NOT A WOOD DEVIL

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 108, 10 May 1933, Page 15

NOT A WOOD DEVIL

THE WETA DEFENDED

A DUEL WITH A ROBIN

AND A CHILD'S TITBIT

(To the Editor.) Sir,—l was pleased to see by your issue of May 4 that the opossum-trappers are making natural-history notes; they have good opportunities for doing so, and I should like to congratulate the Wellington Acclimatisation Society on its interest in the subject by sending the notes of one of the trappers i'or publication. It shows that they too realise that the public take a keen interest xin our natural history, which is unique in many respects. I should, however, like to say a word or two in defence of the weta, or wooddevil as it was called in my younger days. Children are, rig'itly I. suppose, always discouraged from making free with insects; but "Ugh! the ugly thing; kill it! is heard too often. The tale of the Ugly Duckling must not be forgotten; we cannot all be handsome, but we need not be offensive because we are not handsome. That the repugnance many of ius if eel at the sight of a. weta is not natural, but taught is proved by this fact. I know^a young lady who as a girl ate wetas. (I can hear!)— She ■ and her sisters, not taught to regard wetas as repulsive, had been given a new treat, shrimps or prawns, and later when in the bush they saw their friends the wetas they thought them rather like the prawns, and treated them accordingly. She cannot remember how they tasted. VARIOUSHABITATS OF SPECIES. The weta feeds on leaves and wood, and occasionally on his fellow wetas. One species lives in the bush, one in caves, one under stones an open country. AVhen the trapper says the weta "kills every tree it feeds on," how does he know? Why should the weta's feeding kill the tree? It feeds on the leaves, and on.the softer decayed or decaying wood; but it does not "bore into the tree. This fact must be stressed, since the holes in the trees in which wetas are of ten found are assumed to be of its making. They are not. The holes are due to certain big grubs, the chief borers being the huliu (grub of the big brown beetle that often conies blip against the window at night), the grub of the greenmantle (our big green moth), and the grub of the sphinx-moth (the big moth banded pink and grey). These grubs are all large, some as large as a aiddle finger, and they burrow into the sapvpod and pass a long period there—one, iw, three, or more years. And grubs, are voracious feeders, eating during their lifetime, it is estimated, more than a thousand times their own weight. Their burrows are sealed at the opening until they leave them as perfect beetle or moth, as the case may be, and it is in these and similar burrows that the wetas find a home, but too often not a refuge. ' A GIMLET FABLE. I was once contradicted on this point by a man who had long lived near bush. He told me he had seen the weta boring into the tree. "How do they do it? I asked, naturally interested. "You have seen the hard shiny head of the male.' said he. "I have," I answered. Well, he stands with his head against the trunk of the tree, whirls round and round as quick as lightning, and goes in: like a gimlet." Then I realise it was his fun. But that is the only way I have heard of a weta boring a, hole. With its big long feelers, often longer than its body, the weta tests 'any hole it wishes to occupy, and i£ safe, in it goes. As it is a pretty close fit it is a puzzle to know how it can crawl in, till you know that as Captain Cuttle had a hook at the end of one arm, so the weta has hooks at the ends of its limbs, and hooks itself in and out. This is why it seems to hang on to your clothes, if you get one on you by. accident and try to pull it off The hooks fasten, and when the limbs are at stretch as you pull, the poor beggar can't let go, and you think he won't, and pull till the material gives, and— ■• "• ■■',' ■.. .. '," The long tapering "sting as it is called which you see at the end of some wetas is not a sting at all, but the ovipositor or egg-layer of the female. She lays her eggs, twenty or more, separately in damp decayed wood at a depth of about half an inch, and they hatch out, not into grubs, but into perfect insects;, there is no voracious grub stage at all, therefore no burrowing stage. Wetas also live under bark or in crevices as well as m holes, as we wood-carriers know; that is how they are brought into the house. A NIGHT WORKER, FOR GOOD REASON. The weta has always been extremely numerous, and it would be a bad lookout if it killed every tree it fed on; in reality it does the tree no harm at all. The trapper says the weta "has no natural enemy." Why then is it a nightfeeder? Grubs, beetles, wetas, all are night-feeders because by day there are thousands of birds on the watch. Would a bird tackle a weta? Well, the last time I was on Kapiti I was with the curator when he happened to turn over a sheet of galvanised iron lying close to some manuka trees, and the daylight disturbed some night-prowlers hiding there; small ear-wiggy things, a Maori bug or two, and two wetas. The light sent them scurrying they knew there were natural enemies on the watch; knew better than we did; for down in a flash came a robin which we did not know was near by—onetwo—three—the ear-wiggy wrigglers were gone. Ho did not touch the Maori bugs. One of the wetas had hurried off to shelter in the grass, the second was rather slow in starting; and when the robin had disposed of the smaller prey I was astonished to see him dart down like_ a little fury, bouncing up again like a lively feathered ping-pong ball. In that fraction of a second he gave the weta a dig that galvanised it into activity, and off it lumbered, half galloping in its hurry. Again the little feathered fury darted, down and gave another stab, and if shelter hadn't been near by that weta would never have reached it. "There's pluck," I said. "A robin will tackle what most men are half afraid of." The curator told me of an engagement he saw where a robin had cornered a weta, which was standing half erect, facing the robin, its front legs in boxing position, and when the robin darted at it the weta hissed and feinted as it were. Talk of St. George and the Dragon; here was St. Robin and the Weta. BACON FOR THE MOREPORK. No natural enemy?— And seeking to escape the day-birds by . prowling at night, the harassed weta falls into the clutches of the morepork, who by no means despises this juicy morsel. In the Botanical Gardens I saw a gardener one day poking a wire into a hole low down in a ribbonwood. I asked him why? "To kill the' weta if there is one," he said. "Why?" "Because they bore holes in the trees," said he. "How do you know? "We find them there." So I I explained; the guilty party had' already asenped, and the innocent weta was suffering from circumstantial evidence. Ihope other gardeners will think of this. The trapper also spoke of kakas and parakeets "stripping the branches of trees of their leaves," and opossums being blamed. Perhaps the kakas and parakeets do so; I have never seen them at it; but say it is so; they do it occasionally, but the opossum does it habitually. Also, it was known before that the kaka tears off the bark to get at grubs and insects; but he doesn't ring-bark the trees as some insects do. It waa also known that he chisels the wood to get at the insects. But this must be remembered; the bush, the wetas, the kakas, the parakeets all grew up together; and when the bush was far greater in extent than it is now, when the kaka and parakeet thronged it in their thousands, and the wetas in their thousands, it was a bush full of. vigour, no sign of decay, thick protecting undergrowth, and not till man has come with his pests is its existence threatened. SINS OF OPOSSUMS. Not content with the unique beauty of the bush left after so much has necessarily been cleared for settlement, certain people began introducing other creatures—goats, deer, opossums, pigs (Captain Cook started that)—all enemies to undergrowth because feeding on it, and as they increase in numbers destroying it. As regards the deer and the opossums,' why were they introduced? To increase the beauty of

