off after Beverley dropping little round black pellets everywhere he walked. Lambs can be more messy than humans.
We persisted over weeks and Laurie, as we nicknamed the lamb, grew in strength. He became totally attached to us and was more faithful than any dog. It was impossible to move in the yard without him following not just on your heels, but literally on your heels. He would push into the back of your legs and nearly bring you down. He would rub his head and nuzzle against your knees. He was the most affectionate close animal you could imagine. Over the next couple of years Laurie the Lamb grew to be Laurie the Ram and stood tall and wide. When he walked through a gate in our side fence there wasn’t much room between both his sides and the gate posts. He weighed more than 150 pounds. Geoff sheared him a couple of seasons and he gave off a great quantity of wool.
Fortunately we had a big yard both in Ararat and in the city church where we took him. Down in the city church we had a large yard and a side of a church with plenty of acreage for Laurie the Ram to enjoy himself. He kept the backyard beautifully trimmed and would eat anything given to him, fruit, vegetables, a loaf of bread, leftovers from church suppers. Before long he became the much loved pet of all the children in the Sunday School. Before Sunday School they would come round to the back of the church and Laurie would run up to each one. The children in the Sunday School and our own children used to ride Laurie round like a horse holding onto the thick wool at the back of his neck and Laurie would take off at a pace running across the yard with the children hanging on and yelling out in delight. On some occasions Laurie thought he was a buck jumper and would kick his back heels up into the air and the young Sunday School boy would hang on with one hand with everyone cheering round about.
Laurie enjoyed life. He had a game of bucking people from behind and if any of the boys from the Sunday School were standing around looking in another direction he would race up behind them and with a cleverly placed butt of his forehead send them flying. Laurie became a much loved institution in the Cheltenham Church of Christ.
When Christmas came on the beautiful lawns outside the church we got a load of hay bales and created a large stable out of hay bales. Around it we had a fence and inside the stable a manger with the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths. Inside the fence and around the manger we had some real living animals, a donkey, some chooks and a rooster, some ducks and chickens, a tortoise, a couple of white rabbits and, of course, Laurie the Lamb. We floodlit the manger at night and in the week or so before Christmas steams of cars were parked outside the church as little children in dressing gowns gathered on the lawns peering through the fences at the little farmyard scene with the friendly animals.
We left the flood lights on all night and the manger became a stopping place for thousands of cars in that week prior to Christmas. On Christmas Eve, after I had checked the animals before going to bed, a utility pulled up outside the manger, backed up over the footpath and up the church front lawns, two men jumped out and grabbed the huge sheep and threw Laurie into the back of their utility and sped off into the night.
Christmas morning was a broken hearted time for all of us. The tell tale tyre marks in the soft lawn revealed where the utility had come. Someone later reported they saw two men throwing the sheep into the back of the utility. We reported it on Christmas Day to the authorities and on Boxing Day when the papers came out, on the front page was the story of Laurie the Lamb stolen on Christmas Eve from the manger of Christ the King.
Two days later one of the Sunday School girls came riding up to us on her bike in tears. In a paddock down near her house she had found a fresh sheep skin. Laurie the Lamb’s head and skin was lying in the paddock.
That story made the front pages of all the Melbourne papers and that Christmas someone enjoyed roast lamb for weeks on end, but the heartbreak that that thievery caused in the children of our Sunday School was something that will always remain with me.
My second memory about creatures great and small also had to do with Judd’s farm. Geoff Judd said to me, when we were trying raise some money for the building of a new hall out at the back of the Ararat Church of Christ, “Why don’t we come out the farm, catch some rabbits and sell them? On a good night we’ll probably earn a hundred dollars.” The other young fellows who were standing with me at the time were most enthusiastic. There were eight sons, all from the Hurstfield family and they with their slow country way reckoned it would be a good idea and that Geoff could count on them “comin out to the farm”. I agreed to join with them and said to Geoff, “But I don’t have a gun. Will you have a gun for me if we go shooting?” Geoff said, “You won’t need a gun. All you will need is gum boots. It’s been raining and the paddocks are pretty wet so we’ll just chase after them and catch them with our hands.” I looked him in the eye. I might be from the city but I wasn’t that dumb. I looked at him and said “You can’t fool me. I know you don’t catch rabbits with your bare hands. Have you got a gun for me?” Geoff looked back at me without a smile, “I mean it. We chase after them and catch them with our bare hands. Just wear a pair of gum boots.”
