Peter Allison - How to Walk a Puma

Then came the clincher. In keeping with the intended attack on the Roy Boys’ machismo—and being macho is not something I’m often accused of; in fact, as a soft Sydneysider I am so in touch with my feminine side it would be no surprise if I lactated—I was required, purely for my owners’ amusement, to wear a dress. And not just any dress. The small town adjacent to the reserve had a store selling second-hand and fancy-dress clothes, from which a pink and white chequered schoolgirl’s dress had been selected. It was garish, and tight in all the wrong places.

‘I think we need to talk about rugby a lot today,’ I said as I emerged in my gorgeous attire to the jeers and hoots of the other volunteers.

The new trainee, an Englishman named John, was starting with us that day. I began to explain to him some of Roy’s quirks, but he soon interrupted me. ‘You know I can’t really take in anything you’re saying while you’re wearing that, right?’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Adrian, maybe you better go over it all. I’ll just go machete some vines or something.’

Maybe Roy felt some smug satisfaction at seeing me in a dress (‘Who’s got feminine features now?’ I could imagine him asking), but like most animals he wasn’t interested in clothing unless it smelled peculiar. He greeted us the same way he did every morning, and eyed John the trainee with a look I’d seen before.

‘Let’s see what sort of mood he’s in,’ I said as we approached the first hill on Roy’s trail. ‘Keep up if you can, John,’ I added, just as Roy bolted.

By now, Adrian and I were used to the footholds, and knew which trees you could grab and which you couldn’t. (With no guide to the area’s flora, we had come up with our own names for some distinctive species, including the Bastard Tree, covered in vicious spines usually concealed under beards of lichen. You only grabbed a Bastard Tree once.) John didn’t know the trail, and I heard him cursing in his English accent and a solid ‘thwap’ at one point as he slipped, but I had no time to turn as Roy was putting on a show and ran, ran and ran.

‘Not good,’ Adrian said simply.

Roy barely paused until we approached one of his hot zones, at which stage I became anxious that he was just getting his energy levels back up for some hard jumping.

He was. I wasn’t on lead, so Adrian took the brunt of it, but as the number-two guy my job was to be there and make sure that I got Roy off him fast, then lead him away until we were out of the area. But the moment I had him off Adrian he jumped me. Adrian pulled him off—and he went straight for Adrian again. We finally got him through the zone and had some respite for the next few minutes as he kept a pace just above leisurely.

Once he had the breath to speak, Adrian added to his earlier verdict: ‘Not good at all.’ I grunted my agreement, and trotted along behind him, offering words of encouragement to John, who was struggling to keep up with us.

‘Frankly I think it’s lunatic to go out every day into the jungle when there’s a very good chance that a puma will bite you,’ said John at the end of the walk. ‘I think you’re both mad.’

‘I don’t suppose I can argue with that while wearing this,’ I said, plucking at the stifling inbuilt lycra knickers of my outfit with one hand, and reaching for the machete with the other, in the hope of looking more butch.

‘You look like Braveheart’s gay cousin,’ John commented.

I was worried that John might quit, and leave us without a substitute. Two days later he did, limping off with a sprained ankle, and once again it was just the three of us on the trails, Adrian and me plagued by fatigue and footrot, Roy unfazed by anything except when we managed to block his attempts in the hot zones.

Soon afterwards we had a scorchingly hot day, the sort that raises beads of sweat on your brow at the mere thought of action. Despite the knowledge that we’d perspire so profusely that it would stream down our legs and fill our boots, Adrian and I liked these days. The trail was exhausting enough for us in these conditions, but Roy had to do it wearing a fur coat. He generally ran little on these days, taking the shortest trails and, most welcome of all, jumping far less than usual.

True to form, though, Roy defied our expectations and took off early, maintaining a punishing pace. My feet squelched in their rubber tombs, and mosquitoes, trying to bite me, instead drowned in the rivers of sweat that flowed over my body.

Roy kept running and eventually we crossed a particularly slippery part of the trail, sliding and skidding to keep up before dropping down to one of the most picturesque sections. It was a creek bed with a series of small falls and crystal-clear pools. Ferns acted as parasols overhead and the jungle rang with constant cries of alarm from monkeys as Roy passed through. Roy would often stop to drink here, and on some days pause for a rest, settling gently into one of the pools.

Today the heat had finally taken its toll on him and he decided to linger for a dip. I gently scooped up some water into my hands and trickled it over his head and ears until he flicked his tail, letting me know he’d had enough.

The sound of a small motor approached, incongruous in such a setting. On occasion we heard trucks on the nearby roads as they carried their loads of lumber (and with it the sad promise of more habitat loss and therefore stranded animals) to the nearby mill, but this was a different noise. Then suddenly, from down the creek came a flash of green and purple, zigging beelike before zagging away, almost too fast to see. Finally the hummingbird came closer, and to my utter delight it hovered, wings whirring and making the mechanical sound within inches of Roy’s head, directly over his upturned face. It held itself there then scooted to Adrian, where it paused briefly, before repeating the performance with me, fanning my face with manic wingbeats. Then with a whirr of wings and a pop of colour it was gone. It was such a rare moment, something so hard to explain, so beautiful and wonderful and unexpected. A jewel in time.

‘Wow,’ I said, to Roy, to Adrian, to myself.

‘Nice,’ said Adrian.

Even though Roy usually showed his hunting instincts by flushing out and chasing ground birds on the trail, he didn’t react to the hummingbird at all. He just stood up, shook himself like a dog, spraying Adrian and me in the process, and set off again, refreshed enough that he made a half-hearted jump just along the trail. But my mood couldn’t be dampened, and I felt an unfamiliar flicker of enjoyment.

‘Good boy,’ I said to Roy, and to my surprise, I meant it.

Over the next few days something strange happened: Roy’s hot zones went cold. At the approach to each hot zone an anticipatory noise like the zinging of violins would start in my ears, but Roy just strolled on through, not even glancing back at us to see if we were lagging behind enough for him to wreak havoc. Normally he was diligent in checking our whereabouts during the hot zones—if we weren’t right by his shoulders and ready to grab his collar he rarely missed an opportunity to turn and bite.

Each day someone would ask Adrian and me how Roy was behaving. His reputation at the park was that of the adventure cat, but for two and a half days we had to disappoint them by replying, ‘He’s turned into a puppy. Just quietly walks the trails.’ I started patting him when I had the chance, and even bent down and bumped heads with him on occasion, smiling when he returned the gesture. It was as if I had passed a test, and we now had a bond impossible to imagine two weeks before. Whether all the early jumping had been intended to assert dominance, or to try to drive me away, I couldn’t know. Regardless, I was glad for the reprieve, and spoke to Roy in softer tones, using the word ‘bastard’ a lot less often when talking about him to the other volunteers.