The Beginning of Restoration (3)
"How is this even..."
Grace had arrived at the spot where the parrots had scattered their seeds and moved on, and the look on her face as she took in the landscape was one of open astonishment. Color was beginning to show in a place that had been nothing but gray. Across ground that had flaunted a dull, ashen palette, flecks of green and pale yellow were starting to appear.
"You only had the parrots scatter the seeds yesterday evening, didn't you? How are there already sprouts..."
The green and yellow on the ground came from sprouts just beginning to push their way up. They'd grown no longer than a fingernail—not enough to leap out at a glance, but enough that you could tell they were there.
"I suppose you could call this Druid quality."
I shrugged at Grace, who made no effort to hide her surprise, and looked around. Where every tree charred black by the bushfire had vanished, sprouts were beginning to rise, and the sight struck me as rather beautiful. Before I knew it, I'd pulled out my phone and snapped a photo.
It was a shot I was reasonably happy with, but something about it felt a little lacking.
Trees. There need to be trees. Leave it like this and this place won't be a forest—it'll be a field.
"Grace."
"They really sprouted... Oh, were you calling me?"
"Would it be possible to get saplings in bulk? We've got koalas here as well, so please include eucalyptus. And there must be trees that grow incredibly fast—it would be nice to have some of those, too."
Grace was nodding before I'd even finished.
"We already have saplings stocked in large quantities. They were prepared so we could plant them once the soil improved, but the ground never showed any sign of recovering, so they went unplanted. As for a fast-growing tree, eucalyptus would be ideal. Eucalyptus is quite a fast-growing species."
I nodded at the news that they had enough eucalyptus on hand to fill the entire surrounding area.
"We can't plant only eucalyptus, though. The leaves produce an oil that catches fire very easily."
Cautioning me that they could become the cause of another bushfire and would have to be planted in moderation, Grace immediately started making calls to have the saplings transported. Having seen sprouts push up out of the ash in a single day with her own eyes, she seemed to have decided it was all right to plant them.
I gave a small smile at that and decided to head back to the lodging. With things only just beginning to sprout, there was nothing more for me to do on my own.
"...Why does it feel like there are even more of them?"
What greeted me on my return, though, was animals that had multiplied yet again. There were so many of them it almost seemed as if the animals, not the plants, were the ones breeding at a breakneck pace. Kangaroos sprawled all around the lodging turned the walk into a sudden obstacle course, and wombats—fond of people, apparently—had glued themselves to the bodyguards and were diligently obstructing their every move. The koalas, meanwhile, were flopped in some convenient corner, fast asleep.
Even so, on the way back I'd seen that they'd carried out the work I'd given them quite faithfully. I could tell from the grasses of every kind scattered across the ashen ground.
I picked my way along carefully so as not to step on any of them and stepped inside, only to find Soeun caught in Noona's hold and whining.
"Hm? What's going on?"
"...She's curious about a kangaroo pouch and keeps trying to climb in. Talk her out of it."
"Appa! Can I go in the kangaroo pouch?!"
She'd clearly been caught in the act of trying to climb into one. Our zoo had only wallabies in place of kangaroos, and with no joeys around she'd never paid the pouches any mind—until she saw a kangaroo carrying a joey, and her interest caught fire.
"That's a place for the baby kangaroos, so you can't go in, Soeun."
"Uuung... but I wanted to try!"
I smiled at Soeun, her lips pushed out in a thoroughly disappointed pout. A few of the bodyguards nearby, though, managed only awkward smiles. They were the ones who now and then lost a sparring match to a wallaby and got teabagged for it—heads shoved straight into the creature's pouch.
Freed from Noona, Soeun pressed her face to the window and peered outside. There wasn't much worth looking at; she was watching the animals.
"Appa! They're running away!"
"Hm?"
At the news that the animals were fleeing, I couldn't hide my puzzlement. I went over to where Soeun stood and looked outside.
Just as she'd said, the animals out there really did seem to be scurrying off in a hurry. The reason became clear almost at once. About five large cargo trucks were rolling up toward the lodging in a line.
