Off the Radar

by Te Radar

  I make a couple of brisk futile thrusts before I feel the knife connect with something that seems to have the solidity of a heart, and I plunge the blade into the mighty organ, give it a mighty wiggle, and unleash a torrent of black blood that spews out of the gash in its neck, over my wrist and onto my pants.

  The pig struggles, becomes weaker, thankfully stops squealing, and is still. There’s a moment of calm, almost of tenderness, as we release our hold on the pig and haul the dogs off.

  Crikey.

  Blood oozes limply over my wrist as I withdraw the knife. ‘That’s a big pig you got yourself there, Radar,’ says Glen.

  It certainly is. Wide of shoulder with chunky thighs. I stare at the thick bridge of its nose. An ear is missing, ripped off by a dog in the frenzy of the attack, leaving a slick red welt.

  The ear offers the dog an easy place to hold the pig, and it is said that some hunters will cut the ears off the smaller pigs or the breeding sows they catch, making it much more difficult for the dogs to get a purchase.

  I turn to Jane. ‘I suspect we won’t see that bit on the telly,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ she agrees. ‘We most certainly will not.’ Only this time, if you watch the episode, we do, albeit fleetingly. It’s hard to hide the brutality of the event.

  I open the pig’s belly, revealing a mass of fresh, glossy innards, and we check the liver to make sure it isn’t blighted with anything untoward.

  I set the liver and kidneys aside, and we haul the rest of the offal out onto the ground, leaving it where the pig fell, no doubt to be eaten by other pigs not affected by the kinds of morality we humans are.

  It’s quite something to watch the delicacy required when cutting out the rectum of an animal, so that everything can be removed without spilling anything unpleasant.

  The best wild pork I ever had the pleasure of was a leg I brought back from the Chatham Islands. It weighed several kilograms, took four hours to cook, and had that darkness that symbolises the flesh of the wild pig.

  I also brought some weka back with me, for in the Chathams the weka is an introduced pest and able to be hunted. If you are ever there, I recommend asking a local for one. They taste slightly less fishy than a muttonbird.

  The pig is a lot heavier than I imagined it would be. It’s a dense, dead, floppy weight. It’s almost on the cusp of being too heavy for little old me.

  We tie the legs together so that I can wear it on my back like a pack, but Glen, because he is Glen, is tying the knots looser than they should be. This results in the knots coming undone and the sheer ungainly mass of the pig sliding off my shoulder and dragging me down with it.

  I know he is doing this because he is a prankster of some repute. Making mirth is not often bettered when the foil is the carcass of a dead swine.

  Each time I fall, they retie the knots, grab me by the hands and help haul me up into a swaggeringly erect position. I adjust the weight of the hog, and lurch off into the thicket. The rough ground and uneven track cause the weight of the pig to shift, the rope to come undone again on the legs, the pig to fall off and drag me down on top of it, with the result being that I flail around like some kind of dementedly upturned man-beetle.

  It’s a brutal ritual, the harvesting of the hog.

  We need to heat a bath to heat water to scald the pig, and then shave it. I’m handed a pair of tall gumboots, and when the water is hot enough the pig is plunged in. I get in and stand on top of it, kicking the hair off as the heat releases it, making sure the pig is well submerged and becoming hairless and slightly translucent.

  The rest of the shaving is done with the knives, sliding them across its water-lubricated belly, removing the hair in a peculiarly touching moment of rough familiarity. It’s bizarrely intimate.

  I have ended up blooded. There’s no fancy gesture needed—I am literally soaked in blood from head to toe. The back of my jersey is wet with blood. It’s in my hair, it saturates my jeans, and stains my hands.

  At the end of the day as I hand Matt back his knife he says, ‘Nah, you keep that.’

  One of the sons pipes up and says, ‘But Dad, isn’t that your good kni—’ before Matt shushes him. I’m deeply touched.

