turn sound on for effect while you are reading - click soundscape which will open a new browser page and then return to original page
1969 - A WOVEN NET
The penguin was a determined little yellow eye and had been
far off the island in the openness of the ocean feeding since
early sunrise. When in the dawn, the sky was torn with
reddened gold and the chiming chorus of the forrest birds
pierced the uneasy silence, off she had set. Down through
the scrub thickets she had waddled by herself. This
underbrush that scrapped across her body as she passed
by, but offered ideal protection during the dark nights, and
also for her nest where her young one waited during her long absents at sea. Then with a wiggle and a waggle, one pink
foot after the other, she crossed the forrest floor under the larger twisted reaches of the Rata trees. Then with a pausing
caution she would peer out through the forest to see if
the way was clear, before hopping out of through the bush
where others of her kind were also making their way onto
the rocky cliff top and down the steep narrow ledge
to the ocean.
The resting place and the nest site of a small yellow eye
must be a closely guarded secret at all times. Then, once
together, they would waddle through the mud of the tarn
edge, where the water from the peaty up lands soil drained
dark deep brown, into this ponding area, before dripping down to the ocean.
Finally, there the penguins would all stall in congregation
on the rocks at the brink of the splashing ocean waiting for
that right moment to plunge off the abrupt edge through the
air and into the water that allowed them a freedom
that the land could not. Since they were young they had loved the freedom of the
ocean and the ease of movement it granted. It was a much
different world than the land they could only waddle across.
They could speed through the weave of sea weed that
reached from the depths in twining strands towards the surface. They could chase each other and any small fish that hid in
the deep blue shadows. There were the fanciful sounds of
the ocean too. The gurgle as the smooth currents surged
past the rocks, the splash as a wave impacted on the rugged
shore line, the burble as a stream of escaping air bubbles rose surface ward. There was the way the light filtered through the
water and sea weed in a wonderful display, particularly if the
sun was shinning, when the radiant fingers searched
towards the depths. They could swim way down to the depths
then come racing up ward, sometimes even leaping right clear
of the surface, and out of the water. But there were also
dangers. The great black shapes of seal lions could sweep
through the water and chase them relentlessly and catch
them unawares if they were not careful. There were other dangers too, leopard seals and even sharks.
Once they had spring off the dry rocks and were in this
water, they all would swim in a group of seven or eight,
far out to the feeding grounds. Sometimes they would
porpoise in an undulating motion that broke the surface as they raced away seaward. Here they would spend the whole day
fishing for a full belly to feed their waiting young. But now she was returning and something had gone horridly
wrong. At first it had scared her, as she had though it
was a bite from some large creature. But, no, she had been
snagged by a loose piece of nylon fish netting that had been
floating like a trap, suspended in the ocean. It had entangled
her and though she could continue to swim for the shore, it was strenuous work. Her other kind had swam past her long ago
and now, with the darkness sweeping down from the sky, so
that the ocean embraced her with a cold blackness as the
last glow faded above, she battled shoreward exhausted.
Every so often she would stop to surface and check her whereabouts. She was gaining on the even blacker form
of the land and she would soon be able to attempt to
attain a foot hold on the rocks.
And this was the next dilemma, how to leap from the water
with this tangle of netting attached. She could not get enough
speed to leap from the water in a clear vault up onto the hard surface of the rocks above. After several attempts it was
clear there was no way that her waning strength would succeed. However, there was the entry they had used when they
were first introduced to the ocean as juveniles, and it was
here that she found something of an easy path out of the
ocean and up the rocks. Even this was not simple though, as it presented a host of new problems with the net catching on
the sharp protrusions of the rocks. It all added to hinder her progress.
Eventually, there was a way through the traps that had held
and bound her down or at least the tangle of matted net broke
free from the snare enough and on she could move through the blackness. On top of the rock bluff she stood and exhausted
in the pitch shadows of the night breathed deep to regain some strength in the crisp air. Then with all the might she could muster and the thought
of her hungry chick waiting at the nest she dragged herself
and this tangle of netting towards the track that lead through the twinning trees that rose to the sky blacker than the blackness
of the night. Closer she edged to the nest and her
waiting chick. 
Well, she knew this line that ran from the hills down to the sea. From all those trips to the sea she knew it blind folded and
surely she was on the right path. But again there was a foiling
snag. She was caught firm by the tangle twigs that grasped
the net. Exhausted she waited, there were the calls of the night
from other penguins long safe in the bush. There would be a
small chick waiting in the darkness also, waiting for a mother
that should have been home. Waiting for the food she still
held in her stomach but could not deliver. But this snag would not disengage, and she was held fast. There; lay a small tangle of old fishing net, somehow away
from the ocean, right up in the bush. It was among the dead branches and yesterdays leaves, discarded they all lay together jumbled in a pile under a large distort Rata trunk 
. Beside
this was the line of a well worn track that had been trod
habitually by some small creatures the size of a large bird or
perhaps a penguin. For among the tangle of synthetic fibres
of the mesh lay the fine bleached bones of some such beast.
Fine in their scale and fine in their structure they lay set
among the twist of this deathly trap.
