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orangerosebush · 4 years

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Jolly Sailor Bold [ao3]

On the night that they first met, she'd called him her pirate king.

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The year was 1985.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement had just been signed. The River Thames was dead. In the east, the Berlin wall stood strong (it would soon fall); in the west, the Northern Ireland peace walls towered high (they would not). Cold war, civil war, world war — wherever you turned, violence was desperate to weave itself back into global politics.

Untouched, The Ivy sat in the center of West Street.

Old money had their own problems to worry about.

Artemis Fowl I was young and invincible in a sea of men guided more by money than they were by convictions. Tonight wasn't his fête, but it might as well have been — it was impossible to even tell who the original host was when the guests fawned over him, hanging on to his every word. He was the golden boy of the night, and his last name loomed larger than life.

How could it not? When the world seemed on the precipice of a terrible, unknown future, a name that spanned centuries, that spanned a history of every unthinkable era in humanity's past, was a life-preserver. The name Fowl was well-worn and bloody — yet it persisted.

It survived, and that was enough.

Artemis Fowl I was young.

The night was ebbing into the dawn, and Artemis had grown bored of the chattering sycophants that had encircled him as the party grew livelier.

He was drunk, but he wasn't drunk enough to believe that the socialites at this party truly believed his every joke to be funny to the point of uproarious laughter.

Stepping into the cool air of the night, he breathed in the soft, salty air.

He frowned, shuddering despite himself.

"Too much to drink?"

Artemis started, jolted from his thoughts as though clumsily waking up from a dream.

There was a woman leaning against the alleyway. She chuckled at his confusion, covering her mouth with a hand demurely.

"No," he said, a tad brusquely. The woman didn't even flinch, taking it in stride.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to pry," she smiled, her wide, brown eyes twinkling in the gloom of the street lights.

He found himself staring.

"I don't believe… we've met," he attempted, remembering his manners. She tilted her head, her smile deepening.

"You would be correct."

Shaking his head as if to sober up, he refocused his gaze on her. There was a slight chill in the air, but not nearly enough to warrant a full fur coat like the one draped about her. Stranger still was the jewelry she was wearing. Perched fetchingly around her neck was an unusual pearl necklace — even with his hazy vision, it was clear that each of the pearls was distinctly different from the others. Soft pinks, baby blues, and light grays adorned the asymmetric and lumpy beads. Those were fishermen's pearls, Artemis thought, admiring the way they caught the moonlight. When he was a boy, his father had cracked open a small series of oysters from down by the docks to show him the difference between the shape of the natural pearl and the polished counterpart on his mother's brooch. In the fading light, Artemis found he couldn't remember the point of that lesson.

He opened his mouth, at a loss for words. "I-" he began, furrowing his brow in thought. "What's your name?"

"Angeline," she responded, and the name sounded almost like a secret.

He swallowed.

"Oh," he said feebly. "I'm…Artemis."

"A hunter, then," Angeline raised her eyebrows.

"A Fowl," he stressed. She looked at him blankly.

"Pardon?"

Deflating a bit, he shoved his hands in his pockets. "I'm Artemis Fowl," he specified, trying to be nonchalant.

Seemingly understanding that she was missing something, Angeline laughed. "Good for you!"

Whether it was the alcohol or the night air, Artemis found himself laughing with her. Boldened, he reached for her hands, clasping them in his. "Tell me that you'll come dance with me," he requested.

She cocked her head. "Is tonight that sort of party?" she glanced through the windows of the restaurant, trying to spy inside.

He shook his head dismissively. "No. Dance with me anyway, though."

"Alright, Artemis," she said, offering him her arm. Delightedly, he took it, leading her inside the restaurant.

************************************************************

He ends up stealing her cloak off the coat rack when she wanders off to grab a drink.

Artemis didn't quite know why he did it, but the fur of the garment is soft in his hands as he haphazardly shoves it at the Major, ordering him to hide it.

Perhaps she'll try to meet him again in order to find the cloak, he reasoned back in his hotel that night.

The cloak remains in the trunk, collecting dust.

************************************************************

They married a year later.

It was a private affair, which is what you'd expect for a couple half-composed of an individual who, on paper, at least, didn't exist.

