Only the Katipo

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 498, 7 January 1949, Page 14

Only the Katipo

ISTENING to Mrs. A. W. Gordon’s account of life in Southern Rhodesia from 2YA I was reminded of an advantage of life in New Zealand that is so often stressed. We have no native wild animals and no poisonous reptiles, or insects-save one spider. Though I have messed about on beaches where the katipo is found, I have never seen

that little menace, and I should say I shared this lack of experience with more than 99 per cent. of my countrymen. Mrs, Gordon had a little fun at the expense of trav--ellers who looked to

see lions and other big game disporting themselves about Rhodesian railways, but she admitted there were such things in her country, including a leopard, of which the natives were more afraid than of snakes. There are also crocodiles. Snakes, she said, didn’t worry you in the towns, but in the country you had to keep serum ready for immediate use, and renew it periodically, because it lost its efficacy. Children had to be taught not to poke their fingers into holes, and to tell the difference between a dead stick and something not dead but deadly. New Zealand housewives who have listened to Mrs. Gordon will envy their Rhodesian sisters at least one of their conditions of living-their supply of domestic -labour--- but I found myself glad that I lived in New Zealand. Reflection, however, reminded me _ that there are snakes and crocodiles (or is it alligators?p-I never: know which is which) in Australia, but Australians show no inclination to emigrate en masse. After all, the whole world could not come to "God’s Own Country," even if it wanted to.