  After the intensity of the morning’s undertaking, I toy with the idea of stopping off and splashing out a little of my stipend on a can of a popular carbonated beverage at a dairy. I choose not to, and in retrospect realise this is a wise idea, as I’m sure the bloodstained clothing and the knife may take some explaining, especially as I am not the picture of the stereotypical pig hunter.

  What probably isn’t such a wise idea is deciding that I will wash the blood off by taking a swim in the sun-dappled sea, in an area not far from where shark sightings have recently occurred.

  14

  Busy little bees

  I would like to think that if I am pinned by the lower arm or leg by a boulder, or a tree, or an overturned tractor, that I’d have a fair idea where I would cut through the limb in order to extricate myself.

  I’d go straight for the joint, at either the elbow or the knee. Surely, I tell myself, it’s better to cut through skin, flesh and ligaments, before finally snapping the limb off at the joint, than to attempt to cut through the main bones. Who has the fortitude for that?

  If I were trapped higher than the elbow, then I’m sure cutting through the shoulder joint shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but quite what would happen if I had to cut through the thigh I don’t know.

  Regardless, it would sting, and the whole process is no doubt easier thought about than executed.

  Then there is also the problem as to whether an amputation at the joint makes it more difficult to fit a prosthesis.

  My strategies also assume that I would have access to a knife or saw, and while I do have a knife, I have yet to buy a sheath for it, so I don’t carry it around. I am clearly not as prepared as I could be, despite my Scouting background.

  I always pay careful attention to how people survive these incidents, because there are any number of things that can go wrong when you’re stranded alone in the semi-wilderness of a paddock conducting a sustainability experiment.

  I am acutely aware of many of them, thanks to a childhood crammed with safety warnings. As children at a rural primary school, we were often taken on special field trips to watch gruesome displays and be shown some of the most graphic photographs of injuries I can ever recall. We were shown photos of all the myriad forms of mutilations caused by machinery—medical snuff photos—to remind us that what we encountered on a daily basis were not toys.

  We were shown deep gouges in people’s heads, shredded limbs, crushed hands and lacerated legs. We saw cloth mannequins mulched in hay balers or flayed by PTOs.

  While to fresh-faced town children a PTO might be a polite request to Please Turn Over a storybook’s charming page, to a rural child the PTO is the Power Take Off, a metal driveshaft that emerges from the rear of a tractor to power the attached implements. It spins at over 1000 revolutions per minute, and is notoriously unforgiving to those who have the misfortune of being caught in it courtesy of any loose clothing or carelessly placed limb.

  As children we were reminded that it was not only the high-powered driveshaft that was dangerous, but also the implements it powered: the heavy spinning blades of mowers and rotary hoes, the hay-turners’ steel tines, and the chain drives of feed-out wagons. There was all manner of unrelenting steel waiting to slice, crush, or ensnare the unwary.

  Of course, the manufacturer’s specifications said that these implements were not to be approached while engaged, but the practicality of farming overrode this on most occasions.

  I was brought up by my parents to have a healthy respect for this kind of machinery, which I was allowed to clamber over, and even operate at a young age. I’m sure that accidents may have been closer than I realised. But I survived. Not everyone did.

  Now I am back on a farm, and everywhere I look there is danger. As an adult fully apprised of the inco
nvenience of mortality, I am forced to confront my childhood apprehensions and farm-based trepidations.

  It hasn’t helped that I have read too many Reader’s Digest Drama in Real Life stories, where people caught in combine harvesters have to crawl 30 kilometres with their legs severed, or fight off a bear that is intent on eating their face.

  I could cut myself, perhaps on some tin, maybe with a knife, hopefully not with a circular saw. I could hit my thumb with a hammer, and the nail could turn black and fall off. More than likely I will burn myself, catch a cold, or walk into something. I could well burn myself after walking into something that cuts me.

  There are any number of plants that could give me a nasty rash.

  Splinters annoy me.

  There’s always the danger of a piece of wire snapping back to impale me in the eye. Unfortunate cowpokes in Westerns were frequently entangled in coils of barbed wire that had snapped as they were tightening it. These men were usually alone on some desolate part of the range.