Angeline, he thinks that night as they lay in bed. Watching the moonlight dapple over her sleeping form, he gently moved a honey-colored curl away from her face. Angeline Fowl.

When he finally drifts off to sleep, he dreams of the sea.

************************************************************

For the first few years of their son's life, Angeline and Artemis Sr. trade off each night to tell their son bedtime stories. When he is older, Artemis Fowl II will recall his father's story of the fae fondly, giving it the high title of being his favorite story.

The tale of the leprechaun was his father's story, but his mother had her own favorite tale to tell.

Tucking her son into bed, Angeline reached to turn the light down low. Despite the fact her voice was soft as she spoke, he listened, wide awake.

"A human will take a merrow's cloak and keep them on the land for a few years," she whispered, tracing swirls over the duvet almost dreamily. "But the merrow always, always finds their cloak."

Her son blinked, his deep blue eyes wide. "What happens after that?"

"They go back to the sea."

"Are they not angry with the human?"

"No. If a merrow doesn't want to be caught, it is all too easy to plunge deep into the ocean and never reemerge," Angeline explained gently. "They let themselves get caught. After all, you sometimes must give up a little to get what you want. The merrow will stay on land for a brief while with the human, and when their time is up, they will return to the sea, taking the human with them."

"So they drown them, then."

She brushed his hair aside fondly. "You are so smart, Arty. But I'm afraid there is still much you do not know. A human body cannot breathe under the sea, but souls are hardy things, and that's what is important."

He furrowed his brow, clutching the covers of his bed. "That's what's important?"

She nodded. "Even so, before diving back into the sea, the merrow will make sure to wrap the soul up carefully in a spider-silk handkerchief. After that, they'll put on their cloak, put the handkerchief into their pocket, and swim back down into the depths. The sea is much nicer for the soul than land is, anyway," she pinched his cheek, and Artemis wrinkled his nose.

"Are you saying that the soul just… stays in their pocket?"

"Oh, of course not," she looked at him in confusion. "Souls aren't meant to be kept in pockets — that'd be barbaric. They're kept in shipwrecks."

He sighed stubbornly, letting go of the covers. "I don't see how that's much better."

Angeline looked at him as though he'd said something quite silly, grinning indulgently. "It just is, my dear."

************************************************************

To lay with a merrow is to give your soul up to the sea.

Artemis Sr. would promise his wife that he was leaving on his final business trip before he set sail on the Fowl Star.

He almost made it to the Kandalaksha Gulf before the ocean swallowed him up.

************************************************************

The sea can be convinced to change its mind, however, and Artemis Sr. was spat back out amongst the dirty water of the wreck, flailing and choking on the fumes of the burning ship and the sickly sweet smell of the cola spilling out into the Russian gulf.

He would live.

The water knew that miles away, years away, his son would come to these shores to drag him back home.

Artemis Sr.'s time was not yet up.

************************************************************

When he awoke years later, he was in the Helinski hospital surrounded by a tearful Angeline and a guilty looking son. Moving slowly due to the haze of the pain medication, he tried to sit up. He nearly careened forward, and a nurse rushed to his side, steadying him.

Artemis Sr. peered quizzically down at the sheets, feeling unbalanced.

His leg.

He inhaled shakily, grasping at the sheets blindly. He was missing a leg.

Breathing heavy, he looked at his wife and son. Artemis refused to make eye contact. Shaking his head, Artemis Sr. closed his gaping mouth.

"My son," he choked out, forcing himself to smile. "You've grown so much — oh, Arty, come here."

Artemis all but flung himself at his father, embracing him. Artemis Sr. held onto him tightly, as though he was afraid he'd lose him.

"Father," his son breathed, and Artemis Sr. could feel wetness upon his shoulder. They stayed like that for a moment, and the hospital room fell silent.

Suddenly, he felt a hand come to rest on his other shoulder. Artemis Sr. looked up, finding himself eye-to-eye with his wife.

"Angie—?"

"My pirate king," she said softly, gently bringing his chin into her hands and running a thumb over the stubble of his cheek. "You've come back to me."

#Artemis Fowl #fowlfest2020 #Crossover day #my post

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jessahmewren · 5 years

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After a misunderstanding, Freddie makes it up to Brian the best way he knows how.

photo cred

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“Can’t you take a break, Bri? It’ll only take a little while. Hmm?”

