The Eel, a Bird and a Hovering Spear

Perhaps its the absence of glittered trees, consumerist jingles, flashing lights, insane shoppers, traffic jams, and bad Touchstone/Disney films that allowed me to sidestep gut-wrenching nostalgia for my first Christmas away from my family. Then again, maybe its because I wake up in a tent, am concerned about sunburn, have been cooking and eating out of the same pot for nearly a week and get my water from a tap in the bushes. It can hardly be called Christmas if there's always somebody playing Bob Marley on a guitar and I fall asleep to the sounds of camp hooligans throwing gas canisters on the fire. (You just don't get used to that kind of explosion.)

Its Christmas eve and Steve, Monica and I decide that sitting around a candle is just too much of a climbers cliche. We decide to take a walk down to the swimming hole to drink cheap beer and howl at the moon.

We discover that the rumours are true.

Feral Dave, the resident camp mental patient (who would later be arrested for god knows what) had in fact found a large dead bird on the highway and had indeed attached the bird to the end of the rope swing in order to attract eels, the bloated carcass floating s on the surface of the water.

Satisfactorily disgusted, we sat on the limestone shelf, watching the moon paint a silver veneer on the surface of the silent river as we talk redpoints, back clipping and new strategies for regrowing our fingertips.

"Hunting eels is a pretty boring business," says Steve after a while.
"Yep." I say finishing the last of a cheap New Zealand beer. I crush it under my foot with a satisfying crunch and stuff the flattened aluminum into my pocket. "But its safe to say that we've never had a Christmas eve like it."

I get down on my stomach, leaning well over the edge of the shelf and stare at the bloated blue and black feathered mass.

"Holy shit!"
"What iz it?" pipes up Monica.
"There's an eel!"

As our eyes adjust to the robotic blue of the headlamps we start to make out the sleek grey
movements of the eels below the surface of the water.

"There's one," says Steve.
"Oh yeah."
"And another, and holy shit look at that one."

Sure enough the mother eel had arrived for a feast of dead bird; at least a yard long and three inches thick. Its slimy flesh seems one with the water, its dead eyes like tiny luminescent televisions. They way it moves sends chills down my spine.

"We have to catch it. We'll be heroes back at the camp. Christmas eel for everyone."
"How non-traditional. Jesus. How?"
"I don't know, can you just grab it with your hands?"

I position myself further over the edge, reaching farther, breaching the surface of the water. My fingers run along its smooth back.

"Oh my god I touched it."
"Dude, not only that, it didn't even care that you touched it! You gotta grab it."
"Okay. So lets say I pull it out, then what, you smack it with the axe?"
"Right on. Its right here."

Steve pulls the eeling axe from under the rock.

I take a deep breath. I visualize how much strength I'd have to apply to keep a hold of that slimy creature. I pull it out of the water, the eel twisting and convulsing in fear, it sprays cold water in my face, and clothes and onto the limestone. I keep a steady grip, pulling it from the water, its body smacking against me and the rock. Its heavier than I expected but I have applied my rock climbing grip and Steve's coming at it with the axe to put it out of its misery, but suddenly it twists again and sends its long river fangs into the soft flesh on my cheek. I loose my balance and I fall into the river, an angry eel avenging its fate attached to my face.

The thought freezes me. My hands hesitate over the beast. The eel, with a good sized piece of bird in its fangs suddenly does a violent rolls.

"Ahhh. DEATH ROLL!" says Monica.
"Death roll!" I say. "They do death rolls?"

Then I thank whatever Maori gods are responsible for the happenings of the Golden Bay area because more headlamps appear along the shelf signaling the arrival of beer, spears and Hangdog Camp residents who have actual experience hunting eels.

And so it goes that six or seven of us spent the next few hours on our bellies like children staring down at the drama in the water inches below. Hidden in darkness we whispered our thoughts and plans for the attack, spoke to each other like we had no past and no future; just the eel, a bird and a hovering spear.

We would take no eel home with us that night for when the moment of truth came, the spear snapped, and like some message from above, the vaporous walls than held us together suddenly evaporated:
-The eel, scared for its very existence disappeared into some dark hole to recover, its fate as backwoods sushi averted yet another day.
-The climbers, tired and finished with the business of eeling stumbled home half-drunk with a broken spear, an axe and pockets full of crushed empties.
-And the bird, well. I hate to admit it, but it remained tied to the rope, none of us quite sure what to do with dead, bloated bird carcass at 2 am.

Magically there was no screaming and yelling all night long, no exploding gas bombs or chants to "BURN. THE. COUCH. BURN. THE. COUCH. We slept like babies all night and all morning, woken up by birds and sunlight and when we went to swim in the river the next morning, we found that the dead bird had happily disappeared.

Just a regular New Zealand Christmas.