Previous: Chapter Six: Henrietta’s Gift
Frances picked up a clean plate and stepped close to MaryLiz.
“I know you’ve got a lot to deal with, and I hate to pile one one more thing, but we now know for a fact that we’re dealing with a non-native species. By state law, we have to report our findings to the Wildlife Service.”
“You know people with TWS, don’t you? Who was it, back when we had all those javelinas everywhere….”
“Dr Perez. My thesis supervisor at Texas A&M, though they may not be on active duty today. It’d be best to just call the main number first, anyway. Want me to?”
“Yes, thank you for thinking of it.” said MaryLiz.
MaryLiz sat down with Jo and Merl, surrounded by a throng of ranchers full of questions. Frances showed the pale green image of the “trophy case” of cameras secreted within the wallabies’ warren.
“Kinda grainy photo, Doc,” said Elke.
“Not as bad as the Apollo pictures,” said Jaz.
Merl sat bolt upright.
“Not now, Jaz,” said MaryLiz. “You and Elke just volunteered for the first shift of Wallaby Watch. After lunch, make your way over to the Gift. One of you go on the gulfward side, the other landward.
Connect with as many lost cameras as you can get signal for, before the batteries die. GPS tag everything and send it back to us as you collect images.”
Merl spoke up. “How about chainsaws? I’ve got two on the charger. We could get in there pretty easily, and find out what’s up.”
“No, like Jo said, we don’t want to scare the little beasts, or they might move house and we’d have to start all over again. Jo, what about hand tools? Pruning shears, hand saws?”
“That should be fine,” said Jo. “Our new friends don’t seem bothered by human beings, as long as we act reasonably.”
Frances emerged from MaryLiz’s office, food plate still full. “I just got off the phone with Texas Wildlife. They have a team assembling in the Corpus Christi regional office, and will be here by nightfall. They’ll be loaded for bear, or, in our case, wallaby.”
“What’s our legal situation? What do we do in the meantime?” MaryLiz asked.
“They’re chill. They know we didn’t introduce them. They’re not on our ranch, but in what amounts to public land, the Rio Grande Estuary. Frankly, they seemed stoked to have something to do besides pull another ‘gator from a pool. They know we have Jo, Dr Stapledon to them, and they’ll want to know more when they get here. They might be a little jealous at being scooped.”
Varley, one of Frances’ grad students, entered the Mess.
“Red-necked wallaby. 99 and 44/100% pure. One in ten trillion that it’s anything else.”
“Notamacropus rufogriseus,” murmured Jo.
“Yep, one and the same. The sequencer’s still working on the mitochondrial side, but, that’s what we have so far. We finished up nuclear DNA on one individual just after you hit the trail, and the other one just now. One boy, the other’s a girl. Same species.”
Frances exhaled. “So, assuming they do what comes naturally, a potential breeding population.”
“I was expecting as much,” said Jo. “Lil’ Pooper wasn’t that long out of its mothers’ pouch, maybe two months, based on size and behavior. Gestation’s about a month, more or less, and after birth they stay in mommy’s pouch for another seven. So Mom and Dad were healthy enough to do what wallabies do, nine months ago.”
MaryLiz did the math in her head. “Last October. Hurricane Henrietta.”
Jo thought for a moment. “Yep. About then. But that’s jumping the gun. We need more data.” Jo looked expectantly at Frances.
Frances addressed Varley. “Great work. Keep it up, as many samples as you can run through. Widthfirst across sites. We know there’s at least a dozen of them. With a sample that size we can do rudimentary population genetics, find out what the mob as a whole has to tell us of their recent history.”
The Texas Wildlife Service arrived by road from Corpus Christi near nightfall, with Dr Perez, fresh in from Houston, in charge. Except for Dr Perez, who had traveled in haste, they all wore smartly pressed uniforms. “The cavalry,” thought Frances.
The ranchers helped unload a dozen-odd battered live traps, made of heavy gauge steel wire, each fitted with panoramic wildlife cameras and motion sensors.
The horses were restless at the influx of new arrivals, and the busyness of the paddock just when any right thinking person would be retiring for the night. Then MaryLiz was there, speaking gently as she placed the bridle and headlamp on Fusion.
“Night walk, Fusion? Headlamp? Oats?”
Oats.
When everything was ready, and MaryLiz was aboard, the gate to the paddock swung wide. Fusion led the procession into the darkness, the light from the headlamp guiding their way. A live trap swung from each saddlebag.
They were heading for the beach. Fusion stepped without fear or hesitation. Somewhere, surely just beyond the ever-receding pool of light, were oats.
Oats.
By ten PM, MaryLiz’s team had set and baited half of the wildlife service’s traps on the side of Henrietta’s Gift which faced the Gulf. The wall of debris was thin enough so that they could shout to the other team through it, but Jo had suggested that two-way radios would be quieter and less disturbing to their quarry.
With the traps set, it was time to retreat to safe distance. Varley’s counterpart, a grad student called Suse, was scheduled for the next shift working Jo’s DNA sequencer. To pass the time between sample preparation and readout, Frances assigned Suse to keep an eye on the images from the trap cams.
All was quiet until 3:30 AM, when the first of the motion alarms sounded. The loudspeakers were cranked wide open, and Suse fairly bolted from the chair in surprise at the sudden noise, before regaining composure, and turning down the volume just in time for the next alarm.
The cameras were set to record anything interesting on their own, so Suse had nothing to do except to watch as the drama unfolded on the monitor.
A good Texan, or Australian, mightn’t be gobsmacked at what the cameras were seeing, but Suse was from the Cotswolds.
“Two captured, one escaped,” reported Dr Perez, over the radio. “And they took the bait from four of the traps without tripping them.”
This time, the cameras, stoutly secured to the live traps with electric fence wire, had survived to record the scene. The first wallaby to be trapped quickly alerted the others. One of its siblings, startled by the noise, activated the trap it had started to explore and just managed to squirm to safety under the trap’s rapidly closing gate. A slower adult wasn’t as lucky.
The remaining free wallabies had quickly scattered, but were soon back, to check on their trapped comrades. One or two of them nipped experimentally at the spring-loaded wire mesh panels holding their kin prisoner. And then…
Trap 4 showed it most clearly: it camera caught the side of Trap 6, a few meters away, as two joeys approached the open mouth of Trap 6, eyeing the green bait within. The first joey entered the trap, but then stopped, bracing its head against the spring loaded gate above. When it was apparent that all was well, the second joey squirmed into the trap, nimbly past the first, and to the bait. With a quick motion the joey scooped up the treasure in one hand and darted nimbly out of the trap, followed quickly by the first. The gate snapped firmly shut on the empty trap behind it.
The image swung wildly as an unseen grip pulled at the camera shooting the scene from Trap 4, but the fence wire held, and soon the only sound was the crashing of high tide against the Texas coast.