Brian looked up from a under a stray lock of hair to find Freddie stretched on his stomach in a warm patch of sun looking at him dolefully.

His flatmate was youthful, almost feline, and impossible to ignore when he wanted something. And his deep brown eyes were now fixed on Brian.

Freddie buried his chin in his palms, a puff of air escaping his lips. “I need my guitarist, Bri,” he said huffily. He reached out to playfully poke at Brian. “I need my best friend.”

Brian frowned, pushing his arm away. “Knock it off Fred. This model is due tomorrow or my grade will slip. I need to concentrate.” He looked at Freddie crossly. “Don’t you ever do homework?”

Freddie sat up, crossing his arms over his chest. He shook his glossy black hair. “Of course I do…in class, after it’s assigned, naturally. I can’t help it if you’re slow.” Freddie smiled then, a wide, beautiful smile. He didn’t do that often, but when he did it was a rare and beautiful thing. Brian warmed a little as he continued working on his model.

“So what’s this song Fred?”

Freddie stood, enthused Brian was interested. He stretched his arms over his head in an exaggerated motion, accentuating his slim physique. “It’s about falling in love, Darling! What else?” He began dancing around the room, his arms held out as if moving with an unseen partner. “And out of love and in love and out of love…” he continued as he stepped in and out of time with music only he could hear. “Oh won’t you play with me Bri?”

Brian looked at him, a slight smile on his face. “The model, Fred…I–“

Freddie looked at the model Brian was building. It looked like a web of lumpy shapes to him, but Brian had said something about astral bodies something or other when he had first started working on it so it was something to do with space.

“Are you listening to a word I’m saying Fred?”

Brian was standing there, a questioning look on his face, and Freddie was thoroughly caught. So he said the only thing he could think to say. “Would you like some tea?”

-0-0-0-

Cross-legged on the rug in their shared flat, the two men sat with teacups in their hand, sipping thoughtfully. Brian silently cursed himself for letting Freddie talk him into everything, because between them sat the lyrics and notes to Fred’s latest song, his unfinished model forgotten.

“I was thinking you could write a riff for it here and here,” Fred said suddenly, a slender black-painted finger indicating a point on the paper. Freddie did his nails for gigs, but left the lacquer on sometimes well after. Brian would never tell him how much he liked it.

Instead, Brian picked up the sheet, frowning at it. “Could do that I guess.” He peeked over the paper at Freddie, who was listening intently. “A solo here of course.”

Freddie rolled his eyes dramatically. “You and your fucking solos! I swear Bri you’re more dramatic than I am!”

Bri laughed at that. “Someone doesn’t like sharing the spotlight,” he said with a glib smile, setting the paper down between them and leaning back on his hands. “You know I can’t do this today, Fred. Any other day, but not today.”

Freddie’s face fell, but he nodded. “I understand Darling,” he said sullenly, but Brian wondered if he was being sincere. “Thanks for tea at least.”

Freddie stood to clear the cups, turned to make his way back to the kitchen when he tripped and fell in a heap of broken china and leftover tea.

“What in bloody hell,” he muttered before hearing Brian’s high-pitched wail of sorrow.

“My project!”

Freddie turned to see the delicate webbed structure crushed into an amorphous blob on the floor.

“Oh my God, Brian I-“

“You did that on purpose, you wanker, so I would work on your bloody song!”

Freddie blinked at him. “What?! Brian, I wouldn’t do such a thing. Darling, listen to me-“

“No, Freddie,” Brian spat as he shrank from his touch, “not this time.” He grabbed his coat, sidestepping the mess Freddie had made on his way to the front door. “I’m going to fail and it’s all your fault Fred. All because you’re a selfish bastard.”

The slamming door stung Freddie as much as Brian’s words. How could he make it right? How could he get him to understand that it was an accident?

Freddie knew how to do two things well: art and music. One was of no use now, but perhaps the other could be. With that determination, he set to work.

-0-0-0-

Brian opened the door to the flat four hours later in a rain-soaked jacket, his face hang-dog and weary. He’d walked for hours before ducking into a pub, but not before getting the best of the evening’s showers.

