The tree trunks here
in Melbourne, Australia are wrapped with metal guards. This is the kind of
thing that gets my husband and I curious when we travel. Forget the museums,
forget the art galleries, forget the fireworks display every Friday night over
the River Yarra. What’s with the
tree tin? That’s the real Australia. You can just feel it.
As we ride around
the city we develop theories.
“They’re to keep the
squirrels out of the trees,” I speculate.
“But where else are
the squirrels going to live if they don’t live in trees? Telephone poles?”
“Good point,” I
conceded. “How about it’s to keep crazy crap out of the trees. You know like
those bear things.”
“Koala bears? No
way. You’d think they’d want a koala hanging off of every tree branch. Think of
the tourist dollars.”
“Good point.” We
continued to scratch our American heads.
Finally, Sherwood
asks the cab driver, “What’s with the tree tin?”
Cabbie tells
Sherwood, "That's to keep the possums out of the trees."
"Why don't you just
shoot them?" asks Sherwood (Dead Eye) Zern, of Saint Cloud, Florida, near
Kissimmee, home of the Silver Spurs Rodeo.
"Because the
government took our guns, and we'd get in trouble with the animal people,"
cabbie says.
"In America,
we'd just shoot them."
"In America, you shoot
everything."
It’s hard to know where to
go from this point in the cultural exchange: to be more curious about the
enormity of the problem Australians are facing with pesky possums colonizing
city trees, or offended at the gross ignorance and prejudice on the part of the
cabbie about our American way of life. I’ll address both.
One) How big are these
possums? How mean? What happens if they climb up in those trees? What are the
possums tossing at people from up there that makes the citizens of Melbourne
have to take such drastic tree trunk wrapping action? Where do the possums go
if they don’t go up those trees? Telephone poles?
Two) It is simply not true
that Americans “shoot everything.” We don’t shoot roaches. That would be
counter-intuitive. We pour gallons of poison over them as if basting tiny
turkeys. We don’t shoot the mailperson. We give the mailperson twenty bucks at
Christmas and thank her for not throwing our mail in ditches. We don’t shoot
the computer. We want to. We want to real bad, especially when it seizes up and
threatens to meltdown IN CHINESE.
Possums? Possums we shoot.
Especially, when they climb in the chicken coop looking to rape and pillage and
thieve eggs. Then possums are going down—American style. Come to think of it,
that’s why we wrap sheet metal around the bottom of our chicken coops to help
keep nasty possum types out.
Hey! We’re not so different
after all.
It’s a small, possum
troubled, world after all.
Linda (Foreign Exchange)
Zern
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