by Des Hunt
Only slightly more informative was a recorded piece showing Colin Saxton reading a formal statement. It said that the Biosecurity Incident Response Team was investigating the deaths of a significant number of birds at the Peninsula Egg Company farm near Portobello. The cause of death was, as yet, unknown, and it would be at least two days before a definite identification was possible. In the meantime, the area surrounding the farm would be quarantined. He took questions, but fudged the answers in a way that revealed nothing new.
Next we learnt about the fire that had occurred just as the biosecurity team was entering the compound. It was in one of the smaller buildings. The coverage showed the fire engine rushing through Portobello, followed by some aerial shots of the burnt-out building, which the voice-over said was thought to contain incubators. There was then some archive film of Bryce Shreeves behaving the way a successful businessman and public figure should. You would have thought it was a different person to the one we had witnessed bullying Cathy earlier that day.
We had to wait until Jim Black’s segment to see Nick’s interview. It started with a history of Peco. They had some archive footage recorded when the farm was the target of animal-rights activists: shots taken inside the sheds showing chooks cramped in cages, many with feathers missing, including a couple of dead ones.
Dad and I looked at each other grimly. The images they were showing were bad, but nothing like what we had seen. I suspected he was thinking much the same as me: the photos Nick had taken were dynamite. I glanced over to Nick and saw a big, knowing grin on his face. If he didn’t understand how valuable his photos were before, he certainly did now.
More old film of Bryce Shreeves followed. This time he was justifying battery farming.
‘Peco is consistently one of the biggest-selling brands in local supermarkets,’ he said, looking directly at the camera. ‘That’s because our eggs are the best and the cheapest. People want cheap, fresh eggs, and the only way to do that is by intensive farming. But it is not cruel farming. If the birds were not contented, they would not lay eggs. Yes, birds do die. All living things do. The two dead birds illegally filmed by those trespassers were two amongst fifty thousand living birds. Believe me, there is nothing happening at Peco that is either inhumane or cruel. You have my word on that.’
‘Yeah, right!’ said Jim Black, when the clip finished. ‘Then why is the place now getting such close attention from BIRT? We asked them that question, only to be referred back to the official press release. So, we decided to go out and ask the people on the Otago Peninsula what they thought was happening at the Peco farm.’
Several short interviews followed. Some spoke about the dead sparrows they’d seen; others said they always knew there was something wrong with Peco; a few were worried about the effect any disease might have on the local wildlife.
Then Brio and Roost were on the screen, wearing their most colourful clothes. They were standing at the back of their van.
‘Hey!’ yelled Nick, jumping out of his seat. ‘Just as well I cleaned it, eh?’
‘Shut up!’ I screamed, leaning forward to push him out of the way. I didn’t want to miss a single word of what these two might say.
‘We are so disgusted,’ said Brio, in her Scottish accent. ‘We came to New Zealand because it has an image of being clean, green and pure. Now we find there is battery farming here. Battery farms are incubators for bird diseases. They should be banned worldwide. We’re amazed that New Zealand still allows such barbaric farming practices, especially so close to some of the world’s most endangered wildlife.’
Beside her, Roost was nodding at every point she made.
Brio continued. ‘What will happen if the disease spreads to the penguins and albatrosses?’ She shook her head in dismay. ‘I dread to think. It will be an ecological disaster. The eyes of the world will be on New Zealand, and they won’t like what they see.’
Jim Black returned to the screen. ‘Mmmm. Food for thought, isn’t it?’ he said in a sombre voice. ‘However, I must remind viewers that, as yet, it is not known what is causing the disease and how it got here.’ Then he brightened. ‘But one local has an interesting take on that point.’
Nick’s face then filled the screen.
‘It’s a killer virus,’ Nick stated. ‘They come from outer space. They’re aliens really. This is just the first wave. They’ll be everywhere soon. And if they mutate, that’s when we really need to watch out.’