Freddie rushed out, wearing canvas overalls covered in paint. There was a pale yellow smear on his cheek. “Oh, thank goodness! I’ve been worried sick!” He covered both sides of Brian’s face with his large, warm palms, and despite Brian’s previous ire, he leaned into them, closing his eyes.

“I just want a cuppa tea,” Brian said tiredly, shucking his wet jacket. His hair had already dried, but the rain had left it even curlier than usual. He let Freddie lead him to the couch where he sagged down with whatever strength he had left.

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” he gruffed. “I don’t think you would do something like that on purpose.” Brian looked up, his eyes shining. “You wouldn’t, would you Freddie?”

Freddie pressed his forehead against his, sharing his breath. He swept his thumb along the soft line of his jaw, leaving a white smudge. “Oh Bri, I would never do anything to hurt you love,” he whispered. “I’d hurt myself first. But besides,” Freddie gave a small little laugh and kissed the tip of Brian’s nose, “I fixed it.”

Brian looked at him, not comprehending. “What do you mean you fixed it Fred?”

“I fixed it like it was before.”

Brian watched Freddie leave, stealing away into the kitchen and returning with the model…his model…only better…more detailed, more pristine, half finished, like before.

“Freddie, how—“

Freddie gingerly set the model on the coffee table. “I’m an art major with a photographic memory, my dear.” He put one hand on his hip. “Plus, I read your assignment sheet. You missed some of the details.” He licked his lips nervously. “Sorry I couldn’t finish it. I don’t know shit about space.”

Brian stared at him in awe. Freddie was blushing…truly blushing. And he was beautiful. God, so beautiful. With that swath of yellow blazing against his cheek and those ridiculous overalls sagging off his slim frame.

“Well say something you big dumb idiot,” Freddie said, laughing.

“Thank you,” Brian stammered. “It’s amazing.” He wanted to say more, wanted to do more. He was a coward.

Freddie took Brian’s hand; it felt startlingly small compared to his, but it was soft and warm. “There’s more,” he said with a wink, and the little motion went straight to his gut.

Freddie pulled him steadily to his bedroom, talking all the while. “I felt so badly about how you were angry with me. I wanted to make it up to you love. I want you to be happy Bri, always,” he said, looking back at him. They arrived in Brian’s darkened bedroom. “I hope you like it,” Freddie said quietly as he flicked the lights on.

The reveal stole his breath. Brian’s walls were a kaleidoscope of planets and stars…breathtaking views of space in a fantastical artistic interpretation.

“Freddie…this is incredible,” Brian stammered as he led Freddie by the hand further into his bedroom. “You did all of this just while I was gone?”

Freddie smiled. “Well…your bedroom is not that big,” he said cheekily. “Plus, I made quite the mess of myself because I was painting so fast.”

Brian took in his bedraggled appearance and smiled. “I think you look beautiful Fred.” The slight pink in Freddie’s cheeks gave him the courage to keep going. “In fact, I think you look better standing here in my bedroom than you’ve ever looked on any stage.”

“Brian—“

“You said you wanted to see me happy Freddie?”

Freddie worried his lip between his teeth. “Of course.”

“Then let me kiss you, Freddie. Right now. With all the stars watching.”

Freddie dipped his head slightly, a small smile on his face. “You don’t have to ask,” he said quietly.

“Yes I do,” Brian said. “Because when I kiss you it’s going to mean something.”

“Then you can kiss me Darling,” he whispered.

Brian smiled, reaching for Freddie tenderly before pressing his lips to his. They were soft, and Freddie’s stunned little exhalation or the way his body responded against his sent Brian’s heart slamming in his chest. When they finally released each other, Freddie looked up at him sheepishly.

“What do you think they would say,” he said a little huskily, “the stars?”

Brian held him close. “I think they would say those are two people who will always be there for each other, be it in music or in life.”

Freddie lay his head on Brian’s chest. “Sounds good to me,” he said with a smile.

-0-0-0-

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wombatportrait · 7 years

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I am mad they blocked this story and only let subscribers see it. But I busted through that wall. (It is a metaphor!) I copied it for you.

