I was pretty sick when I recorded this episode, but I was dead set on getting these episodes out every week.
I feel for Kate, not only did she have to put up with me on a personal level, but with having to cut together an endless slew of sickly re-takes.
I pushed the boat out a little further on niche jokes in this episode. Maybe the effects of the virus helped take my guard down a little.. for better or worse..
I laid the Wilford Brimley stuff on pretty thick..
If you don’t know, he was an actor and prominent in a number of 80s movies.
He also had diabetes.. and his own way of pronouncing it.
He famously filmed a commercial before he died talking about his.. diabeetus.
Something about that face and that pronunciation tickles me directly.
Anyway, this commercial has since been re-edited many times. You’re more likely to find the edits where he talks about his magical horse, being Lindsay Lohan or rapping over MC Hammer than you are to find the original commercial.
So why did I include him?
Episode 3 saw the emergence of Big Merv. An elderly Kākāpō who stole our hearts and became our unofficial mascot on the podcast.
..and he looks exactly like Wilford Brimley.
The resemblance is uncanny.
Merv was one of the few birds to get a full story arc across the series, he’s our absolute favourite, but you’ll have to listen to the podcast to hear what happens to him. It was certainly a twist we did not expect.
This is also the last episode to carry an epilogue highlighting other endangered New Zealand species.
This is a regret I have about the series and I wish we could have kept it up, however it proved to be just that bit too much extra work once hatching got underway.
Almost all of New Zealand’s native species are endangered or under threat and much of that is just down to ignorance. Hell, even the seagulls are endangered! People just didn’t realise they’re surprisingly long lived, often exceeding 30 years of age, so we didn’t notice they weren’t multiplying and it was geriatric gulls stealing all our chippies.
The problem for them, like so many New Zealand birds, is either nesting on the ground, or at the beach.. where New Zealanders like to drive and let our dogs loose.
It’s not exactly a recipe for the survival of precious eggs and tiny chicks.
“Sucks” - NZ Red Billed Gull
And before we go any further, yes, New Zealanders really do drive on the beach and it’s a bit mental.
The Kākāpō is a popular bird and receives more funding than other species (even if it’s still not enough). Using that popularity to highlight the plight of other species was something I really wanted to do.. so I’m going to at least start tagging links to other species onto these posts so you can choose to learn about them if you want to.
Learn about the Northern Royal Albatross here
EP 03: Set Your Egg-timers