The previous night’s thunderstorm flushed the coucal trail clean.

Wet gum leaves clumped like lost feathered fishing lures tangled 

up in a snag. A baby king parrot hopped along the path in front 

of you both, ripped from its nest by the wind’s calamitous fingers. 

One of its parents shadowed it from branch to branch – it had 

no tail feathers, no rudder to steer it skywards; could only fly-hop 

like the Wright Brothers’ first balsawood & silk plane. It careened 

off the path like a flightless throwback. Then you came across the 

first casualty. The biggest moth you’d ever seen. As long as your 

index finger, powder-coat camouflage flaked off like frayed canvas; 

its see-through silicon wings frozen like a tent’s trim blizzard roof 

or a coffin’s firm lid. Turning it over, a huge snow-white abdomen 

adorned its undercarriage like a cruise missile, but it smelt rank, 

as though death had given it a mammal’s gradual power of decay. 

Your wife dry-retched. Christmas Eve killings continued to fall.