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

[nfoster at extremezone.com]

Jewel:

I know a lot of men that would be jealous of Henry!

I can't believe you got to check out a tuatara!  I have only read about them,
somehow it makes them seem more real to have you talk about them.

Nella

Quoting Jewel <jewelblanch at kinect.co.nz>:

> 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
>
>
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