  That’s the thing about farming accidents: they will most likely happen while you are alone and some distance from help.

  And the hygiene is not so great either.

  I often wipe my hands and cutlery on the grass in order to clean them. Who knows what dangers lurk there? Scientists know, I guess. Or at least scientists who specialise in the field of fields.

  And then there is the problem of zoonoses. These are diseases that can be transmitted from animals to me. There’s leptospirosis, brucellosis and tuberculosis. The common factor: the cow.

  Don’t chickens have salmonella? They drink from the water trough that I occasionally bathe in. What else could be in the trough? When I’m soaking in it, there are lots of little things that bite me. What are they? Could they burrow into my skin or, heaven forbid, enter me through a much more private and embarrassing route?

  And what about the algal slime that grows in the trough? While it is more than likely harmless, what if I were to slip on it and fall as I’m getting in or out of the water?

  If animals don’t give me diseases, there is always the danger of being trampled. Milking the cow means there is the risk of being badly kicked. A sheep could butt my knee. At least there is only a limited chance of suffering fly-strike.

  Let’s not forget the chance of sunburn.

  Then there is the danger of the compost pile, which can contain spores. I don’t want to be incapacitated by a spore. Nor do I want to contract a flesh-eating disease.

  I could poison myself by eating the wrong part of a plant. I could fall in a hole. I could tweak a muscle attempting to do something that is physically beyond me, which is most things. A hernia is a possibility. Haemorrhoids are, no doubt, a given.

  Bales of hay could fall on top of me.

  Perhaps worst of all is the knowledge that I could be killed by a bee.

  I recall as a child one day encouraging my parents to come around to the side of the house to look at monarch butterfly chrysalises, when a pain in my gumboot distracted me. A bee had rather stupidly flown into my boot’s murky depths, and had promptly stung my leg. Within minutes I was itching and swelling. My breathing became laboured. This no doubt caused concern for my parents, but I don’t recall being overly traumatised.

  A very quick trip in the Rambler Rebel into Huntly, a shot of adrenaline at the doctors, and I survived. Obviously.

  After that I had to carry pills with me in a stainless steel amulet.

  I have been stung since, and I haven’t always had to take the pills, but I guess the possibility still exists. In any case, it’s an excuse to wear an amulet—or it would be if I could remember where I put it.

  The last time I was stung by an insect, I was in the middle of the Sahara shooting an episode of Intrepid Journeys. I felt a stinging in the knee area. I put it down to one of the small prickly seeds that littered the desert, like a spiky biddybid. But the stinging moved, and I shook my pants. Onto the desert sand fell a scorpion. I can’t say that my life flashed before my eyes, but thoughts of my imminent death certainly did.

  To compound the problem, I was filming a piece to camera at the time and I didn’t want to be seen to overreact to what at that stage I was convinced would be at the very least a near-death experience.

  ‘Umm, I’ve just been stung by a scorpion,’ I said.

  I began to wonder how long it would be before there was a reaction to the toxin. I did have with me a vial of liquid adrenaline in case of a bee attack, but quite where it was I wasn’t sure. Would the toxins be related?

  What a glamorous way to go: on assignment in the middle of Africa.

  Gosh, I really didn’t want to seem like a wally and blub at the thought of my demise. Stiff upper lip and all that.

  Actually, were my lips stiffening? Maybe. I wasn’t sure I could feel them; but then, could I feel them normally? Was my breathing becoming laboured? Or was my preoccupation with my breathing causing my breathing to be irregular?

  Was this a panic attack, or was I going into anaphylactic shock, which would result in my body shutting down?

  Would they take my body home? I’d smell pretty ripe in a short period, unless they stowed me in the cool store with the food and beer as the festival carried on around me.

  We rushed off to find help, and ran into the shady guy who was running the show.

