I felt safe. I wasn't. After spending hours with my fiance pushing through forested land we purchased to create our homestead, he had finally had enough and headed back down the over grown track to where we had left our bike. I paused to let him get ahead, I wanted him almost lost in the foreground with the valley in the distance. I didn't have one of myself, so even though I literally looked like I had been dragged through a Bush backward, I posed for a selfie.
Then I meandered down the track absorbing the view. I heard something quiet moving through the scrub behind me.
I have startled wild pigs in the past . These pigs would be called boar any where else in the world. I hadn't found any in my many solitary walks until that day when the dark shapes darted from a clearing as I rounded the bend. I thought they might be a neighbours dogs and started to follow and then hearing the snorts I registered the danger of one big shape and two small ones. Maternal sows can be very dangerous. That was how I found the elusive track I was on. I backed away into what appeared to be a dense wall of scrub on the other side of the clearing, and it opened onto the lost track we had seen on Google earth and until that moment failed to find. I knew deer were hidden in the trees but only ever saw them when they snuck into the cleared paddocks at the base of the property. I was uneasy when I heard the animal near me, given how much noise we had been making before we separated.
I slowed a little and so did the sound. I clapped a few times rationalising it must be a distracted pig and kept walking with my head forward, avoiding an unnesasary confrontation. The snapping twigs and rustling leaves started again and the sound came closer.
It wasn't right. I stopped and faced the sound, was it a person? I was considering asking "Who's there?"
Then came an open mouthed growl, from about 15 feet inside the scrub. Something I could not see was locked on to me. The snarl wasn't aiming to intimidate me, it really wasn't that loud. It was breathy, so it wasn't baring it's teeth for show the way a threatened dog does. It was saying,
"God dammit she heard me."
I unclipped the Machete from my belt loop pushed back the velcro fold to unseat it and held the blade to my right side. Now, my man was over my left shoulder.
To call him I had to turn away from the Bush where now I heard nothing.
"Wild Dog!" I dared yell toward the Quad then snapped my head back. Hearing no movement.
"What?" He called up the track.
I thought for moment.
"Help!!" I tried not to sound afraid.
" Why?" I realised I was being lost in translation and began my slow retreat down the track, listening. I never saw the dog, and I didn't hear it leave. We don't have predators in New Zealand. I had never been hunted. I know of no one who has. Sure I've been bitten by a bad dog, even attacked while I was doing youth work in a state housing subdivision. This was altogether different.
To be clear. The animal had heard us and watched us together. And waited for my strapping partner to move out of sight. I limp. It chose me. It stalked me from behind, getting withing 15 feet of me before I turned. If I hadn't faced it, well. I was carrying the Machete for my partner who had his hands full. With it in my hands, I felt I had some chance. Without it I would have been terrified.
My partner found a dog track. The paw was two inches wide. We both assume it was a feral pig dog, selected for it's fighting genes and trained by a pig hunter, gone wild. It was so much scarier not seeing it.
Here's the thing, the present danger did not compel me to disarm. Why would it? To remove your means of self defense as a response to aggression is insane.
I am following the Libertarian movement in the USA closely. The only reason New Zealand has the lowest corruption score is because we are so damn agreeable, and frankly don't live with danger. Aside from the one wild dog we have no predators. No poisonous anything. Abundance and peace has made us soft. Now we have what appears to be a communist platitude wielding Prime Minister and have aligned ourselves with China.
Obama and Hillary are coming to visit and they will be welcomed like Royalty. My love is a South African and he has little affection for most New Zealanders, because we are ignorant and arrogant about our safety.
Save your country, and when that is done, spare us a thought in the South Pacific. 