Ramblers in Paradise

JACKIE'S JEWEL Why do jewelers put pearls in their mouths? We know one jeweler who now practices a bit more restraint, all because of a little friend of ours named Jackie…. Jackie is arguably the grumpiest koala at the Featherdale Wildlife Park in the Adelaide Hills of southern Australia. All the koalas there are grumpy. You would be too if you were nocturnal and someone kept waking you up all day while you were trying to sleep it off. That’s right – sleep it off. The average koala is perpetually intoxicated from gorging on eucalyptus leaves, which ferment almost immediately in its tummy. The reason Jackie and her buddies are repeatedly roused from their enhanced slumbers is so they can be hugged and photographed by tourists, who make the pilgrimage to Featherdale and an increasing number of other preserves for just that transfiguring experience. Whatever department in the Aussie government oversees such things is now moving to outlaw the practice, which is understandable. How would you react, mate, if you were trying to sleep off a dozen Fosters and some round, furry creature reeking of eucalyptus kept waking and mauling you? After visiting and hand-feeding packs of laid-back kangaroos and aggressive emus at the park, Martha and I found ourselves in a queue to have a love-fest with a koala. Our hug mate turned out to be the aforementioned Jackie, a 7-year-old female who seemed to be sneering at us in between gulps of eucalyptus. Martha held and nuzzled her while I dispensed large quantities of hallucinogenic vegetation and tried to video at the same time. Then the staff arranged a formal Polaroid portrait while we held the rotund inebriate between us. She mellowed during this final ordeal and actually seemed to be smiling in the finished photo. After a shower that evening at our hotel, we ate dinner at a nearby restaurant. Returning to our room later that night, we noticed a subtle aroma. Was that the essence of eucalyptus from a room freshener – a sachet put into our chest of drawers by a thoughtful attendant – or was it something else, something on our clothing? A search narrowed the field to the photo-vest with its dozen pockets that Martha had worn earlier that day. Lo and behold, in one of those pockets Jackie had left a souvenir or, perhaps, a critique of the whole affair – a small, oblong pellet, redolent of eucalyptus and hard to the touch when retrieved with a tissue so we could dispose of it. And then, a sudden antic inspiration… Dispose of it? Why not instead… We did not declare this souvenir at customs in New York. In our defense no mention of such a commodity is found on the customs declaration, and we were not about to ask anyone what duty status Jackie’s memento might have. The dog employed to sniff out recreational drugs in our luggage gave us a long quizzical look and then, shaking his head, went about his business. Whew! That would have been hard to explain. Shortly thereafter we paid a visit to Lynn at Specialty Gems in Crystal River to discuss settings for a black pearl we had found during different circumstances on our meanderings. Lynn took the pearl, stared at it for a long while with her loupe and then, as part of the evaluation, put it in her mouth. (Fake pearls feel smooth when rubbed across the teeth, while real ones feel gritty.) It was determined to meet all standards, and we decided on a setting. Then the moment of revelation was at hand for Jackie’s Jewel. Martha unwrapped it. “What do you make of this?” she asked, handing it over in its tissue. Out came the loupe again and an even longer examination ensued by a very puzzled jeweler, who finally frowned and opened her mouth. “Whoa!” Martha and I yelled in unison. “You don’t want to do that!” More visual and olfactory attention followed, and Lynn zeroed in on the persistent odor of eucalyptus. “What the heck is this? My God, it’s got hairs in it!” was all Lynn could finally muster. So we told her the story. She turned several shades of green, replaced the pellet very carefully as if it might explode, and then excused herself to wash her hands. A discussion followed on what to do with this unique curio. Our original thought had been to dip it in liquid gold and set it in some way, but molten gold would probably destroy Jackie’s Jewel, Lynn estimated. Instead, a series of emersions in polyurethane was selected, along with a mounting in what resembled a little golden birdcage. As a postscript, we visited Featherdale again two years later and discovered that Jackie was still alive and healthy but retired from the jewelry business. We asked to see her but were told she was taking a nap.