Liebe Grüße,

Donna

Painstaking: Alison Douglas at work. Pictures: Justine Walpole

It is an often overlooked but proven scientific fact that wombats have feelings too. Evolution did not, however, provide the humble wombat with the anatomical means to verbally express its feelings, or a natural place in which to do so. No coastal Buddhist wombat retreat, for example, where these quadrupedal marsupials might form trust circles to emotionally release themselves from the burden of playing second fiddle to the self-satisfied koala, or ponder the viciousness of the sociopathic dingo, or truly convey the overwhelming anxiety that sometimes makes a wombat just want to dig a hole in the ground and crawl deep inside. Stop the world, I want to waddle off.

Late November, 2016: Queensland Museum taxidermist and senior preparator Alison Douglas slips on a pair of surgical gloves as she pads through a basement room past a stack of arcing whale rib bones the size of two-person tent frames. She passes a large steel macerating tank where a long-deceased marine turtle is being boiled and stripped of gunk and grit before it’s transferred to a taxidermist’s table. She passes a freezer room filled with tagged specimens: “Echidnas”, “Prep birds”, “Possum”. Each animal’s tag contains details of where and when it was found. “You can have the most beautiful specimen in the world but if it doesn’t have its location and date then it’s useless to science,” Douglas says. Science needs the animal’s story.

She comes to a back room with a word fixed to its entry: “Skinning”. A stuffed ringtail possum sits on a perch in the corner of the room. A corkboard on the wall features detailed colour portraits of animals, and Post-it note messages between colleagues: “Cat skull for Caroline.” The room is lined with drawers with various tags speaking of their contents: “Red eyes”, “Yellow eyes”, “Paired brown eyes”. Drawers full of taxidermy patching fur. Another marked “Skins, Bones and Bits”.

There’s a dead animal beneath a sheet on Douglas’s stainless steel workbench. She removes the sheet slowly. It’s a common wombat. Brown fur, lumpy body, curled in a ball like it’s sleeping. “Here he is,” she says. “Tonka.”

She stands back and looks at that face. The bare nose. The serene eyes. The odd tenderness that emanates from the little guy, somehow soulful even in death. “He’s got such a beautiful face,” she says. “He looks like someone, doesn’t he?”

He does. Someone old and wise; someone you might have cared about. Someone with feelings.

“He just looks so peaceful,” she says. She takes a deep breath, feels the weight of the task before her. “Tonka’s not so important scientifically,” she says. “But he’s very important to people.”

Tonka the wombat had any number of reasons to feel sad throughout his short life. After his mum was killed by a car eight years ago, Tonka was rescued from her pouch and hand-reared by humans at Billabong Sanctuary, a native animal wildlife park near Townsville, north Queensland. Lacking the necessary smarts for the wild, Tonka was destined for a lifetime in captivity. But if he longed for life beyond the park enclosure he rarely let it show, rejoicing in the constant companionship of a loving team of rangers with whom he cuddled, played, walked, ate, napped. Some nights staff members would take him home to meet their families, prop him up on the living room couch with mum, dad and the kids, and settle in for another episode of The Block. Before long, Tonka the wombat became the park’s star attraction, dazzling groups at the morning and afternoon wombat shows with his charm and insatiable zest for life. Where some marsupials recoiled from the hugs of tourists, Tonka seemed to grow in spirit and confidence with every warm embrace. Male wombats wanted to be him, female wombats wanted to be with him.

Then, in early February 2011, Category 5 Cyclone Yasi tore through Billabong Sanctuary, smashing enclosures, destroying displays, uprooting trees. Miraculously no animals perished, but the park was closed for 10 weeks as an army of rangers and volunteers worked on the clear-up.

Tonka the wombat went off his food. No matter what the rangers placed in front of him, even his beloved carrots and sweet potato, he wouldn’t eat it. He dropped 20 per cent of his body weight in a matter of weeks. Just as alarmingly, he had suddenly retreated into himself. The wildly charismatic Austin Powers of the marsupial world inexplicably lost his mojo. It was as if Cyclone Yasi had blown away into oblivion and taken Tonka’s spark with it.

Park management consulted the best veterinary minds money could buy. They did blood tests, looked for internal damage, tested for disease and infection, checked his body for broken bones or bruising. Physically, there was nothing. So how to explain the reduced interest in once pleasurable activities, the loss of energy and slowed behaviour, the increased desire to sleep and the loss of appetite? The vets had nothing to offer, except to say bare-nosed wombats have feelings too. Tonka the wombat, it seemed, was living with clinical depression.

