Read Online Rat Island by William Stolzenburg - Free Book Online
Authors: William Stolzenburg
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But for all the valiant intent, it amounted to the reflex of a man mortally wounded. After a brief vacation in Wellington, Henry returned to Pigeon Island with a broken spirit. Always the meticulous groundskeeper, he could not bring himself to paint his house or tend his garden. His lifeâs calling in Dusky Sound had become nothing more than a job, a chore of tedium and attrition in the face of an unstoppable enemy. âI have not the old interest in it,â he wrote in January of 1902, âfor I am not expecting a ⦠long residence here, on account of that weasel.â
A month later, a beaten Henry sent his letter of resignation. âI feel I cannot stay here much longer, so I beg to resign my billet as caretaker of Resolution Island and propose to leave here by the next boat.â
Henry would rally once again, but only briefly. He agreed to reconsider, to stay on at Resolution, though the passion would never return. For the remainder of his days in Dusky Sound, he went through the motions. âI am 57 now and have made no worthy provisions so that my pleasant old dreams of getting married will all have to be buried and that will be alright,â he wrote. âI have the rheumatics in my hands, often lumbago and this wheezy chest so that I am not half my time fit for work. I have been building a dinghey and I could make myself so tired that I nearly always went to bed before dark.â
Out of a rote sense of duty, Henry continued to move kakapos and kiwis, shuffling birds like deck chairs on the Titanic . His tally surpassed seven hundred birds. It was a wonder there were any left to move. By then he had concluded that the kakapos and kiwis of Fiordland were on the skids. His favorite old hunting grounds on the mainland had fallen quiet. The refugees stranded on Resolution had become sacrificial lambs to professional killers. âWhatever has been the cause it has been the same everywhere I have been these last two seasons,â Henry reported.
Richard Henry would die twenty years later, alone and confused in a nursing home in Avondale. Back in Dusky Sound, his kakapos were abandoned to their fates, the walls of their last little fortress falling before the vandals.
Chapter 3
FOX FIRE
N EARLY FORTY YEARS after a beaten Richard Henry surrendered Resolution Island and his countryâs tailspinning avifauna to their fate, there began an eerie repetition of history. A lone man in a little wooden boat began crossing treacherous seas between islands of snowy peaks, on a mission to save a spectacular kingdom of birds.
His name was Bob âSea Otterâ Jones, and in 1947, in a faraway island wilderness a hemisphere and six thousand miles north of New Zealand, the sturdy little seaman Jones took up sailing a twenty-foot dory through the storm-battered archipelago of the Bering Sea, as the resident first manager of the Aleutian Islands National Wildlife Refuge.
Jones had accepted the Herculean task of managing the Aleutiansâ sanctuary of seals and seabirds, gathered on a chain of cold and rocky islands arcing eleven hundred miles, from the Alaska Peninsula to the farthest American outlier of Attu. Jonesâs work environs had a temper to match the squalling tantrums of Richard Henryâs Fiordland. His was the domain of the infamous Aleutian fog that lured lost pilots into mountainsides, whose peaks occasionally rained boulders of lava and harbored a beastly wind with a name all its own. The williwaw was a meteorological phenomenon born in the icy mountain peaks, a cold, dense slug of air hurtling downward over shore and seaâan avalanche of wind. On the decks of boats bobbing off the coastal swells, sailors would come to fear that certain sudden calm of a hurricaneâs eye, heralding the rumble of an oncoming freight train. They would batten down the hatches and brace themselves for the williwaw to come roaring, a mast-snapping, boat-flipping force sometimes reaching speeds of
A month later, a beaten Henry sent his letter of resignation. âI feel I cannot stay here much longer, so I beg to resign my billet as caretaker of Resolution Island and propose to leave here by the next boat.â
Henry would rally once again, but only briefly. He agreed to reconsider, to stay on at Resolution, though the passion would never return. For the remainder of his days in Dusky Sound, he went through the motions. âI am 57 now and have made no worthy provisions so that my pleasant old dreams of getting married will all have to be buried and that will be alright,â he wrote. âI have the rheumatics in my hands, often lumbago and this wheezy chest so that I am not half my time fit for work. I have been building a dinghey and I could make myself so tired that I nearly always went to bed before dark.â
Out of a rote sense of duty, Henry continued to move kakapos and kiwis, shuffling birds like deck chairs on the Titanic . His tally surpassed seven hundred birds. It was a wonder there were any left to move. By then he had concluded that the kakapos and kiwis of Fiordland were on the skids. His favorite old hunting grounds on the mainland had fallen quiet. The refugees stranded on Resolution had become sacrificial lambs to professional killers. âWhatever has been the cause it has been the same everywhere I have been these last two seasons,â Henry reported.
Richard Henry would die twenty years later, alone and confused in a nursing home in Avondale. Back in Dusky Sound, his kakapos were abandoned to their fates, the walls of their last little fortress falling before the vandals.
Chapter 3
FOX FIRE
N EARLY FORTY YEARS after a beaten Richard Henry surrendered Resolution Island and his countryâs tailspinning avifauna to their fate, there began an eerie repetition of history. A lone man in a little wooden boat began crossing treacherous seas between islands of snowy peaks, on a mission to save a spectacular kingdom of birds.
His name was Bob âSea Otterâ Jones, and in 1947, in a faraway island wilderness a hemisphere and six thousand miles north of New Zealand, the sturdy little seaman Jones took up sailing a twenty-foot dory through the storm-battered archipelago of the Bering Sea, as the resident first manager of the Aleutian Islands National Wildlife Refuge.
Jones had accepted the Herculean task of managing the Aleutiansâ sanctuary of seals and seabirds, gathered on a chain of cold and rocky islands arcing eleven hundred miles, from the Alaska Peninsula to the farthest American outlier of Attu. Jonesâs work environs had a temper to match the squalling tantrums of Richard Henryâs Fiordland. His was the domain of the infamous Aleutian fog that lured lost pilots into mountainsides, whose peaks occasionally rained boulders of lava and harbored a beastly wind with a name all its own. The williwaw was a meteorological phenomenon born in the icy mountain peaks, a cold, dense slug of air hurtling downward over shore and seaâan avalanche of wind. On the decks of boats bobbing off the coastal swells, sailors would come to fear that certain sudden calm of a hurricaneâs eye, heralding the rumble of an oncoming freight train. They would batten down the hatches and brace themselves for the williwaw to come roaring, a mast-snapping, boat-flipping force sometimes reaching speeds of
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