Well I couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or not. On Saturday afternoon I headed out to the farm and the Hurstfield boys were already there with half a dozen of their dogs. I didn’t have a pair of gum boots but I had bought the church baptismal waders with me. They were big duck hunting waters that came right up under the armpits with straps that went over the shoulders. I kept them in the boot of the car being a bit too embarrassed to bring them out until I noticed that Geoff and the boys were all dressed in their overalls and gum boots. There wasn’t a gun to be seen. They were going catching rabbits and they were going to run them down by foot and catch them by hand. I got the waders out of the back of the car and pulled them on. We walked over to the flooded bottom paddocks and Geoff explained, “All the warrens are flooded out and the rabbits can hardly run over the flooded paddocks. Oh, they’ll beat you for the first twenty yards or so in a race but the water and the mud tires them out very quickly and from the twenty yard on you’ve got it going your way. All you’re going to need this afternoon is a fair amount of stamina and you’ll run down some rabbits.”
The dogs had a job. They ran round the boundary fences and frightened the rabbits who were mainly sitting in clumps of grass up above the water line. The dogs ran around the perimeter of the paddock forcing the rabbits to run all into towards the centre. As the rabbits came into the centre we took off after them usually one or sometimes two persons chasing each rabbit. It was as Geoff said, for the first twenty five yards the rabbit would speed away from us but the wet spongy ground and the high mud and the puddles of water would soon tire the rabbit whereas we would come bounding up afterwards with giant leaps, splashing mud and water everywhere. I was never more grateful for those high waders. I bounded through the slush with great enthusiasm.
The first time I saw a rabbit caught was when Geoff chased a rabbit for about thirty yards when the rabbit stopped. Geoff bounded up behind it, suddenly took of his hat and dropped it in the mud. The rabbit looked at the hat transfixed. Geoff walked up around it to behind it, bent down and picked it up, wrung its neck and hung it on his belt. Picking up the rather damp hat he walked back to us. I was absolutely amazed. “You have a go at the next one,” he said, “just put the hat on the ground and walk round behind him.”
A rabbit shot past me going at terrific speed. I took off after him splashing through the slush. Sure enough he stopped, puffed. I threw my hat on the ground and walked round him. The rabbit sat transfixed looking at the hat. As the hat didn’t move, neither did the rabbit. I walked up behind him, reached down and picked him up, and with the grasp of the neck and the hind legs quickly dispatched him.
I would never have believed that you could chase rabbits and catch them bare handed if I had not done it myself. By nightfall we had a hundred pair of rabbits and about $150 in the new hall fund.
The third memory I have of some creatures great and small also took place out on Judd’s farm. Geoff was trouble with a plague of foxes. It was lambing time. He need to get rid of some of the foxes. I had had a number of talks with Geoff about foxes. He was opposed to shooting foxes and always felt that foxes were of a benefit to the farmer. It was only city people that came out and blazed away at foxes. As far as he was concerned they kept the mice down living mainly on field mice, and kept the rabbit numbers down enjoying the little kitten rabbits in the burrows. But this season the rabbits were rare because rabbit eradication programme had been very successful that winter. Now the spring lambs were around and the foxes had bred in unusually large numbers and had taken quite a number of newborn lambs. Regretfully Geoff had to reduce the number of foxes on his property. He asked if I would like to come out fox hunting.
I don’t like guns, I am repulsed with the idea of shooting animals for sport, and I am opposed to acts of cruelty for animals, but on the land there were times when an animal needs to be put out of misery, and when an outbreak of numbers of one species upsets the balance of nature and has to be redressed. The rabbit eradication programme had left the foxes hungry and the foxes were killing the sheep. We went out in the back of Geoff’s farm ute with a spotlight and Geoff’s old gun. He had a fox whistle, would stop the ute in the centre of a paddock and then use the whistle to imitate the sound of a rabbit caught in a trap. The squeals of the rabbit would bring any fox from its lair. With the light we circled round in the darkness. Sure enough on the perimeter of the light we would pick perhaps ten pairs of eyes watching us. Then one would come to get the fame.