“He’s a bit chunky,” Douglas says, studying her subject on the metal workbench. “He’ll take a bit to thaw. He needs to be thawed out before we remove the skin. There’s no getting around that with taxidermy. You do have to skin the animal. It’s quite confronting – there’s blood and there’s guts and it’s kind of like a butcher’s shop in a way, especially with an animal of Tonka’s size.”

Douglas has worked as a taxidermist at Queensland Museum for 16 years, moving into it from a background in visual arts and props and puppet-making for theatre. “My interest is not in taxidermy as such; it’s very much museum taxidermy, for the purpose of conservation. It’s about teaching people about the animals. It is sometimes the only way of seeing these animals that you would otherwise never get up close to.”

A rustic leather case of medical tools is open on her workbench: scalpels, rat’s tooth tweezers for removing flesh from hard-to-reach places, pliers and scissors and wire cutters and fine metal scoops designed specifically for scooping the brains out of birds’ skulls. She has a selection of drill bits for working on the bones of larger animals and fixing specimens to wooden perches.

She studies Tonka on the bench. She will draw some sketches before she skins, capture the curve of his muscles, the sag of his body fat. “You’re trying to recreate the body shape that comes out of the animal,” she says. “You’re taking the skin off like a glove. The whole body comes out in one piece.” She moves closer to Tonka’s face. “There is something important about seeing him at this point,” she says. “I’m trying to preserve that face as much as possible.”

It was this face that was plastered under headlines around the world. “Wombat Diagnosed with Depression” wrote the Daily Mail. “Depressed Orphan Wombat” declared The Huffington Post. “Wombat Diagnosed with Clinical Depression” reported the Daily Mirror.

It seemed so absurd, a clinically depressed wombat. While scientists considered whether it was even possible, animal lovers across the social media world sent deep, life-affirming messages to the inexplicably gloomy bare-nosed wombat in Townsville, Queensland.“Focus on the little things, Tonka.”“Just keep waddling, Tonka, one paw at a time.”“Stars can’t shine without darkness, Tonka.”

“One hundred per cent, he had depression,” says Samm Sherman, a 27-year-old PhD candidate at James Cook University’s College of Science and Engineering, and the former Billabong Sanctuary wildlife carer who was closer to Tonka than anyone. Sherman documented her close friendship with Tonka through a series of Instagram images tagged “#bestfriendisawombat”.

“That wasn’t a joke,” she says. “It truly wasn’t a joke. He was my best friend. You can ask the people I worked with. They saw it. I loved him immediately when I saw him. He was just so special. I would take him for walks. I’d give him cuddles, a little chin scratch. I mean, I know we didn’t hang out all the time and it’s not like we’d go to the movies or anything, I’m not delusional, but if I was ever frustrated or stressed or anything I could go to him and give him a cuddle and I’d feel better. And… ummm… yeah.”

She pauses for a moment. “I miss him,” she says. She pauses for another moment. “Thanks for making me cry at work.”

Tina Janssen has spent the past decade running Safe Haven, a wombat research and rehabilitation centre in Mt Larcom, near Rockhampton. She was one of many experts Billabong Sanctuary consulted during Tonka’s downturn. “Yes, I think they can feel sadness,” she says. “Wombats are a very funny animal. They sulk. They don’t like change. That’s one of the big things with wombats. If you feed them, for example, at a certain time every day and then, all of a sudden, you change that, they will quite likely not eat.

“They’re really intelligent. People say, ‘Stubborn as a mule’ and I always say, ‘Well, you’ve never met a wombat’. They just dig in. And they get attachments. I have a captive-born wombat that I’ve cared for for 12 years and just recently I went away and for three nights she didn’t eat. If they have a square water bowl then you better bloody give them water in the square water bowl.”

Cyclone Yasi brought great change to Billabong Sanctuary. With the park’s rangers focused on the clean-up effort, Tonka’s daily routine was torn asunder. With no visitors for 10 weeks, he was denied his morning and afternoon wombat shows, something akin to Olivier being asked to wait forever in the wings at the Old Vic.