‘Yes … well …’ said Jim Black, smiling. ‘I think we’d better wait until we have a more official version of events.’ The smile turned to a grin. ‘Don’t you? Thank you, New Zealand, and goodnight.’
Nick seemed unfazed by the treatment his comments had received. He’d been on television — that was all that mattered to him. Now he was a celebrity.
‘What else did you tell him?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I told him that I’d been the first to discover the dead birds,’ he said, proudly. ‘And that if it weren’t for me, the problems on the chook farm wouldn’t have been discovered.’
Dad looked up sharply. ‘You didn’t say you’d been on the farm, did you?’
Nick shook his head furiously. ‘No! I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Then what were you going to show him on your phone?’ I asked.
He studied me for a moment. Then his face brightened as if he’d just realized what I was talking about. ‘Oh that!’ he said. ‘I was going to show him one of the photos I took of the trucks this morning.’
‘What about the photos you took last night?’ I asked.
‘No, no. I wasn’t going to show him those.’
‘Well, just in case you get interviewed again,’ said Dad, ‘I think we should get rid of those photos.’
Nick’s body stiffened. ‘No! I’m keeping them.’
‘No, you’re not,’ said Dad, showing the first signs of anger. ‘Not when my living depends on them.’
‘I am!’ said Nick.
‘Stop!’ said Mum, holding up her hands. When she had our attention, she said, ‘The thing to do would be to store the photos on the computer, and then everybody will be happy.’ She turned to me. ‘You can do that, can’t you?’
I nodded, although I wasn’t all that sure that I could, especially as my old computer was made out of bits salvaged from the dump. In the end, however, it proved to be remarkably easy. Nick’s phone had all the bells and whistles, including a USB cable which could connect to any machine, even one like mine. Soon the photos were safely installed on the hard drive. Dad then stood over Nick and watched him delete the photos from the phone, one by one. Only then did the atmosphere in our house return to anything near normal.
We went to bed early, exhausted by the events of the past twenty-four hours. But I didn’t go straight to sleep. Ideas kept going around in my head. Some of them didn’t make much sense. Things such as Brio and Roost being on the news, particularly when earlier they’d seemed so reluctant to report the dead birds themselves.
Before I could come to any conclusion, Nick interrupted by asking, ‘How do you think I did?’
‘About what?’ I asked.
‘My performance on TV, of course.’
The question took me by surprise. How could I tell him that he’d acted like a fool?
‘You seemed very relaxed,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I was, wasn’t I?’ A pause. ‘It was really easy. I think maybe I could make a career out of it.’
What! I thought. Playing the village idiot?
Out loud, I said, ‘What did you think of Brio?’
‘What about her?’ he asked, grumpily.
‘She seems to hate battery farming.’
‘She hates everything!’
‘I think she’s involved somehow,’ I said.
Nick looked over at me. ‘What! With Peco?’
‘Yeah.’
He was silent for a while. ‘Yeah, she could be. She seems to know a bit about battery farming.’
‘And she’s a veg
etarian,’ I added. ‘They’re always getting upset about the way animals are kept.’
‘Maybe we should check her out on the web,’ suggested Nick. ‘She might be one of those eco-terrorists.’
It was a good suggestion. That was the thing about Nick. He could seem real dumb at times, but he was actually quite intelligent. The problem was recognizing the clever bits in amongst all the rubbish.
CHAPTER 9
The next morning, Nick slept in while I went out to the workshop to work on my Christmas presents — there was only one week to go, and if I didn’t get a move on they wouldn’t be ready in time.
The gifts I was organizing weren’t a lot different from the sort of gifts I expected to receive, except mine didn’t come from the dump — they came from the beaches around the peninsula.
For Mum, I was making hanging flower-baskets out of fishing buoys that had washed up on Allans Beach. They were almost finished. It was harder to create gifts for Dad, as he could make almost anything he wanted better than I could. The exception was anything that required artistic talent. He was a hopeless artist, and yet that was one thing I was really good at. So much so that I was already thinking that at some stage I’d like to go to art school.
