‘And never the twain’

The birds were one of those issues – and there were many – that were endlessly confusing as I was growing up, but which eventually became accepted wisdom and, finally, simply the way of the world. I lived in my grandma's house, built on red mud and topped by a great, stunted eucalyptus tree, one that had put its energies into growing orderly branches rather than taking on height. The property was always defined by that massive growth, its shade and smell, even back when my grandma was young. 'Always it's been red mud down here, the tree up there, and me in the middle,' she'd say, as though reciting a recipe for the bitter eucalyptus wine she made every spring. But if the tree had always defined the property, the birds had always defined the tree. Every year for generations, the same nests were built among the same branches: owls on the bottom, cuckoos in the middle, and crows at the very top. The crows were my favourite: they jumped up and down a lot, just like me.

'Why do they live like that, in that order?' I'd ask repeatedly. I hated orders, and birds seemed freer than anyone to live where they pleased. 'Always it's been so,' was all my grandma would say, as though describing why storms smelled so fragrant coming in from the west. Eventually it became a joke between my brother and me – what would happen if the birds intermingled? We imagined looking into their nests one day and finding wondrous, fantastical mixes. A cross between an owl and a crow would become black as a night wind, we'd whisper, leading my brother to wake me with a sheet over his head, hissing like a walking corpse. A cross between a cuckoo and an owl would surely be the dumbest animal, and so I'd tease him when he did poorly on his school tests. And oh what could be, if we kids lived in trees and could take flight on a breeze …