So too did a theology student named Julian who visited for a weekend on university mate Bruce’s farm back in my halcyon days where — known as Ted — my first farming fracas drew to its finale.
We went for a shoot one night. Rabbits.
Atop the back of the ute, I beamed with pride at holding the old cast iron spotlight as Phil drove us to a paddock and, on either side of me, Bruce and Julian took alternating shots at the vermin.
Was that a tingle? Coinciding with Bruce firing, I not only felt a sharp but small jolt through my body, but I am sure the spotlight momentarily dimmed.
“How you going there, Ted?” Phil asked from the cabin. Bruce giggled.
The lamp was shorting out with every brush of the ute’s top bar, most of the charge going through my body.
“Ted’s having a good night!”
“It’s electric!”
I was given a small calibre birdshot rifle and allowed to have a go. Little red eyes glowed like gems back at us in the torch light.
One shot and they all scarpered, which became thematic for my evening until, with six rounds remaining, I hit one.
“Nearly, Ted”, so another shot, and another, and another.
“Almost there,” while a Tarantino scene played out 50 paces away.
The joke was not quite on me because the adrenalin was popping my eyes out of their sockets.
Then, I noticed a pair of green gems reflecting back and the mood changed.
I knew to keep silent.
While the bunnies were a cost to the farm’s grain crops and pastures, this neat little fox would probably take a lamb or six by next winter.
From the cabin came the deep, smooth sound of a 0.22 loading.
Phil had his rifle resting on the side mirror and we waited.
A crack that reached the horizon.
He missed. Green eyes vanished. There was a curse.
“You only get one shot at a fox,” Bruce muttered.
I dreamt of rubies and emeralds that night.
The next evening Julian and I, with Bruce’s blessing, took off somewhat recklessly in my suburban four-cylinder car, rifles toted out either front window, bouncing over paddocks while we clenched our teeth.
Didn’t bag a single one and — bored of our now-perfected Elmer Fudd impressions — we found a dusty track and headed homeward.
Green eyes suddenly and casually bobbed up and down toward us.
“Ted!”
I braked. The green eyes froze motionless, and in the car headlights, the outline of a fox slowly turned and lolloped away down the middle of the track.
We didn’t speak. Julian (not left-handed, mind) awkwardly leaned his rifle out the passenger window and took aim with our very final round of ammunition.
“Ready when you are, Ted.”
My imagination was already picturing the pelt hat I would sport in Adelaide.
I dropped the clutch and my prissy city car gave chase.
Curiously, the fox stayed right in front as it gathered pace.
Then the simply unbelievable.
Pop.
The fox tumbled into a ball of orange tail, dust, yelp, tail, green-lit eyes and more tail.
“Their tails are awfully big,” I said just as — for good measure — I collided with the little bugger, heard a solid thump underneath and then braked over the top of him.
Julian and I stared in disbelief amid the mix of gunpowder smoke and road dust.
Then I backed up and saw not a single cunning trace of our quarry.
Impossible.
Mid-morning, we returned to the scene of the crime, ‘bush’ tracking in the dust to see from where the fox had first changed direction, the chase right down to the car’s skid marks, a passing kangaroo (must have been afterwards), a four-footed tumble, a drag of a hairy body and then the miracle.
Four prints casually walking from the scene. Tiptoeing in fact.
A month later I’m back in Adelaide and the car is on hoists getting new suspension fitted while my father glared.
“What the fox happened?”
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