The Family Zoo

By Grant P Cunningham

The Family Zoo is an illustrated book about rescuing injured wildlife and raising children on the East Coast of Australia. From wallabies and kangaroos to snakes to parrots to tawny frog-mouths to lizards to things too fierce to mention. If you are after a change of pace from urban life this charming book is for you.

Here you will met Iggie the Egret; Fast, Flash and Flatulent the baby Kookaburras, Winston the Wallaby and the rest of the family.

It was a lot of fun to write and even more fun to live. Come and enjoy a life lived differently in a place far away from the busy centers of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grant P Cunningham
• Release date: Feb 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311775672

Grant P Cunningham

Grant Cunningham was born in New York City in 1950 and immigrated to Australia in 1971. He has collected live animals in the wild, been a zoo keeper, research assistant in forestry, natural physician, sculptor, surfer and diamond hunter. He has also written a number of popular books including THE CROOK BACK BOOK, INNOCENT BYSTANDER, THE MARKS WE MAKE and THE LITTLE BOOK OF MEDITATION but hopes this will not be held against him. Isn’t it funny . . . here I am a writer and I do not like writing about myself. Yet I am told you are curious about me and there it is. I must I must I must . . . I was born in New York City General Hospital on the East River in 1950 to a large Irish Catholic family. Had a chaotic family life built around love and alcoholism, with wee bits of madness and some jail time too. The family moved to Westport, Connecticut around 1955 and ended up at Edgewater Hillside on The Old Mill Pond with the swans and the clams. Industrial grade Catholic guilt and the pursuit of the American Dream. Indeed we were McCall’s Magazine family of the year in 1956 just before the whole act fell apart. Divorce, madness, jail. The whole deal. I was raised by my brothers and sister Lee and I owe them my absolute love and affection. They have it. My father dried out with AA when I was 11 and I owe him and them my mind. I lived with him and my bother Noel in New York City for a few years. John was a Harvard boy and he gave me to the Jesuits while reading William Burrough’s THE NAKED LUNCH aloud to me when I came home. It was a fine and terrible thing to do to a child for which I am profoundly grateful. Ta Jack. My bother Sean and I were speaking not long ago and he mentioned that the thing about having alcoholic parents is that they promise to do this or do that or take you here or pay for that, and they don’t. Oh, they mean to when they say it but . . . So what it does is to train the children of drunks to realize that if they want something or to do something they better do it themselves because nobody else is going to do it for them. Not bad training really. Keeps all the equations about life simple. I attended either 12 or 17 different schools ( l lost count ) before I graduated from Berkeley High School in 1968 as a hippie and a rebel. Was living with my brothers Kevin, who was in the Marine Corps and stationed at Treasure Island, and Noel. Went to all the venues, saw all the bands with a lovely PhD student named Janice who took me to every Janis Joplin concert in the Bay Area. Country Joe and the Fish were the local band in Berkeley, Credence Clearwater Revival were up the road in El Cerrito, the Pointer Sisters were in Oakland and Santana were third billing at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon ballroom. Traveled to Africa to collect live specimens of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects for the Steinhardt Aquarium and the California Academy of Sciences. Bill Gaynor and Ted Pappenfuss. Reality in Africa drains one of illusion. There is illness, there is death, there is war, there is this thing we call life and it is not as we would wish but rather as it is. I was 18. Got back to the States, worked in Mike Malkin’s singles bar on 77th Street, got itchy feet and immigrated to Australia. Good move. I was 20 years old and Australia is where I have lived my adult life. Worked for the Forestry Commission, Taronga Zoo, started a leather craft business with Errol, lived naked on an island on the Great Barrier Reef with Sue, went back to school to study osteopathy and found an isolated house by the sea where I have remained since 1977. Fancy that. Time to write and sculpt and, lucky me, have a family. The good woman Donna, three lads (Bracken, Liam and Brean) and the ocean. Got to help a few people, write a few books, make a few images. A small life. Works for me anyway.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

A whale jumped out of the water, stood on his tail and waved. He was a humpback whale and was less than half a mile out to sea. Slowly toppling over with a great splash, which considering he was the size of a railway carriage perched on its end, was not surprising and a heartening re-enforcement of the laws of gravity. Was he waving at me? Should I wave back? What was proper cetacean etiquette in this situation?

