Last Chance to See

our hosts did not want to have a bunch of media trendies rampaging around their island frightening the birds with their video cameras and Filofaxes, and they were only slightly mollified by the fact that all we had was one tiny Walkman tape recorder, and that we were being very meek and well behaved and trying not toorder gin and tonics the whole time. The fact that we’d actually brought some beer and whisky with us helped a little.
    I suddenly felt extraordinarily cheerful. More cheerful, in fact, than I had felt for the whole of our visit to New Zealand so far. The people of New Zealand are generally terribly
nice
. Everybody we had met so far had been terribly
nice
to us. Terribly nice and eager to please. I realised now that all this relentless niceness and geniality to which we had been subjected had got to me rather badly. New Zealand niceness is not merely disarming, it’s decapitating as well, and I had come to feel that if just one more person was pleasant and genial at me, I’d hit him. Now things were suddenly very different and we had work to do. I was determined to get these surly buggers to like us if it killed me.
    Over our lunch of tinned ham, boiled potatoes, and beer, we launched a major conversational assault, told them all about our project and why we were doing it, where we’d been so far, what animals we had seen and failed to see, whom we had met, why we were so keen to see the kakapo, how much we appreciated their assistance, and how well we understood their reluctance to have us there, and then we went on to ask intelligent and searching questions about their work, about the island, about the birds, about Boss, and finally, why there was a dead penguin hanging on the tree outside the house.
    This seemed to clear the air a little. Our hosts quickly realised that the only way of stopping us talking the whole time was to do some talking themselves. The penguin, Phred explained, was traditional. Every February 28th they hung a dead penguin on a tree. It was a tradition that had only started today and they doubted if they would keep it up, but in the meantime at least it kept the flies off the penguin.
    This seemed a thoroughly excellent explanation. We all celebrated it with another glass of beer, and things began at last to move along with a bit more of a swing. In an altogether easier atmosphere, we set out into the forest with Araband Boss to see if we could at last find one of these birds we had traveled twelve thousand miles to see.
    The forest was rotten. That is to say that it was so wet that every fallen tree trunk we had to clamber over cracked open under our feet, branches we clung on to when we lost our footing came away in our hands. We slipped and slithered noisily through the mud and sodden undergrowth, while Arab stalked easily ahead of us, just visible through the trees in his blue-plaid woollen parka. Boss described a chaotic orbit around him, hardly ever visible at all except as an occasional moving flash of blackness through the undergrowth.
    He was, however, always audible. Arab had fastened a small bell onto his collar, which rang out clearly through the clean, damp air, as if an invisible and deranged carol singer were cavorting through the forest. The purpose of the bell was to allow Arab to keep track of where Boss was, and also to let him know what the dog was up to. A flurry of agitated rings followed by silence might indicate that Boss had found a kakapo and was standing guard over it. Every time the bell fell silent, we held our breaths, but each time the clanging started up again as Boss found a new avenue in the undergrowth to plunge through. From time to time the bell would suddenly start to ring out more loudly and clearly, and Arab would summon Boss back to him with a quick shout. There would then be a slight pause, which on one occasion enabled Mark and Gaynor and me to catch up with them.
    We came tumbling breathless and wet out of the forest to a small clearing, where we found Arab squatting beside Boss, stuffing a small wad of mossy earth up into the cavity of the bell to dampen its sound a little. He squinted up at us with his slow, shy grin and explained that the bell mustn’t be too loud or it would only frighten the kakapo away—if there were any in the area.
    Did he think there were any around? asked Mark.
    “Oh, they’re certainly around,” said Arab, pulling his fingers through his streaming wet beard to clean the mud offthem, “or at least