This Christmas, I was giving Dad a pendant carved out of a bone I’d found on our beach. The figure was an albatross in flight, and I must say it was beginning to look pretty good. I’d also started a bone carving for Nick. It was Harriet the Parriet flying in to land. Just in case either Dad or Nick didn’t want to wear a pendant, I made sure my carvings would look just as good hanging on a wall.
In the afternoon, we went to check out what was happening at the Peco quarantine site. The answer was nothing much. There was a police car at the T-junction, but no reporters of any sort.
I wanted to see what was happening in the compound and had worked out a way of doing it. There is a walkway that climbs to the top of an old volcano called Harbour Cone. I figured that somewhere along the track we should get a view onto the farm.
We didn’t. However, we did find that by climbing a fence, scrambling through a gully and up another rise we were almost on top of the place. Probably we were trespassing on somebody’s property again, but it worried me less this time than before.
‘Wow!’ said Nick, staring down at all the activity in the compound. ‘Did we start all that?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘The bird flu started all that.’
He ignored me. ‘Look at the size of that hole. They must be burying the dead birds.’
The hole was at the rear of the sheds. A couple of big diggers were parked nearby. As we watched, one of the small frontend loaders we’d seen on the first day came out of a shed and dumped a load of dead chooks into the hole. Immediately, another loader moved in and covered them with a white powder. The drivers of both vehicles were wearing full protective suits, as were all the other people we saw moving around the site.
‘Do you think they’re all dead?’ asked Nick.
‘Probably. If they didn’t die of the disease, they would have killed them anyway.’
An evil look came over Nick’s face. ‘Yeah!’ he said. ‘That would be worth seeing. They must have killed thousands of them.’ He made a pistol out of his hand and started shooting at things. ‘Poof, poof, poof …’
‘I don’t think they would have shot them,’ I said.
‘No, you’re right — they probably used an axe.’ Now he was swinging an axe around the place. ‘Swish, swish, swish …’
I shook my head in wonder at the way he could change from a sensible person to an idiot in less than ten seconds.
‘They would have been gassed,’ I said, although I didn’t really have any idea of how they destroyed large numbers of birds.
He stopped swinging and looked at me. ‘Yeah, yeah! Hydrogen cyanide!’ He grabbed his throat and started making choking noises.
I turned back to study the compound. Another load of dead chooks was being dumped. Judging from the size of the hole, the loaders still had many trips to go. I wondered what would happen when they were all buried. Would they leave the sheds there, or would they, too, be destroyed? Burned probably. I looked over to the blackened ruins of the building that had burned the day before. A couple of people were sifting through the remains. Police, no doubt, looking for how or why the building had been destroyed.
My thoughts on that were broken by a voice barking at us. ‘What are you doing here?’
I turned, and there was a policeman, standing with his hands on his hips, glaring at us.
‘Just having a look at the chook farm,’ I said quickly, before Nick got a chance to say something stupid.
‘You’re both trespassing on private property.’
I lowered my head. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘We’re allowed!’ said Nick. ‘We’re the two boys who started it all.’
The policeman shook his head. ‘Doesn’t make any difference,’ he said. ‘You’re not allowed anywhere near here. Nobody is. So I’m asking you to leave now.’
Nick stared at the man, getting ready for an argument.
‘C’mon, Nick, let’s go.’
When Nick showed no sign of moving, the policeman said, ‘Take your friend’s advice and just leave.’
Nick eyeballed the policeman for a while longer, before snapping his feet together and raising his arm in a Nazi salute. ‘Ja wohl, mein Führer.’
The policeman shook his head sadly. ‘Listen son, if you knew a bit more about history, you would never salute like that. It is still extremely offensive to many people. Now scat, before I take you in for trespassing.’
