The Duckman: Appreciate the hand that feeds you

EARLIER this year we had our first fox attack. Dozens of ducks were slaughtered in a pen, left mostly with their throats pierced.

Cartoon: Simon Schneider

EARLIER this year we had our first fox attack. Dozens of ducks were slaughtered in a pen, left mostly with their throats pierced.

When I first saw the results of the night’s carnage I had trouble comprehending what I was seeing. The greyness of early morning still lurked and provided some camouflage to death.

Unfortunately reality grabbed me by my un-ripped throat. Soon the good wife and I were doing what we had to do. Later we made changes that will hopefully prevent us having to again spend a day dealing with a fox’s idea of a riotous night out.

In fact, inspired by reading a little excerpt from within the fine pages of The Weekly Times, Jodi and I, and our two girls, Madi and Milla, adopted two young foxes.

According to an organisation featured in the paper, offering a home to a murdering feral animal is a perfectly sensible thing to do. After all, the very best farmers take pride in trying to live with the natural environment. Many have planted native trees to work as windbreaks for stock as well as wildlife corridors for indigenous animals (those not killed by foxes at least).

Such laudable qualities – working with nature to make a dollar – are almost as admirable as the good wife walking past a shop’s sale sign without peeking inside.

My inspiring reading was actually the regular Dill of the Week. This particular weeks’ winner was those people who find homes for orphaned foxes. It may have taken two seconds to read, but much has come out of that blink in time. Most importantly I became aware there are people on this earth more irrelevant than Cory Bernardi.

The truth is, I haven’t really adopted foxes and since we’re making confessions, I can also tell you I have bought a shiny new gun.

When it comes to farming, I sometimes think I’m an extra in some elaborately staged joke, such is the challenge of making a dollar from the soil. But in this case, I hope I am the dill and that this Dill of the Week was the joke.

But, so gobsmacked was I by it, I began to wonder if there wasn’t a more serious matter to consider. Are such views on foxes confined to people in the city? Surely such an opinion can only come from people with absolutely no affinity for our natural environment or interaction with rural Australia. If so, what to make of the disconnect?

The good wife and I believe the gap between farmers and those tortured by peak hour traffic is diminishing. Our opinion is based on personal experience. We sell our ducks to many Melbourne restaurants where chefs and customers know and care about where their food comes from and how it is farmed.

Jodi and I, refugees from the city, also know the daily torture of peak hour and crowds can inevitably lead to moments where city folk can become demented. This, though, is usually only ever temporary. Given their astonishing plans seem a little too permanent, there can be no accounting for the fox adopters. Yet they’ll be nowhere near as sound as the plans of the food producers – those who regularly deal with foxes – the shepherds, the chicken crew and the milk makers, who have to shoot cows when a fox has eaten a calving cow’s udder, who live with their land.

Reading about that Dill ultimately made me appreciate even more the importance of at least trying to be connected to the land that feeds us.

• Greg Clarke and his wife, Jodi, farm ducks at Port Campbell. To read the original tales of the Clarkes’ venture, visit theweeklytimes.com.au