As I pondered my response to this awkward social position, the sun shone strongly over the sea, cormorants and terns flew dawn patrol, wheeling and diving in search of breakfast. The sight was easy to bear as the whale rose, stood on his tail and waved again. To my relief he was waving at someone else. A petite and demur female humpback, a mere thirty feet, lounged on her back and was very impressed with this display of aquatic affection.

Donna came over and pushed my lower jaw up; clump.

fz17

It’s a whale of a day, I said pointing out to the now flat and glittering sea.

Well, that’s nice, said Donna, but it won’t get the wallaby fed. Would you?

Must I?

Yes.

In that case I’d be happy to.

Winston was our wallaby. He was 17 months old and had been with us for 14 months. Winston was two feet tall in his normal wallaby posture, bent over, head to the ground. Nearly four feet tall when he stretched right up, he weighed about 20 pounds. Red-necked wallabies like Winston do not grow much taller although they fill out considerably across the abdomen, hind quarters and tail as all the macropods do. His fur was a warm tawny colour with a small russet cape draped across the shoulders and neck. A black tip of four inches on his tail completed his red-necked wallaby uniform.

In the morning and three other times a day, Winston was drinking 120 ml of lactose free milk. Going to the kitchen I heated water and began to make the mixture. Winnie, not unaware of my actions and what they meant for him, huddled around my legs, moving as I moved, grabbing the backs of my legs with his sharp claws to make sure I knew he was there.

At that time Bracken, Liam and Brean, our three young boys, were eleven, nine and seven years old respectively and they too were crowded in the small open kitchen, bumping into each other and Winnie. An injured magpie named Sam walked into the house and joined the mob, hoping for cheese or other small treat. This not being forthcoming, Sam decided to investigate Winnie’s tail, and as I stirred the mixture and the boys made their own lunches for school, the magpie attacked Winnie’s tail, who jumped up and whirled about and went for Sam who screeched and defended himself. Brean dropped his peanut butter sandwich and began to wail; Bracken bent down and picked up the struggling wallaby; Liam laughed.

Ah Winnie, said Bracken. What should I do with him?

Put him down, I suggested. Perhaps you could give Sam something to eat. Finishing the mixture I put it into the bottle with the three inch long wallaby teat and Winston smelling the milk and recognising the bottle was tsk-tsk-tsking and pawing at me. I went over to the steps on the east side of the house and sat down. Winnie rushed-hopped up and I shoved the bottle towards him and he did the rest. I stroked his soft short fur, which annoyed him, but not nearly as much as the magpie who had returned to chasing Winston’s tail. Sam the magpie thought this great fun, on his back on the hardwood floor with the wallaby’s tail between his legs, pecking and clawing at it. But Winnie was too preoccupied with his food to take any action other than to wave his tail about. The magpie held grimly onto the tail and appeared to believe that this was the best way to start the day.

The boys ran out of the house at speed as the school bus approached. They were dressed in their grey shorts and grey shirts which was their school uniform, with caps and school bags. Winston finished the last of his bottle and with a strong flick of his tail sent Sam flying into the house and leapt down the steps in hot pursuit, catching up to Bracken. Winston grabbed him. Bracken turned and pushed Winnie’s head back, the standard macropod challenge, and Winnie, a young and maturing male wallaby, was not about to let a challenge go unanswered. He started kicking. Bracken tried to run off with Winnie holding on and delivering kicks with both strong legs, sitting back on his tail for balance. Liam ran back to help Bracken. Winnie decided that Liam was more his size and gave