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Moa, Moose & Maeroero
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morgue
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Jan 22, 2007 02:40 PST
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Or: Creatures of the South
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There are moa down there. New Zealand's largest flightless bird, the
moa, is reputed to be extinct since before the arrival of Captain Cook
- but I choose to believe it's not. Because the world would be a
cooler place if there were still gigantic, curious birds stomping
around its most mysterious recesses.
Besides, a moa was seen just a dozen years ago. By a guy who ran a
pub in the area. The pub then becoming a well-patronised tourist
destination. Hmm. His name was Paddy Freaney, and yes he's Irish,
and you can see the photo he took of the moa at <a
href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa> Wikipedia</a>. Unless it's a
photo of a sock puppet. Or perhaps a seagull.
So now that we have established beyond all doubt that the moa exists,
it is with regret that I report Aaron and I failed in our quest to
find one, despite making numerous moa-appropriate calls into the bush
wilderness. Inexplicable.
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And moose. The moose of the deep south were confirmed to exist in
2000, with the discovery of a verifiable clump of moose hair in the
depths of Fiordland. The <a
href=http://www.nzwt.co.nz/projects.htm>New Zealand Wildlife Research
Trust is working</a> on finding out more about them, and perhaps
snapping an elusive picture of the Fiordland moose in its natural
Fiordland habitat.
As an aside, I love that a large chunk of New Zealand is called
'Fiordland' because it is entirely made up of fiords/fyords. That's
how they do it down south - no fancy dressing things up for them.
They call a land of fiords a Fiordland and crack open a Speights mate,
pride of the South.
And despite the drinking of Speights, and Monteiths, in abundance, and
making numerous moose-appropriate calls into the bush wilderness, no
moose came to disturb our campsite. Or if they did we were already
asleep in our tent.
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And the maeroero. The sasquatch of the Catlins, on the South Island's
southeast tip - as it says on <a
href=http://www.catlins.org.nz/iwi.htm>the Catlins site</a>, "Maori
legend has it that large hairy monsters inhabited these valleys of
forest, their name was Maeroero, meaning wild man of the forest and
were feared by all Maori."
We did our best to lure a maeroero to our table by playing abundant
cribbage and drinking bourbon and making numerous maeroero-appropriate
calls into the bush wilderness, but no maeroero emerged from the
darkness. The only wild hairy men of the bush were Aaron and myself.
And perhaps that's the truth in all of this - that you can go looking
for the secrets of the wilderness, but all you find there is yourself.
With a beard.
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So, given our lack of luck with the moa, the moose and the maeroero,
what creature did make an impact on our Southern Odyssey? It was the
sandfly. New Zealanders, and travellers who've experienced them, will
give a shiver of acknowledgement at the thought of these creatures.
They are tiny, millimetre-long flying insects with a disturbing desire
to drink your blood, and they leave behind swollen irritations which
in their numbers can be atrociously uncomfortable. Tenacious and
pernicious, the sandfly accompanied us all down the West Coast, out to
Milford Sound, and turned up again in Piano Flat on our last night
together. They came at us in great numbers, hundreds, even thousands
of them, clustering against our tent and flying into the car and
landing on us all over. They were constantly drawn to us. I do
believe they worshipped us as Gods, whole sandfly civilisations rising
and falling over different interpretations of our holy writ. They
loved to get on to our exposed skin and bite.
We hated them. Strict biosecruity measures, learned at the NZ border
crossing, maintained the integrity and safety of our tent. Outside of
that, we relied on some very effective insect repellents, which had
the effect of convincing a sandfly that has landed on you not to bite,
but instead to fly to another part of you and see if it can bite
there, and so on and so on.
The sandflies were fairly intense in tiny Haast, at the south end of
the West Coast road. Haast, you will recall, is a tiny hamlet of a
few hundred people - this total a huge advance on the population in
1990 - with a single small "supermarket". It gave me no end of
bewildered pleasure to note that sandfly-beset Haast's only retail
outlet had a sign out front saying that no-one wearing insect
repellent was allowed within. The owner, it seems, is extremely
allergic.
One supposes she married into the region.
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