  I had squashed the scorpion and put it in a tissue so that they could identify it and administer the correct antivenom. What if I should die for a lack of antivenom? How long would I have? We were 80 kilometres north of Timbuktu, not a great distance, but still a distance that meant several hours of travel over an unforgiving desert landscape.

  He took one look at the scorpion and said, ‘It’s only a baby, not at all dangerous. Would you like an aspirin?’ I settled for a beer.

  The year 1979 saw both the introduction in New Zealand of the car-less day, and the discovery of the Asian paper wasp on our fair shores. While the car-less day disappeared within a year, the plague of the paper wasp has become an ongoing problem, as Frank the soundman experiences, in a most delicate place.

  A wasp has stung him in the groinal region, and he has decided to take matters into his own hands and eradicate the nest of them we have discovered in a hole in the paddock.

  Now I am worried that the fire brigade will be summoned as Frank’s eradication method has gone beyond the liberal amounts of fly spray we have been using, and now includes a smoky combination of methylated spirits, a car tyre, and matches. The plume of smoke is rising into the still summer afternoon.

  Wasps are flying around, looking a little disturbed at the incineration of their house. Goodness knows how many of them are down there, but the hole verges on huge.

  For weeks we have been eradicating nests of paper wasps with fly spray. I know that it isn’t overly sustainable, and no doubt there is a fair amount of collateral damage, as my method is to send large clouds of it drifting over the area of the nest to quell those flying about, before making a quick foray to the nest site and coating it with spray until it is a foamy white mess. I don’t so much spray them as drown them in spray.

  While I realise that they are a part of nature’s ecosystem, they also present a danger to us all as they have decided to try to colonise areas we frequent, such as the woodpile, the piles of usable trash, and on fences. I do not want them to attack Jane’s child, or me.

  Quite often it is difficult to locate the nest, so it requires much wasp watching to see if it is possible to discern where they are centred. They fly along with their legs hanging beneath, a dangling undercarriage that makes them look a little comical, and slightly lazy. But they are busy little creatures, and much of their business seems to involve collecting fibre that they bind together with saliva to form a honeycomb-like nest, into which they deposit their brood. Their other business is concerned with stinging us.

  I’d like to rail against the blight on our country that is the introduction of foreign species, but to be fair, we can’t claim th
e moral high ground. This high ground is occupied by Artioposthia triangulata, or the Canterbury flatworm. Yes, one of our most successful livestock exports (after the 1924 Invincibles) is the Canterbury flatworm, which in the 1960s succeeded in colonising vast swaths of the United Kingdom, where it proceeded to slaughter on a wholesale level the indigenous earthworms by anaesthetising them and reducing their innards to the consistency of a soupy gruel, which they then consumed for sustenance.

  The official advice from the British junior agriculture minister was to eradicate the Canterbury flatworm by treading on them, which prompted a question from the House of Lords that asked: ‘Are you sure it’s effective to stamp on a worm that’s already flat?’

  15

  The right bait for whitebait?

  As the light drizzle turns to an inclement rain, I struggle through the long grass and tall reeds, armed only with a fry pan, my camp-burner stove, five eggs, and a heady sense of optimism. With the reeds and grass towering well above my head, the entire place has the feel of a jungle scene from any number of Vietnam War movies. Not a bird sings. It’s wet and eerie.

  I have to confess that I am a little worried that at any second I may be the victim of an ambush by either a flurry of black-pyjama-clad Vietnamese or a surge of trigger-happy American GIs, either of which will result in me being killed to death.

  I hadn’t realised that it is possible to catch whitebait in a creek off the Kaipara Harbour. Apparently it is, or at least that’s what I’ve been told.

  They are a funny fish, the whitebait. They seem to be mostly eyes. The thought that we eat them whole—eyes, organs, their stomach full of whatever it is they eat, and even their anus—never seems to faze people. Perhaps they simply don’t think about it.

  If you are a whitebait fan and you’ve never thought about it until this point in your life, then sorry. You’ll think about it next time, I can assure you.