From the sheep paddock they followed the blood trail to the neighbouring forest, from where they were easily able to pick out and follow a trail of fleeing paw prints, left in the thick carpet of pine needles and gum leaves that covered the forest floor.

They tracked the prints for almost a kilometre, until they suddenly converged on a great twisted ghost gum.

“Looks like it took its kill up a tree to feed,” suggested Andrew.

“Don’t be stupid!” protested Sam.   “Wolves can’t climb trees.”

“This one obviously could,” said Mel.   He pointed up to where the bloody, half eaten carcase of a sheep was wedged tightly in a fork in a great bough, five or six metres off the ground.   “Either that or Charles Fort was right after all!”

“Who the hell is Charles Fort?”

“Was, not is,” corrected Mel, “he died forty years ago.   Charles Fort was an American pseudo-scientist, who devoted his life to the study and documentation of rains of fishes and frogs.”

“Rains of…But that’s crazy!”

“On the contrary,” corrected Mel, “that’s the sane part.   The crazy part was Fort’s explanation of where the frogs and fishes came from before falling from the sky.   Since fish and frogs can’t fly, Fort argued that they must be extraterrestrial fishes and frogs, falling from passing flying saucers.”

“But what would Earth-type frogs and fishes be doing on board flying saucers?” asked Andrew Braidwood.

“Ah…Well, that’s the big hole in the theory,” agreed Mel.   “Obviously Fort rejected the theory of evolution.   Or else it simply never occurred to him that two identical species couldn’t have evolved separately on two different planets.”

“But what the hell has all that got to do with the black wolf killing my sheep?” demanded Sam Hart.

“Nothing, except that if we rule out the idea of the sheep falling from a UFO, then we’re stuck with the fact that whatever killed it carried the carcase up this tree to eat it.”

“But wolves can’t climb trees!” said Sam for the second time.

“Then whatever raided your sheep station can’t have been the black wolf,” pointed out Andrew Braidwood.