Birubi

‘And say the animal responded?’ – Jacques Derrida ‘Why did Derrida not ask… if a Gregory Bateson or Jane Goodall or Marc Bekoff or Barbara Smuts… have met the gaze of living, diverse animals and in response undone and redone themselves and their sciences?’ – Donna Haraway Small, tucked and rounded creature, curled like a kidney bean, rough grey-brown fur, wide, silken nose. Koala of the undergrowth, similarly singular. Sick and malnourished, motherless, and mother-seeking, hurting at the loss of his own marsupial mother. Eager at the bottle and needy for affection. Responsive to contact, crooning, caress. In 1989, a year and a day after her son John died at 29 from a severe form of arthritis, a young wombat arrived at the mountain forest home of esteemed Australian ecophilosopher and activist Val Plumwood. Plumwood had taken him in under the supervision of a wildlife group local to her. This was in the Southern Tablelands, not far from Canberra. Birubi was around a year old when he…