The Wallaby and the Soccer Ball
It really had no idea what to do with it, which you’d suspect was not a surprise, but it was an avid tennis player already. Perhaps it was more the shape of the ball, that it was made for feet not for racquets held in the hand, that bewildered it so.
It pressed at the ball with its long foot, careful not to pierce it although the surface was already flaking away. The ball rolled away revealing a tattered new side and the wallaby leapt at it but its toe just punted it away towards a eucalypt. The ball bounced off with a thud and fell back to the ground onto sticks that it cracked and grass that it crunched.
The wallaby followed the ball into the shade of the tree and looked at its plaything again. It turned as a car rumbled past on the road nearby, the rattling earth tingling along its tail and toes in the way it would never get used to.
The car passed and the wallaby bent down to pick the ball up and it held it at chest height and looked about for some other bushland creature that might know more about what to do with it. The wallaby threw the ball at the tree and it bounced off again and then hit the wallaby’s chest and the wallaby darted back and then forward, this time turning, its tail solid and then into the side of the ball as it stung the skin through the fur.
The ball sailed through the air out over the bank of the pond then clear over the water then down with a splash. The wallaby looked on as the ripples raced out and the brown leaves floating on the water danced.
The wallaby hopped up to the water’s edge to watch it. Frogs in the middle of the pond sat atop their lily pads and looked at the ball and then the wallaby and they ribbitted in the way they do when they’re annoyed and then turned away from the wallaby.
The wallaby beat its tail on the bank to get their attention again. It just wanted the ball. The frogs knew. The bushland mood against pointless activity set in. The wallaby’s tail calmed. It looked about it and saw some friends off in the distance, snacking as they seemed to do all day without playing.
It looked back to the ball, now floating slowly towards the opposite bank, and it decided it would come back. It would teach the bush how to play with whatever rules it could come up with. It had taught them all tennis that way, the spider webs between the trees the nets, the wide expanse the court, the only rule to not let the ball hit the ground. Or, it supposed, the water. The same rules could apply.
