Mate, let me tell you, this was something that happened to one of my best mates at the time and me in Otakiri, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.
Now my mate lived not too far away, a couple of paddocks away to be precise. We hung out quite a bit as teenagers (we would have sneaky smokes, listen to The Doors and have a bloody good laugh really). Now one particular night I hooned over to her place with my torch and over sized gumboots, carefully navigating my way as there was this huge ass mother of a drain smack-bang in the middle of it! SLOP SLOP. Pulling the ‘Gummies’ out if they happened to get suctioned in by the mud.
It was the usual sort of a night for us: music, laughter, smoking, dancing like rock queens. We’d wish that Jim Morrison was still alive so we could drool more! Bloody Nora! Anyway, no-one else was at her place at the time, so the house was ours for a few hours so we could live it up! Just had to make sure I didn’t go green again, like I did this one night, puking outside by the trampoline wishing I was never introduced to Black Russian!
So, after all our shenanigans it was time to go home. BOO! She decided to come stay over at my place, and in all our wisdom we decided to walk along the metal road (the Local Council had a lot to answer for mate!). Shit roads to the max. Big potholes that could stuff up your steering and rattle the mufflers off your wagon. Walking on the road WAS the best choice at the time because that big mother of a drain in the paddock was a pain in the ass! Many a lost gumboot in that mud-pit, never to be seen again!
As we walked we reflected on some of the hard-case things each of us had done that night, just so we could laugh and live the moment again, “…..hahahaha! What about when you cracked up! And you spat out that Black Russian all over my face! hahahahaha!…”. So upon reading that you will know that we weren’t exactly quiet. The neighboring farms 5 km away would have heard us! It was a valley in the middle of nowhere! Anyway, I don’t laugh I cackle so that’s even worse.
Now, I immediately stopped my cackle dead in it’s tracks because my mate stopped walking and put her hand out in front to stop me. She shone the torch up towards the last bend in the road on the home straight. SHIT! Do they look like eyes? SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! Oh my god! What the hell? There were glowing eyes, heaps of them, dotted and stealthily moving around on the road up ahead. We were a paddock away from her place and frozen to the core. What the hell do we do? They were dogs, not our dogs but a pack of blood thirsty mongrels. We could hear their growls of hate echoing with a horrible, sick, demented noise. We both, out of instinct, slowly moved backwards not keeping our eyes of the horrible glow up ahead. Weren’t you supposed to not make any sudden moves in this situation? Why the hell are they moving towards us ?! “Damn mate, they’re moving towards us!”, and at that moment the sickening growls seemed to get louder and louder. They had decided to prey on their next victims – US! “GO! HELP! GO!”, and without any further ado we bolted! We had to and our life depended on it. Our life depended on making every stride count, keeping every scruple we had left and speed, bloody speed!
Photo courtesy of Brian Giesen.
This next bit actually happened, no lies. If we had to do it again we probably couldn’t. Now my mate had big boobs and was bigger than me, but she was bloody fast! We could see her house and the driveway was too far to make it. Reaction cut left and jumped, yes jumped the Taranaki fence, sailed over, adrenalin pumping! Was I breathing? Or did we get picked up by angels? They were so close, so close that I could hear their paws thundering with each step on the road behind.
Focus, focus! Focused on the house lights then JUMP! Jumped the next fence onto the driveway. GO!GO!GO! We’re gonna make it! Skidded onto the porch and scrambled to safety, heavy breathing, I mean REAL HEAVY breathing, it was like our heart was in our heads.
We looked at each other, eyes bulging out of their sockets. Man was she pasty looking! Just made me realize what I probably looked like. We were shaking and then realized that we beat the odds and outrun a pack of lethal mongrels!
Still pumped (was for days), I made the first step to set off a chain reaction. I called my folks who called all the local farmers, who got their guns, who got in their wagons (or on farm bikes), who all met up at that ‘last bend’, who searched and searched for the killer pack. Nothing to be found! What?! Bummer!
Found out that the local farmers had cattle that had been mauled by these bastards. Apparently these ‘hunters’ were ex pig dogs that never came back, trained to hunt and bring down their prey with brute force or whatever it took. The odd one was found after that and dealt to, fact of life really.
And I tell ya what! We didn’t do that again for a very long time! Bonus was that we were allowed to use the farm bike to and from each others house for awhile, but always looking out for any more opportunist blood thirsty mongrels wanting to bring down their next target. We’re alive and wake up breathing everyday just so I can tell you what could happen in A Day In The Life Of A Kiwi while visiting friends in Otakiri, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.