Culling in the name of
A mournful violin solo set the tone as a downloaded video of Killing for Kicks got under way in ominously melancholy mood. Charlie Chabot sat in an antique wood and leather swivel chair at an antique walnut desk in a small library papered with paperbacks. He was peering down his bulbous nose through thin Granny glasses at a large flat screen monitor attached to a Dell computer. Simon Hogg sat in a dining table chair to Charlie’s right. I was to Charlie’s left, flat on my back on the floor with a cushion over my face. In a last minute show of cowardice, I had reneged on the deal, or at least half of it: I could hear the video; I could only see it if I lifted my head and peeked round the cushion. I had issued Charlie and Simon with express instructions not to elaborate on what the audio conveyed unless I asked for elaboration.
‘Kangaroos are unique to Australia,’ began a male narrator over the aforementioned mournful violin. ‘These extraordinary soft footed creatures have evolved over millions of years to live in harmony with their country’s fragile environment.’
‘What’s happening?’ I asked from beneath the cushion.
‘Just kangaroos hopping about in a field at the moment, Bailey!’ Charlie shouted.
‘I’m under a cushion, not a blanket.’
‘Sorry!’
‘But with the white settlers, other animals came – hard hoofed cattle and sheep whose feet are turning vast tracts of land into desert. Kangaroos have become the scapegoats. This year, the Australian Government authorized the slaughter of nearly seven million kangaroos, their meat and skin being sold across the world. A variety of excuses is used to justify the slaughter, not one of which stands up to scientific examination. The latest argument is that kangaroos are a valuable resource. In other words, Australia’s wildlife has no right to exist unless it pays its way. And it pays…with its life.’
A shot rang out on the audio and I heard Charlie cry ‘Oh, my!’ I winced beneath my cushion and pulled it tighter over my eyes. Simon, interestingly, remained mute. Then again, he was used to this sort of thing.
‘The killing industry supposedly operates to a code of practice,’ the narrator continued to an accompaniment of frequent rifle fire and equally frequent outraged moans from Charlie. ‘But it has no legal force. And as the killing takes place at night in the outback, it is completely unmonitored. Incredibly, it is football boots which underpin commercial killing.’
The roar of a crowd now. Sensing it was safe to come out, I peered around my cushion: A football match. A packed house. Legendary midfielder, Andrew Sandham curling an angled free kick around a helpless goalkeeper. Andrew Sandham running, celebrating, arms wide, shirt over his head, being mobbed by team mates.
‘And the biggest customer for skins is Asok…for its Marauder boots.’
Charlie and Simon both turned to gape at me. I gaped guiltily back.
‘Andrew Sandham not only wears these kangaroo skin boots, he also promotes them.’
‘Uh oh,’ said Charlie wincing at the screen. ‘Hold your hats – we’re back in the outback!’ I hid under my cushion.
‘This man is an unlicensed commercial killer shooting for the leather trade.’
More shots. More howls of derision from Charlie.
Now an unmistakably male Australian voice straight out of Kath and Kim. ‘Aw shit! What is it, a buck or a doe, mate?’ Then the voice of a child, indistinct, but excited. ‘Look at that big buck,’ said the Aussie bloke.
‘Yes, look at it!’ yelled Charlie. ‘It’s fucking dying!’
‘Charlie?’
‘Sorry, Bailey. Sorry!’
‘The fact that he has supplied some sixty kangaroos a night for twenty years without anyone asking questions makes a nonsense of government claims the industry is tightly controlled.’
‘They’re protected, these ones,’ said the Aussie bloke sounding a bit guilty. ‘But you don’t know, see?’
Now a diesel engine running – a four wheel drive, I surmised. More shots.
‘Oh, Lord,’ said Charlie. ‘A baby kangaroo. What’s he doing to it?’
‘G-God!’ said Simon, expressing anguish for the first time. This from a man who had seen more than his fair share of carnage, a sure sign matters onscreen were now officially off limits to other than the hardiest of souls. Confirmation of this came moments later: ‘Move over, Bailey,’ said Charlie, flopping down beside me with a cushion.
‘It’s an absolute disgrace,’ said a female, frightfully English voice on the audio. ‘I mean what we’ve got here is the biggest wildlife massacre the world’s ever seen. All for meat and skin Australians don’t even want.’
