JUNIPER & THE JOEYS
Recently landed: Juniper & the joeys
We’d arrived before dusk, so as to have enough time to walk around the surrounding area of the release site where we’d initially collected Juniper and her three berry-joeys the other day. Now that she was rested, her nose returned to a healthy pink, and she and her joeys had been examined by the Wildlife Victoria vets and given the green light, it was time to get the family back to their home, before someone else moved in. The residential area was pleasingly, reassuringly full of possum food trees, and there was a small park replete with a native garden. We spotted trees that had their crowns evenly nibbled, and a fence line that meant that with relative, late-night ease, were you a possum, you could get to the lower, lush plantings. This has been one of the loveliest parts of wildlife care: seeing a new world open, a parallel universe, almost, before your eyes, as you look for signs of where a possum would go, and what would they eat. We look at the connecting canopies, the overhead powerlines, the means of getting from place to place in the arboreal world. Above our heads, another landscape. Side by side, a secret world we could easily miss if we failed to read the signs.
Continuing reading on Marginalia.
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28th of October, 2024
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Bilateral Symmetry (detail, replete with a Ringtail possum in the top left), 2024, artists’ book