For a moment I thought Nick would argue. Instead he lowered his arm, swivelled around and began goose-stepping down the hill.
‘Nutcase,’ murmured the policeman as he watched us go.
‘I heard that!’ yelled Nick. ‘You just wait until the alien virus takes over. You’ll be the first to suffer.’
I glanced back. The policeman was now nodding his head: he’d recognized Nick from the interview the night before. ‘Nutcase,’ he said, with more conviction, and at that moment I couldn’t help but agree with him.
We went to Murph’s place.
He was at the kitchen table, smoking while reading the newspaper. No sooner had we sat down than Harriet flew in and settled on Nick’s shoulder. ‘Give us a kiss. Give us a kiss,’ she demanded. Nick happily obliged.
I watched this without saying anything, but inside I was not happy. In the past Harriet would have landed on my shoulder and asked me for a kiss. That’s the way it had been for years. Now she was doing it to Nick, whom she’d known for only a couple of days. She hadn’t even looked in my direction.
Fortunately, neither of the others saw my reaction as they were concentrating on Harriet. Murph leaned over and stroked her. ‘Say hello to Nick.’
‘Hi Nick! Hi Nick!’ said Harriet, much to Nick’s delight.
‘Saw you last night on the telly,’ said Murph.
Nick nodded without speaking. On his shoulder, Harriet also nodded.
‘I know you only meant it as a joke,’ continued Murph. ‘But some people don’t have much sense of humour. You say things like that too often and eventually nobody will listen to you when it matters.’
‘Yeah,’ said Nick, stroking Harriet. ‘I guess I get a little too stupid at times.’
I looked at him in amazement. Here he was admitting to crazy behaviour. Something I’d never heard him do before: was this him speaking or Harriet?
‘Trouble is,’ said Murph, ‘it allowed that Jim Black fella to make fun of what’s happening to the birds.’ He pointed to the paper. ‘Have you read this?’
I shook my head.
‘It looks like that Bryce Shreeves brought the disease into the country.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘Eggs,’ replied Murph. He tapped the paper. ‘It says here they have found some egg shells which are different from the eggs his chooks lay. They’re doing tests. Seems like
Shreeves could have got the eggs overseas. He’s just come back from a trip around the world. At least now he won’t be able to blame my birds.’
‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ I said, puzzled. ‘He wouldn’t want disease on his farm.’
‘No, but he would want new varieties of chooks that laid more eggs. Bet he was bypassing biosecurity by smuggling eggs through in his bags. He’d hatch them out here and nobody would know anything about it. Wouldn’t surprise me if they were genetically modified.’ Murph took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Makes more sense than the alternative.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That migrating birds brought it here. But they have been coming here for thousands of years. Can’t see how all of a sudden they’d start bringing diseases with them. Would have happened before. And it hasn’t. No, mark my words. That Bryce Shreeves is the one to blame.’ A quick puff. ‘Mongrel!’ he added angrily. Then he started coughing. It was a horrible, rasping sound, as if parts of his lungs were hanging loose and flapping around in the tubes.
When he was like this there was nothing you could do to help. It would take him a minute or so to recover. I waited.
‘Come on,’ he wheezed as the coughing subsided. ‘Come and see what’s happening to my birds.’
‘Can I bring Harriet?’ asked Nick.
‘Yeah, sure. She likes going outside.’
‘What about the disease?’ I asked. ‘I’m happy to stay in here with her, while you go out.’
Murph shook his head. ‘No need for that, Danny. If she’s going to get the flu, then she already has. She’s been out with me several times since I first noticed the sick birds.’
So we all went out to the aviaries, with Harriet still on Nick’s shoulder — and still ignoring me.
In the first one, we found two fluffed-up birds sitting on the ground. As we went from cage to cage, the number of sick birds increased.
‘Have many died?’ I asked.
‘Too many,’ replied Murph, softly. ‘Too many.’