‘If the kangaroo industry is camera-shy, then that’s largely due to the efforts of British zoologist and animal rights campaigner, Julia Campbell. If she gets her way, culling will be outlawed.
‘I hope,’ said Julia Campbell, ‘that when Australians see this program, many people will wake up to what’s happening to the kangaroos. I think many people are just not aware of the issues. That millions of kangaroos are being shot for their meat and skins.’
‘Having successfully campaigned for the banning of kangaroo meat from British supermarkets, Julia Campbell wants to bring the fight to Australia.’
‘Unashamedly, you want to put this bloke out of business,’ said the narrator now turned interviewer.
‘Of course I want to put him out of business! He makes his living out of blasting the brains out of kangaroos!’
‘I don’t blast anything!’ an irate Australian yelled over her. ‘I shoot!’
Sensing another break in the bloodshed, I took a peek. Charlie had just done the same. Julia Campbell was a pretty, blond woman in her forties. The Aussie hunter was a pretty blond man in his thirties. They were sitting side by side on the steps of a veranda somewhere in rural Australia, hence the shrill chorus of cicadas I had been hearing in the background.
‘And killing their joeys?’ she said to her defiant foe, swatting flies from her face. ‘How do you feel when you take the joeys out of the mother’s pouch?’
‘I don’t shoot does with big joeys!’
‘And what do you do with the small joeys?’
‘Right, the small joeys are killed by the Code of Practice, which is a sharp blow to the back of the head.’
‘How do you feel when you take that joey out and you kill it?’
‘I don’t feel anythink (sic) at all. That’s my job. I’ve been doing it for so long.’
‘The kangaroo is Australia’s national symbol.’ We were back to narrative. ‘But that doesn’t prevent it from being treated with utter contempt by some.’
A bearded hunter in an Akubra hat aimed a high-powered rifle out the driver’s window of a four wheel drive. Charlie and I were back behind our cushions before the shot rang out.
‘This is not commercial killing. It is so called pest control.’ Then the gleeful giggling of a child accompanied by an odd repetitive bang; dull, metallic, like a tennis ball being thrown at a car door. This to the sound of a hardened battery hen farmer expressing quite alarming shock: ‘J-Jesus! No! Oh! God!’
‘Campbell’s radical vegetarian group Viva! has already stopped kangaroo meat exports to the lucrative British market. Now she wants to put the boot into the skin industry. Viva! has begun targeting soccer stars who wear kangaroo skin boots in a highly emotive campaign that is making headlines across the UK.’
‘The argument is ethical and scientific. It’s both,’ said Julia Campbell. ‘You have to ask yourself: is it right to blast the wildlife off the face of the planet for products nobody needs? So called luxury products.’
The violins returned and, from beneath my cushion, I heard Simon shuffle out of his seat with a heavy sigh. ‘Guys? You can c-come out now.’
*****
A Beethoven bust on a pedestal stared blankly at Simon Hogg from its corner of the Killing Hall library. Simon Hogg stared gravely back. That l-last bit was really g-grueling,’ he said at length.
Charlie and I, now upright and in chairs, cushions in laps, could only speculate.
‘Can I show you?’ Simon asked, the question directed at me.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Then, c-can I tell you?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Mmm,’ Charlie said, rubbing hands over his face as though trying to wipe away what he’d seen like excess moisturizer. ‘Sorry, but I think you should look. Or at least listen.’
‘You didn’t!’ I said rather pointedly.
‘I saw enough.’ His hands went to his lap and his eyes were red and sore. ‘But I’m not the one with the career-defining decision to make.’
I glared defiantly at both of them. They stared pleadingly back.
Then, after a long pause, Charlie said: ‘Do you drink whisky, Bailey?’
I glowered. ‘Not as a rule, no.’
‘Would you like to try some whisky, Bailey?’
A knowing smile settled uneasily over my defiance as the good intentions of Charlie’s euphemism sank in. This wasn’t about whisky. It was about Dutch courage.
We stared searchingly at each other for quite some time.
‘Yes, Charlie,’ I said finally. ‘I’d like to try some whisky.’
