This is he. He's a huhu and a lucky one at that. Howie was resident in a length of firewood, going under the axe wielded by a compassionate fellow who goes by the name of Anonymous Big-Hearted Cobber. It was Howie's great fortune to be discovered, still whole and entirely intact, by ABHC and gently lifted from his soft woody home and relocated to a saucepan, replete with sawdust of the kind Howie fancies, gastronomically. And there Howie reclines, safe and sound with good prospects along the lines of 'becoming a beetle'.
Howie looks enormous in this photo provided by his Saviour, but is in fact a mere 5cm in length.
It makes me happy to hear stories where the quality of mercy applies even to the tiny creatures of the world and this story is one.
10 comments:
To Howie's Saviour...YOU ARE A SAINT!! nuff said.
They tell me Robert the Tuataras love and see huhu grubs as akin to our Christmas dinner ..they even (unusually) will move quickly to dinner if given a grub to eat :) Howie going to die sometime why not in a Tuataras tummy :)
Looks like trout bait to me.
Pauline! Wildcrafty! What if Howie hears you!!
I've seen the Tuatara race across their enclosures to get huhu Pauline and it's not a pretty sight (bug juice dripping from ancient jaws etc.) My (our) hope is that Howie will metamorphose into a hair-cutter, fly about the place terrifying women, lay streams of eggs in rotting logs, then expire.
Did you know that huhu beetles have no mouth and cannot eat (as you'd expect).
Wildcrafty - you fish?
Only intermittently unfortunately.
I've seen tuatara go fast for baby mice. Maybe they think they're huhu (same colour, similar size).
wildcrafty - I'm interested to know where you've seen hungry tuatara in action - a breeding facility somewhere? Steven's Island? Invercargill's tuatarium (in which case I don't think the mouse incident would have been during a public feeding session :-)
Are there tuatara at Otago Uni?
Hmmmm....
It was at SMAG Robert. They used to do public mice feedings, don't they do that now?
Good grief, did they??
All I saw in my two years there were locusts and huhu grubs.
Baby mice!
Well I never!
I suspect there must have been a public outcry. Feeding mammals to reptiles seems to be asking for trouble.
Did you work there? Not many people outside of the industry would say 'SMAG'.
I knew some people there, a long time ago.
Huhu and loucusts do seem a better choice. I wonder when they stopped with the mice.
Karl?
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