[Ag-eq] Alittle Peep Into New Zealand Ecology [tuataras]

[Jewel]

It seems that most everyone is busy planting their spring gardens or are out in the menage  arena 
schooling their horses, so may I say something about one of our more famous tuataras?
I said that the Southland Museum had a very successful tuatara breeding colony and this * famous 
tuatara is Henry, its senior male.
It is not known exactly how old he is, but what is known is that he is well over 100 years old, 
maybe even 120 and he is still fathering children.:  he has, at the latest count:  18 to Melinda and 
11 to Lucy, but this happy state of affairs did not come about until he was   approaching his 100 
birthday.;  till then, he had been infertile and the cause was not known, but then, it was 
discovered that he had a large tumour on his family jewels.
Ancient creature such as the tuatara had never had anything that could be called surgical 
intervention and the possibility of operating on Henry was debated for a long time, but it was, 
eventually, decided that a start had to be made somewhere "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" so 
Henry went under the knife.
It is needless to say:  (so why say it than)? the operation was a resounding success.
Henry is named for Richard Henry:  New Zealand's first real conservationist,  why Henry rather than 
Richard beats me!
Henry's stats are that he is 55mm long and weighs 1.1kg.

I visited the Southland museum in 2009 and asked if I could * see one of the tuataras?  Permission 
was granted and I was allowed to examine an unnamed  juvenile. I called him Virgil, as I had done an 
Afghan Hound I had bred.  All the other pups in the litter had names, but I could not think of one 
for this remaining pup.  Then, one night, I was listening to the radio and they played a recording 
by a guitarist who went by the sobriquet of Virgil Nameless.
I was talking to Lendsay Haysley yesterday, the curator of the tuatara colony, who,  I was extremely 
flattered, to find  remembered me anmd what flattered me even more was that the little bloke I had 
called Virgil had, officially, retained that name.

         Jewel