Kiwiana
My day job today brought me into contact with one of the most thoroughly Kiwi situations ever.
The gentleman (a friendly sort from a local hunting & fishing emporium), was keen to learn whether I was able to broker his regular and reliable source of possum fur and skins.
Now, the Kiwi view of possums (which are non-indiginous, and horrifically damaging to native flora and fauna) bears marked differences from the Australians (a near neighbour where the critters are now considered endangered). Essentially, in New Zealand, possums are vermin and are accordingly culled (on many occasions in not terribly humane ways) by all and sundry.
Here you have the strange paradox, where you are able to purchase what is deemed as ‘ethical fur’, which is marketed in such a way as to support local wildlife initiatives. By creating a market, you are paying for men to hunt, and thus protecting native species from the threat of outside predators.
The enquiry, in addition to being rather exotic to an expat Brit such as myself, was thus one that you would only ever hear in New Zealand.
Another instance that I found to be similarly ‘local’ in context occurred a few weeks previously.
I came into work and noticed that our heavily pregnant administrator seemed to be fairly unresponsive to my banal and chipper Pommie demeanor.
I asked one of the other girls from our sales team what was the matter with her and was told that, “Oh, she’s upset cos her brother shot her favourite pig-dog for eating the next-door neighbours goat”.
A foible of Kiwi law is that dogs are not legally pets - but are classified as working animals and are thus not protected. If they have reached the end of their usefulness to you, then you are able to despatch them if it is done with due care.
On further study, I found out that it is common practise to put down pig-dogs (essentially pit bulls - utterly unsuitable as pets) if they have become interested in other prey. Essentially, once they get a taste of anything other than pigs (joggers, for instance, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10609216) they are uncontrollable.
“Only in New Zealand” came to mind again after being told the following tale by a colleague whom formerly ran a Bed & Breakfast on the South Island. He said that a, “guy turned up at our place with a mashed in bumper. He got it while trying to shoot a deer out the window of his Ute, then lost control and hit a pine tree, not before putting a bullet hole through the front corner of the light & out the bumper”. Not only was the hunter trying to bag his prey from the cab of his truck - He was attempting to do so whilst still driving.
Indeed, I felt that the ‘shooting whilst driving’ story was the pick of the bunch until on arrival home this evening, I turned on the evening news and stumbled across this story:
Three men were this weekend arrested for ‘disorderly conduct’ having been seen driving up and down the Octagon and Baldwin Street (regarded as being the steepest residential road on earth) in Dunedin towing each other round in a chilly bin (essentially a large plastic ice box), tassled to a car tow bar with a domestic extension cord.
It will be no surprise to non-Kiwis (and non-Kiwi residents) that Dunedin is a University Town.
I found the nature of the mens arrest to be somewhat interesting. The men were not actually arrested in the steep area which they caused the most alarm, but were later arrested on the flat, where they had doused the roads surface with petrol (which was then lit) and were towing each other from the rear of their vehicle on the chilly bin roof.
