Chapter Six
The European wasp queen had laboured long and hard to build her nest in the cavity beneath the fallen tree. Years ago, when the stringybark gum stood lofty and strong, the hollow had been a kookaburra nursery. Before that, it belonged to a pair of boobook owls. Before them, a colony of tiny bats. Before them, sugar gliders and possums and parrots. Perched high above the ground, it had provided its tenants with a century of protection.
Now the hollow lay almost entirely buried. It was a roomy space, half a metre square, accessible only to tiny creatures, and the foundress was putting it to good use once more. Painstakingly, she cleared an entrance by moving aside small barriers: twigs and grass and little clods of mountain clay. She piled a screen of gumleaves around the hole
