Big ups to the friendly farmer with the crayfish creek on his property: I now have two native New Zealand freshwater crayfish in the pond. I think I’ll called them Reggie and Ronnie (Ronnie is the big one). Check them out: Like the infamous Kray twins of London’s East End, these two have been sentenced […]
For some time now I’ve been meaning to compile a blog entry entirely out of words in columns by Michael Laws – I set about cutting and pasting text tonight – and found to my surprise that there’s a ghoulish rhythmn in his prose. What I’ve done is go through two columns selecting only words […]
Phase one of Operation Spawn of Ponsonby is now almost complete (and we’re talking about popping out frogs, not sprogs, here, in case that headline was misleading); the ultimate goal of Operation Spawn of Ponsonby being, of course, the establishment of a self-sustaining population of frogs, fish and (hopefully) freshwater crayfish in the gaping industrial […]
I’ll be filing this one under the ‘rules to be me, sucks to be you’ category on the blog: at the end of February I’m flying to the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia to do a story for The Dominion Post and Stuff.co.nz So far, the itinerary lists “snorkelling, diving, swimming with turtles, nature treks, beach […]
Very, very excited by my new favourite animal in the garden – check him out: a juvenile and rather pretty green and golden bell frog who I found hiding under the cucumber vine, keeping out of the hot midday sun like the sensible Aussie immigrant he is. Finding a frog under the vine was a […]
Despite my general left-leanings I’ve been on-the-whole okay with National’s John Key as our Prime Minister. Backing down in the face of opposition to mining our national parks? Okay, that was cool: the initial idea was bad, but then you showed you could listen to the public and admit mistakes. And the general straight-talking profile […]
A while back, travelling in Egypt, I met a guy who had been shot by some dope growers. They were locals who saw him walking in the hills near their crop, took a pot shot (so to speak), nicked his leg, and then realised when he ran off that this guy – Ahmed – was […]
I walked past the Ponsonby Sohole the other evening and wow has it taken off. Where once there was a gaping hole in the heart of the Ponce there’s now a gaping hole with a charming pond at the bottom – and the beginnings of an eco-system. A quick background: a properly hideous development was […]
So Russel Green has started a new Shanghai Lil’s in Parnell. I just got back from interviewing Russel for a magazine called The Pulse (which is being launched on Feb 3 and will be all about Parnell) and boy can that guy talk. In a densely packed 32 minutes he managed to mention his visits […]
Two people now have sent me a link to this story, first appearing in the Moscow Times but re-written by Stuff.co.nz – either by their Russian correspondent, or maybe by someone in their 500-strong cute animal stories department – about a fox that shot a hunter in Belarus. Apparently the hunter took a long shot […]
