Mating with hats seems to be a common thread amongst rare bird conservation doesn't it? If you recall this funny section from "Last Chance To See" about Pink, the Mauritius Kestrel...
"You see, the young birds that we've hatched here don't come to sexual maturity at the same time, so when the females start getting sexy, the males are not ready to handle it. The females are bigger and more belligerent and often beat the males up. So when that happens, we collect semen from Pink, and..."Harold points out in the comments that Kakapos also got turned on by ranger's hats, so let's promote that section of Last Chance To See into the main post...
"How do you do that?" asked Mark.
"In a hat."
"I thought you said in a hat."
"That's right. Carl puts on this special hat, which is a bit like a rather strange bowler hat with a rubber brim, Pink goes mad with desire for Carl, flies down and fucks the hell out of his hat."
"What?"
"He ejaculates into the brim. We collect the drop of semen and use it to inseminate a female."
"Strange way to treat your mother."
"He's a strange bird. But he does serve a useful purpose in spite of being psychologically twisted."
When one of the rangers who was working in an area where kakapos were booming happened to leave his hat on the ground, he came back later to find a kakapo attempting to ravish it. On another occasion the discovery of some ruffled possum fur in the mating area suggested that a kakapo had made another alarming mistake, an experience which is unlikely to have been satisfying to either party.
5 comments:
Gareth, you've done a lot to humanize the animal world for me!! What a GREAT site!
M&M
Thanks for blogging about my blog.
LCTS is one of my favourite books, of Adams or anyone else.
Nice blog!
Ian
I think there was a bit in the chapter on Kakapos about someone who had left his hat on the ground and later returned to find a kakapo ravishing it. Have I got that right? I need to locate my copy of LCTS and check...
Harold
You're right Harold... Here's the section....
When one of the rangers who was working in an area where kakapos were booming happened to leave his hat on the ground, he came back later to find a kakapo attempting to ravish it. On another occasion the discovery of some ruffled possum fur in the mating area suggested that a kakapo had made another alarming mistake, an experience which is unlikely to have been satisfying to either party.
So it seems like all the business with kakapo trackers and kakapo-tracking dogs could be simplified if they simply left hats scattered about to attract love-crazed kakapos.
I wonder if the females respond to hats as well? A male who kept a hat (or several hats) in his booming site might have a better chance of attracting a female. Track-and-bowl systems could become track-and-bowl-and-pile-of-hats systems!
Harold
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