I hope you enjoyed the story so far. This one is true; it happened in 1965, when I was twenty four. My husband was the surveyor for the Waroona dam. The only accommodation within miles of the place was a farm house that had been left empty for several years.
COUNTRY LIFE CONT:
“It’s only possums.” Robert’s voice was sleepy but not concerned.
“Are you sure?” I whispered, conscious of our baby son sleeping in the corner.
“Yes. Go to sleep, love.” He rolled over and was snoring in minutes.
Thump, thump. Wham. Scuttle, scratch. The noise continued. Bloody army of possums, I thought, trying to switch my mind off, desperately wanting to sleep before Stuart woke for his next feed.
“Darling, can’t you do something about them?” I shook my husband awake. “Stop them making that racket?”
“No. Just go to sleep, love. I’ll sort it out in the morning.”
Sure that I had been asleep for only minutes, I woke to our son’s hungry cries. The first rays of sunlight poured in through the uncovered windows. I slid out of bed and tiptoed across the lounge room floor, nearly stepping on an enormous cockroach, at least ten centimetres long. My screams woke husband and daughter.
Robert killed it with his shoe. “Don’t worry, love. I’ll get some bait today. What time is it?” He walked back into the bedroom as Jane wandered out from her room, rubbing sleepy eyes.
“Where are we, Mummy?”
“This is our new home, darling. You go back to sleep. I’m just going to feed Stuart.”
At eight o’clock, with baby asleep and husband gone for the day, I made it a game. “Let’s see how many of the beetles you can find.”
Almost gagging at the stench of each one as I stomped and whacked, I killed forty two cockroaches, following an excited, three year old daughter around the house. Empty cupboards, left untouched for seven months, provided the largest horde. In the bathroom, on the enclosed back verandah, crackly brown creatures scurried into crevices in the walls and floor. Shutting the door on them, I burst into tears and picked up my daughter.
“Clever girl,” I said, burying my wet face in her pink frilly dress.
“More, Mummy.” She wriggled from my grasp and ran back to the kitchen, opening cupboards and peering inside. “All gone.”
The disappointment in her voice made me smile. When she grows up I’ll tell her about this day, I thought. I wonder how she’ll respond then.
That night, having beaten the ceiling with a broom in the hope of chasing away the thundering hordes, we were about to get into bed.
“Are cockroaches carnivorous?” I asked the man who had spent half an hour putting baits in places where our adventurous daughter would hopefully not find them.
“I don’t know, love. Why?”
I looked at the cane basket where our baby lay sleeping: at the four wooden legs that held the frame up off the floor.
“They can climb up the legs.” Tears poured down my cheeks. “They might eat him.”
“Well, let’s put him next to our bed for tonight and tomorrow I’ll fix something.”
In bed he held me, kissed my lips, ran a finger lightly over my nipples. I wanted to respond in the way he wanted me to. My back stiffened. Images of cockroaches everywhere, scurrying, splattered, stinking, attacking my children like a rampaging army.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “Sorry, I can’t.”
He turned over and was soon asleep.
I lay on the other side of the bed, unable to shut out the sight and smell of the disease ridden vermin that inhabited the house.
A week later, with electricity restored, house scrubbed and disinfected, I started to feel that perhaps the six months that we’d committed to—his new job and renting this neglected farm house—might be bearable, despite the lack of phone, transport or any other means of communicating with family and friends.
“The possums seem to have moved out,” I said as the three of us sat around the kitchen table on Sunday morning.
“Really?” Robert continued to concentrate on his bowl of cornflakes.
“Yes. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Um. There’s something I should tell you.” He spoke slowly, hesitantly.
We had dealt with the kitten dying from snake bite and the cattle breaking through the fence around the house, making the journey to the outside dunny hazardous.
“What now?” I asked.
“I think I’ve killed all of them. I’ve been setting traps at night and getting up before you were awake in the morning. I couldn’t put baits out for them because they’d head for the water in the tank and pollute it.”
“But you’re not supposed to kill possums.” Suddenly I felt guilty for causing the death of our native animals, despite the problems they had caused.
“No, they weren’t possums.” He had a worried, guilty look on his face. “I couldn’t tell you because I knew you’d freak out. They were rats.”