the bush or of the open hills?— No. One to provide revenue, the other to provide sport. It will be observed that the trapper, writing for the Wellington Acclimatisation Society, is drawing a red herring across the trail. He is blaming the weta, the kaka, tli-j parakeet, and exculpating the opossum. In .-mother column he. says: I will defy any person to show me where an opossum lias been the cause of even a bush sapling dying in that particular bush." That is like Ajax defying the lightning. Here is the stroke. When J. L. Bennett was caretaker of Kapiti he on one occasion took me up various gullies to show me how the fuchsia was being killed out. "It is the same everywhere on the island," lie said. "They are being killed out." "What is killing them?" I asked. "The opossums; they are getting too thick, and always feeding on the younger fuchsia leaves, the trees never get f. c-l'iance." The opossums were not then being trapped. A BRAND FROM THE BURNING. Fortunately the fuchsia is a resistant tree— bucket-of-water-wood the bushman used to call it because it wouldn't burn. There is a story of a thick log having been used in a busliman's open fireplace as a back log for two or three years, and when at last thrown out, the scarred veteran plucked up heart of grace, sprouted, aud grew, vigorous as ever. So the opossum-stripped trees on Kapiti hung on, and when trapping reduced the numbers of the animals the trees revived, providing food when in flower for the I honey-eaters, and when in berry (the jkonini) for practically all the bush birds, including the climbing weka. The trapper's "defence" of the opossum is summed up as follows:—(1) The greatest source of revenue in wild life; (2) not a damapor of forest or birds (or at any rate not a damager to any appreciable extent); (3) more in danger of being exterminated than of being an exterminator of other things. „, . ~ . Note that the first defence (1) is that he is a great revenue producer. Revenue is more important than the forest; revenue is more important than the life in the forest; yet if the forest were not there there would be no revenue for the Acclimatisation Society—or for anybody else. 4nd three final questions—who draws this revenue? What rent is paid for the area from which it is drawn? For whose benefit is it expended?—l am, etc., JOHANNES C. ANDERSEN.