“He loved those shows,” Sherman says. “I would see him before the shows some days. He would be waiting at his gate, like, ‘Come on, let’s go people’.” The born entertainer. Tonka came alive before a gig. “He loved the cuddles from people. He needed the cuddles. I think it stemmed from not having a mum. But when the park was closed for a couple of months while they fixed everything up, there was no time for him to be cuddled.”

By the time the park was ready for its grand reopening, Tonka was considered too physically and emotionally fragile to resume the shows, and another wombat took his place. “When he saw the people, he walked up to the fence like [he was asking] ‘Why aren’t you picking me up for the show?’” Sherman says. “So one of the rangers took him out to meet people again. And, then, after his first cuddles he went back into his enclosure and started eating again. It genuinely was because he wasn’t getting his cuddles from people that he wasn’t eating.” Billabong Sanctuary’s star attraction was back, and so was Tonka’s self-esteem.

Valentine’s Day. Alison Douglas walks into her museum basement work room, past two cast and painted pythons and a taxidermy deer that’s been donated to the museum by a member of the public. She enters the skinning room, where Tonka waits on her workbench. He looks playful. She’s captured him at a typically spirited moment, tugging on the shoelace of a Billabong Sanctuary ranger. “He came together all right in the end,” Douglas says. “I wanted to show that he wasn’t just any wombat, he meant something more to people. I was trying to get that sense of fun and connection he had to anyone who came along.”

She worked on him over summer. His skin was put in a tanning solution for three weeks and washed. She cast his ears and the shape of his back. She cast his skull and rebuilt it with expanding foam, and gave him glass black eyes. The insides of his body and legs were painstakingly crafted from natural plant fibres and bound tightly with string. “He was quite a challenge because during his treatment [after death] he had patches of fur removed, which limited the choices of positions he could be in,” she says. “The patching wasn’t as straightforward as it usually would be because there wasn’t much to work with, but I’m happy with him.” Her time with Tonka has ended. Time to take him upstairs where others can enjoy his company. Time to say goodbye.

Samm Sherman remembers when she said goodbye to Tonka. It was June last year, and Tonka had been diagnosed with kidney failure. “I’m gonna tear up again,” she says, taking a breath. “I wasn’t working there anymore by then but I still visited quite often... And the last couple of days, when it seemed like he was really having a hard time of it, we’d go and he wasn’t really eating much but he ate a pear. He didn’t stand up for a bit but he ate this pear lying down. He didn’t usually eat pears but it was because it was soft and full of fluid. And then they told us they were going to take him to the vet to euthanise him.”

She pauses again. “That was the right call because there was nothing they could do,” she says. “He had irreversible kidney damage and his quality of life was really poor. He seemed really unhappy. A bunch of us went in and gave him some cuddles. And we said our goodbyes.”

She showered Tonka with nose kisses. She scratched him on the spot on his back where he loved being scratched and he curled up in her arms. She didn’t know what he was thinking but she had an idea of what he was feeling because she felt it too. “And I told him I loved him,” she says.

Sherman went home and waited for the world to hear the news of Tonka the wombat’s passing. She watched the hundreds of condolence messages land in Billabong Sanctuary’s Facebook page, messages from across the world.

Jill Halliday: “I didn’t even know what a wombat was before I cuddled the lovely Tonka. I know how sad we feel from meeting him once so it must be awful for everyone at Billabong Sanctuary.”

Linda Chillon: “I hope that you’ll find peace and happiness wherever you are.”

Crystal Allen: “Oh no, poor Tonka. My two youngest boys come to visit each school holidays and knew his story off by heart.”

Kerrianne Chappell: “Noooo! I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it!”

In the museum basement taxidermy room, Alison Douglas throws a half-smile at this perfect and still version of Tonka. Soon the great performer will be back where he belongs, in front of crowds of fawning strangers. Douglas is relieved. She wanted to do him justice. She hopes people see the same thing she sees when she looks at him now, something she was trying to capture, something beyond science, something more closely related to feelings.

“He was loved,” she says. “And they loved him because they knew him.”

Tonka and Alison Douglas will be part of the Let’s Talk Taxidermy event on March 24-25 at the World Science Festival in Brisbane. worldsciencefestival.com.au

#wombat #tonka #taxidermy

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