Choice words from a choice man...

From the New Zealand Listener, April 23-29, 2005. Said by renowned conservationist Don Merton, who died today.

“They are our national monuments. They are our Tower of London, our Arc de Triomphe, our pyramids. We don’t have this ancient architecture that we can be proud of and swoon over in wonder, but what we do have is something that is far, far older than that. No one else has kiwi, no one else has kakapo. They have been around for millions of years, if not thousands of millions of years. And once they are gone, they are gone forever. And it’s up to us to make sure they never die out.”

Never a truer word was spoken.

Goodbye to a legend...

Renowned conservationist, Don Merton died today. As we tend to say in New Zealand, a mighty totara has fallen. 

Don and his old mate "Richard Henry" the kakapo

Someone recently described Don Merton as New Zealand conservation's answer to Sir Edmund Hillary.  Not a bad little comparison.  What Don was able to achieve for some of our native species was nothing short of staggering. 

I got to meet Don while traveling through the Subantarctic Islands in 2004. We had a great old time pointing out wildlife and going into raptures over sea lions, albatross and penguins.  Then, while filming "Meet the Locals" with TVNZ, we met with him and asked him to tell the story of the black robin.

If you don't know the story, it goes like this. The black robin, one of NZ's most endangered  birds, dropped to just 5 individuals when Don and the Wildlife Service team got to Little Mangere Island in the Chathams. In that 5 birds, was just one viable female, an older robin Don named "Old Blue". Thanks to some nifty nest-swapping and unlimited perserverance, the team got Old Blue breeding again, and saved the entire species.

After the black robin work, Don went on to lead the kakapo recovery programme, and again contributed to saving the species from certain extinction, due to nifty nest-minding techniques and total tenacity.  He has since gone on to advise on conservation projects around the world. 

In a strangely synchronous event, Don's kakapo-contemporary, the elderly kakapo Richard Henry (named for New Zealand's other legendary conservationist) died on Christmas Eve last year, after an enviable life-span of up to 100 years.  Richard Henry was the last remaining Fiordland kakapo, rediscovered by Don and his team in the 1970s. Shortly after Richard Henry and the Fiordland kakapo were discovered (all males), a remnant population of kakapo were found on Stewart Island (including the crucial females), and the opportunity to save the species began. Richard Henry's genes (because he came from a separate population) were very important for kakapo conservation, and he was certainly the 'elder statesman' of the kakapo clan.

Don and Richard Henry crossed paths many times over the following years, most recently when Don and his wife went to visit Richard Henry late last year. Don told me that he was very glad to have had that opportunity.  In correspondence I've had from Don this year, he seemed quite matter-of-fact about his illness, his one regret that he did not quite have enough time to finish all the conservation projects he was involved with.

I remember watching Don and his workmates on wildlife documentaries, when I was a kid, their work inspiring me to take up the career I have now. If Don has one lasting legacy among people, it was his unswerving dedication to the conservation of our most precious wildlife. I wish to help carry that torch, and I know I'm not the only one.

A little bit country...

We spent last Saturday visiting the Oxford A & P show.  There's been a rash of them lately in our area - but this is the first one I've been to this year. 

I love A&P shows. Always have. I love the unchanging nature of them. While almost every aspect of our day-to-day life changes constantly as technology increases, lives get busier and we fill every moment of our time with 'important' tasks, the A&P show is predictably the same. And that's extremely comforting.

The same rides (actually, this is no joke, they are exactly the same pieces of machinery I remember tentatively hopping onto twenty years ago), the same food caravans, and I'm sure, sometimes, the same people operating them.

I'm pretty sure that this is the same ferris wheel that I used to ride on at A&P shows when I was a kid...

Taking your family to the A&P show means you can amble along past shearing displays, the calf-judging, prize-winning poultry, and hand the kids a few bucks to go on a ride, or get a hot-dog, knowing they'll find you again soon. We left the father-in-law at the shearing (it's his favourite), and meandered over to the wood chopping contest, which was by far the most popular event.

This photo was taken about thirty years ago, but you can't really tell the difference between then and now in woodchopping competitions.

Sitting on hay-bales in the sun, we watched some of the fittest kiwi athletes I think I've ever seen power their way through logs in seconds, scale huge poles to cut the top of logs that stood twenty feet high, swinging axes with arms that would have put Popeye to shame.

Apart from the people-watching, and sneaking a pat from some of the livestock on display, my favourite part of the A&P show is actually inside. The arts and crafts and vegetable part, usually in a hall on the site.  Oxford's A&P show didn't disappoint. As a kid, I remember entering the flower-saucer competitions (usually involving some wilted looking pansies jammed in a saucer full of sand), but the vegetable-art one was probably always my favourite.  Bert and Ernie (below) were streets ahead of the usual potato-bunnies.