The amazing thing about the fox was that it wouldn’t run straight to the sound of the trapped rabbit. Instead he would run in a circle right around until he was downwind of where we were and then slowly come towards the light with his nose in the air sniffing for the smells of man. Geoff would continue the shrieking whistle and eventually the fox, fearful of the smell but overcome by the desire to get a trapped rabbit, would walk right up to the ute. He would not be able to distinguish us behind the light. A simple shot and a fox lay dead. It was rare for a second fox to follow the path of the one before so we would leave that spot and move on to another paddock. I never managed to shoot anything except on the last occasion. Geoff was whistling and he gave me his old gun. When two eyes in the distance started running fast towards us. “He is not going down wind I said to Geoff.” In between whistling Geoff said, “Its an odd one this. It is not acting like a fox.” As he whistled the eyes ran in bounds towards us. I couldn’t see the fox clearly but I had his eyes in my sights and squeezed the trigger. The eyes shot up into the sky in a tremendous leap and bounded off. I had only winged it. Geoff said “What a pity you didn’t get it. I don’t know what that was but it certainly wasn’t a fox.”
The next day Geoff went out into the same paddock and looked and there, near the fence, he found the body of a mountain cat. It was a cross between one of the wild mountain cats that inhabit the Grampians and a large feral cat that had been bred from domestic cats let loose in the wild. Geoff rang me to tell me it was a monster. One of the biggest wild cats he had ever seen and felt that that was good riddance for the sake of his stock. He had seen wild cats pull down a calf and knew them to destroy much live stock.
My final story of creatures great and small also occurred out on Judd’s farm. Long after we had left Ararat we came back to the farm for holidays. For many years it was the centre of our holidays and our family of two became a family of four and the Judd’s four children and our four children grew up together sharing their holidays when they came to our home in the city and we spent our holidays with them in the country. Every September school holidays when we went to the Judd’s farm our children asked if we could go up to see the eagles’ nest.
On Mount Ararat there was one huge old gum tree that had an eagles’ nest in it. It was a long and difficult climb but to get up to the eagles’ nest was worth it. We stood below the tree looking at the huge nest. A platform of sticks about six feet across. Two eagles with wing span of six feet had made that next their home for years. Every year they came back to the same nest and produced one or two small offspring. In the first few years that we took the children to see the eagles’ nest and as we pointed out the eagles as they soared slowly in circles around the top of Mount Ararat, I was able to answer the children’s questions about eagles quite easily. But as they grew older their questions became more technical and coming to know that pair of eagles made me find out more about them.
I discovered that when the Australian wedge tail eagle mates, they mate for life. That eagle will stay with its mate for all of its life. They will hunt together, eat together and nest together.
Their courting rituals occur at 5,000 feet in the air when they are but specks in the sky. Their love calls to each other will echo down along the mountain side and when the time for mating comes the female goes into a tremendous steep dive down towards the earth and the male flies after her, eventually catching up with her and then at the point of a fast steep dive the female turns upside down and the male comes upon her, they lock claws and there mate in the midst of an incredible dive. The mating completed they peel off and then swoop upwards curving ever higher with their wings outstretched riding the thermals. Their love songs have an eerie echo as they roll down the mountain side. They establish a permanent nest and return to it season after season. Fighting is non existent. They hunt together and eat together. When the eggs are hatched they spend time alternatively staying with the eggs or the young while the other flies away to gather food. I then discovered a most unusual aspect of the Australian wedge tail eagle. While the female is sitting on the eggs, the male will fly some distance away. The Australian eagle has been measured up to flying 50 kilometres away from the next in order to pick a special greenery which he brings home in his beak and then places it as part of a circle around the edge of the nest. Every day and additional piece of greenery is added.
The eagles protect each other and stay together. Geoff said to me “When we get these city people who come onto our property without asking and fire away at eagles it really makes me mad. You know, if you shoot an eagle and hang it on a fence its mate will come around and stay with it. Many hunters do that and they wait until they shoot the second eagle as well.” Geoff loved the eagles. They lived mainly upon young rabbits and field mice and kept the vermin down. They usually only hatched one and after the awkward bird had got its plumage the parents literally forced it off the branch where the huge platform nest was built and there, in desperation the young eaglet flapped its wings and found it could fly. The young one would go off and find a mate of its own and build its own nest while the parents still returned to the same nest year after year.
As I stood with my wife and children looking up at the eagles’ nest I found myself praying that God would protect the eagles. They had so much to teach us. They say that marriages are made in heaven, and if so we humans have a lot to learn from the beautiful Australian eagles.
They were are remarkable bunch of creatures, furred and feathery, creatures great and small that we came to know through our time on the farm at Ararat. And our love for animals has increased ever since, since those first days when we came back to the country manse at 90 High Street, opposite the Railway Station, having learnt another lesson in the difficult art of becoming a country parson.
GORDON MOYES