Sally

The sound of birds used to fill the air of Christmas Hills. I would wake up to the drawl of the Currawongs and the familiar warble of the Magpies most mornings I lived there, which was the first twenty years of my life. When I was young, perhaps four or five, the eerie mopoke mopoke of the Boobook owl made me think strange creatures the size of small men were waiting outside my window. I lay stiff between my sheets those nights, thinking the Boobook would swoop in through the fly wire and gobble me up as if I was a little common skink, maybe a silky-backed Huntsman.

Laying in my parents' bed you could see the face of a fox in the pine ceiling. Its nose was a dark knot in the wood. It was the nights I heard the noises from the bush that I would end up looking up at the ceiling from that big, quilt-covered bed. It was only time I remember being scared of the bush really. A little later, during summertime, I would find the alien-like shells of cicada cases stuck to the wooden poles of the chook pen. I had a Bantam named Sally, back then.