Killer in the Shadows

Behind the shadows he lurks, hiding him like a secret, intimidating bright blue eyes, baby bird in mouth, ready to eat,

A closer look displays that the bird is an endangered Carnaby’s Black cockatoo,

The mother’s cries echo through your ears, panic and desperation, the third baby gone, leaving one sibling, now an only child,

She wails so deep, her eyes a beautiful auburn, reminding you of crunchy autumn leaves raked in a pile, but her eyes, wasted on so many tears you could fill a swimming pool,

The baby bird’s eyes fluttered closed. Gone, dead. And no one to blame but one,

A trail of blood leaving evidence showed the culprit, but he wasn’t petrified, he was proud,

He crept along the dimly lit porch, pitch black, midnight terror, his owners completely oblivious of the damage inflicted,

No existing guilt from these monsters, their minds set on prey, catch, kill, eat,

The cats need to be controlled, as we doll them up and pamper them,

They decide to erase species, special to us, important to us, unique to us, they masquerade from us,

As they crawl and creep, breeding and multiplying, unstoppable, we sit and watch, too lazy to do anything. What have they become? What have we become?

The soft tweet of birds sings joyfully in your ears, tall native grass blowing ever so gently, the smell of smoke from a distance bush fire. All ordinary, is it?

No, the perfect day to some, but right under their noses, a feral cat takes the life of the last-ever desert bandicoot, as if it were just another,

She lays dead in the grass, last of her species, life taken so casually, many grieving that day. But only blame themselves for being so… negligent, careless, inattentive, lackadaisical, and not only the bilby hurting, also our hearts, and our earth.