When I stepped outside, the animals that had fled came creeping back and crowded in around me. I gave a light stroke along the back of a wombat trembling at my feet, then walked over to Grace, who was signaling toward the trucks.
"What are those trucks?"
"The saplings you asked for earlier. They were being stored nearby, so we brought them right over."
She handled things so immediately it was as if she were truly devoted to restoring nature. I shook my head and approached the trucks as they finished parking.
Inside, saplings were packed in tight, row upon row—so many that just hauling them out and planting them looked like a job in itself.
"Our workers and the volunteers will take care of the planting."
Fortunately, there were people to put them in the ground. If I'd had to plant all of that myself, it would have been exhausting, no question.
"Th-this smell...!"
I'd only been looking at the trucks full of saplings for a moment when the koalas came ambling over. They'd caught the scent rising from the eucalyptus saplings inside. Unable to get proper nutrition from anything but eucalyptus leaves, they were painfully gaunt, and the sight of them stirred my pity. In the end I pulled a few eucalyptus saplings from the ones filling the truck and offered them over.
"Now this is the stuff!"
They tore into the leaves on the saplings as if they'd lost their minds over eucalyptus they hadn't tasted in ages.
"Did you know koalas don't eat young leaves?"
"They don't?"
"No. Young leaves are more toxic, so they mainly eat the mature ones."
Listening to Grace, I looked more closely and saw they weren't touching the young leaves at all. Thanks to that, more than half the leaves on the saplings would survive.
Watching them for a moment, I felt we needed to get the saplings in the ground quickly, if only for their sake.
"Hmm..."
As I watched the koalas chewing away at the eucalyptus and turned the problem over, the kangaroos and wombats caught my eye. They were locked in a petty standoff over the few grasses still left in the boxes that had held the fodder.
"Kangaroos, wombats—everyone, assemble!"
At my call they came over, looking as if to ask what this was about. They knew I was the one who fed them, so they were remarkably cooperative.
I started sorting the kangaroos and wombats that had gathered, forming them into teams of two kangaroos and one wombat each. By the time I was done, there were several dozen teams.
"All right. You take these and plant them. Kangaroos, you carry them. Wombats, you dig holes deep enough to plant them in. Then the kangaroos plant one each."
I gave them a quick demonstration—peeled the wrapping off the base of a sapling, dug a hole to that depth, and planted it just so.
That brought up one problem. The wrapping at the base of each sapling had to come off, and that was a bit much to ask of kangaroos and wombats. Of course, the problem wasn't hard to solve. We had the parrots, those flying delinquents of Australia's cities. Clever as they were, stripping a bit of wrapping would be nothing to them.
"The wombat digs, the parrot unwraps, and the kangaroo plants. Easy, right? Move out!"
One wombat on digging, two kangaroos on hauling and planting, and a parrot on unwrapping—they set off as a unit. I loaded a few saplings onto the kangaroos and sent them on their way, and they planted exactly as I'd instructed, diligent as could be.
A wombat would scratch out a small hole the way it dug a burrow, and a kangaroo would stand there holding a single sapling. The parrot would whip the wrapping off, and the kangaroo would drive the sapling straight down into the ground as if staking it in place. The wombat then covered it with soil and tamped it firm, and one sapling was planted.
"...Are we supposed to consider this natural ecosystem restoration, too?"
"The animals are doing it, so isn't it natural?"
Grace, watching beside me, couldn't hide how absurd she found the whole thing, but I only shrugged.
The volunteers who arrived not long after were no different. Seeing saplings go into the ground through the teamwork of wombats, kangaroos, and parrots, they stood there with their trowels and looked utterly dumbfounded. Some of them even seemed to feel defeated, watching the animals plant several times faster than they themselves could manage, digging away with all their might.
"Kwee!"
"Ah, all right. I'll move faster."
A number of the volunteers had even been reduced to a sapling shuttle, trailing after the animals—while getting scolded by kangaroos that whipped them with their tails to make them hurry up.
Even so, the planting raced along because of it, and color after color began to return to a place that had been nothing but ash.