Bert and Ernie were definitely my favourite, looks like the judges thought so too.

The bloke and I wandered around the tables, exclaiming at the odd stand-out prize-winning vegetable, and muttering quietly to ourselves that our beans were better, my plum sauce was definitely competitive, and our kamo kamo were worth a shot at the top prize.  Next year, we'll enter our own fruits (well vegetables mostly) of our labour, and A&P shows will take on a whole new meaning.

And who knows, maybe one day soon, we'll be able to enter our own prize-winning poultry, lambs or cattle. I'm looking forward to that!

Mine's bigger than yours...

One of the veges that has been the most successful in our garden this year is the kamokamo.  I'd never eaten it before now, and upon trying it this summer, I have to say I really like it. It's kind of like a cross between a pumpkin and a zuchinni (tastes more like a zuchinni).  Some of you may know it as kumi kumi or Maori pumpkin.

Like many of the pumpkin and squash family, it starts in a fairly slow way, sitting quietly and non-descript in amongst the other plants. Then one morning, ZOOOM, you come out to see the garden, and this triffid has taken over your whole backyard!

Kamokamo is the plant that you can see everywhere here, running over gardens, along fences, and around the clothesline.  (chooks placed in picture to give correct scale!).

Our kamokamo this year have been extremely prolific, constantly growing the large striped green globes, with no signs of tiring yet.

Even now in April, we still have new kamokamo bursting forth.

Mostly it's best to eat kamokamo when they are relatively small, they can get tougher and less tasty as they grow bigger. The giveaway is when they start to turn orange. 

However, this year our kamokamo have grown like 'topsy' (as my Nanas would say), and have constantly produced large, tasty orbs of goodness like this one. 

Our most recent kamokamo, which I dubbed "Wilson" weighed 4.5 kilograms.

I have been going a wee bit stir-crazy working from home, and had almost started calling the enormous kamokamo "Wilson" in reference to my Castaway work situation.  Having got to that point, it was probably a good thing that friends from up North arrived here for a cup of tea the other day, and in exchange for a crayfish and some perch, I passed "Wilson" onto them for their culinary enjoyment. Kind of serependitous really, since they hail from the same area that the seeds of our kamokamo came from. Wilson has gone full circle. (aside: Reuben's Mum put it on the plane as her cabin-baggage, much to the amusement of the aviation security guys when they x-rayed her bag). 

Do any of you grow kamokamo? What's your favourite way to eat it?

Not quite loving ALL nature...

I quite often describe myself as a 'nature nerd'. I have in the past claimed to love all nature and embraced all manner of not-so-cute-and-cuddly creatures including eels, giant weta and tuatara.  It's time to confess. I really don't love all creatures great and small. In fact, it's some of the small ones that drive me the craziest.

Flies. I am really annoyed by flies. All kinds of flies, the little, moronic ones that just zzzzz around in circles in the middle of the room, the flies that have some kind of mad penchant for anything electrical, so they repeatedly land on my laptop or the corner of the television.  No matter how many times I shoo them away, they just fly in a lazy figure eight, and return to their favourite spot.  Which they then throw up on. Those 'fly spots' that you see on your walls, roof and lightbulbs, are not poo, they are in fact where the fly has regurgitated some spit in order to liquefy more solid food items, which it then mops up with its tongue, like a sponge. Blegh.

The problem with flies is if you don't like them, how do you get rid of them? you can swat them, but that's energetically demanding (I'm nothing if not consistently lazy!). Swatting also leaves gross fly remains on your walls, coffee tables etc. Some genius inventor has come up with an electric fly swat, that looks like a cross between a tazer and a tennis racket.  You can spray them, but it's not nice to pack your house full of chemicals, because you're annoyed at a couple of flies dithering around the lounge.  My Nana always had some of that sticky paper hanging in the kitchen... which I found rather macabre, with it's trail of sticky black corpses, trapped forever in glue. 

I have another solution. A venus fly trap. I've got one on our kitchen windowsill, and lo and behold it has been doing it's job.

Two in one go!

 Venus fly traps, are carnivorous plants. That in itself is pretty cool. They work by the tiny hairs found on the inside of the 'trap' part. When an insect walks over these trigger-hairs, the leaves swing shut, trapping the insect inside. The insect struggles away, the leaves seal around it, creating a kind of 'stomach' where digestion occurs, and then after the juice has all been sucked out, they open again, with just the exoskeleton of the insect remaining. amazing! 

I hope my venus fly-trap doesn't get as big as Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors!

So, what nature do YOU not like? got any pet peeves, or animals that just gross you out? Why?