On the joyful things in life

So it's been a while...

There are many reasons why - and I'll discuss them at length soon hopefully - but this post is not about that.

This post is about joy.

A LOT of big things have happened in my life recently which have not been great for my mental health.  And on Wednesday, as part of a conversation around this topic my GP asked me if I had things to look forward to.  She asked it in a caring way - although I know it's also part of a suicidal ideation checklist thing.  But for me, this was the easiest question of all to answer:

Yes.  Always.  No matter what craziness is going on in my life I am always looking forward to something.  No matter how anxious or sad or low energy I'm feeling I am always excited to see what's next.  I rattled off a list of things happening over the next two months that I was excited about.  And these are just the things I know are happening that I'll enjoy.

And while part of this is because I actively put effort into creating opportunities so I do have things to look forward to*, the bigger part is that I am excited by so many random things in life: cool bugs, seeing my kids learn something new or tell a dumb joke, funny bumper stickers, people being nice for no reason.  We never know what each day will bring!

So I wanted to write a list of some of the unplanned cool stuff that I've witnessed.  I'm not talking about the paid activities I've been on, or the encounters I've had at zoos, but the unexpected stuff.  And because of who I am and what excites me - they're mostly animal related.

So in no particular order of importance - here are some cool life experiences that have brought me joy:

1. The second time I was in Rarotonga we met a three legged dog on the beach - he was missing a back leg.  He was so friendly, and just wanted to hang out with us on the beach which was fine by me.  And while meeting random dogs in Rarotonga is not unusual, what we witnessed shortly after certainly was.  He was fishing!  He started herding little fish toward the shoreline, trapping them with his front legs and then snapping them up in his mouth!  It was just not something I knew dogs did or ever expected to see.  And yes, we were in Rarotonga which is extremely privileged in and of itself, but this moment was so unexpected, it made the holiday that much more special.

2. I rescued a kereru.  We were driving to Mahurangi because it's one of my favorite swimming beaches and I wanted the kids to experience it too.  We were only about 10 minutes away from the beach when I spotted a kereru on the side of the road.  It was just sitting on the ground pretty much on the road which I thought was a bit weird and I was concerned it might get hit by a car.  So, to the resigned annoyance of my whanau, I turned the car around to check on it, thinking maybe it was fruit drunk and just needed to be encouraged away from the road.  Once observing it close up, it was clear it was actually injured - it could not fly properly.  So I cornered it, scooped it up and instead of visiting Mahurangi, we took the kereru back to Birdcare Aotearoa - which is only 15 minutes away from our house, and visited a local beach with the kids instead.k

 After a few weeks of specialist medical care, decent food and rest, we were invited to release the kereru back to Mahurangi, which we did.  It was a pretty special experience.

3.  I saw a seagull do a little dance.  I know they do this to imitate rain and get critters to come out of the sand just like blackbirds and thrush's do, but I never expected to see it actually happening in front of me!  I did not want to disturb the seagull because I needed to see its little dance so I had to zoom the camera in quite close.  But it was so cool!  Not something I've seen since, but every time I see a seagull, I'm hopeful.

4.  We got to help a hermit crab find a proper home.  When we were on holiday in Samoa Etta found a hermit crab near the resort gym that had decided to make a bottle cap its home.  It was not ideal, and Etta was pretty upset about it.  So we went hunting to find a shell that the crab would fit into.  It took about three shells before we found the right one.  We got to watch the hermit crab feel around each one to see if it was the right fit.  Once we brought the right sized shell it very quickly maneuvered itself out of the bottle cap and into its new home.  We have kept the bottle cap in our china cabinet as it was such a special event.

On the same trip we also got to see hermit crabs lining up to swap shells!  I have read about this, but never thought I would see it.  They actually line up big to small and eye up their neighbours to see if it's a good upgrade.  I have no idea how they work this stuff out between each other, or the science behind this, but it was pretty damned cool!

5.  When we were on our honeymoon in Brunei, we ended up staying more days than originally planned due to me still recovering from breaking my ankle.  Brunei isn't exactly renowned as a touristy destination and we'd decided to catch a bus to this crazy theme park** we'd seen was there.  Weirdly, this theme park is in quite a rural area where there was a dairy, a mosque, the theme park and lots of cattle.  I wanted to get a better angle to take a photo of this magnificent looking cow. Murray was yelling at me not to step off the path because there might be snakes - and, having done my research I knew there weren't any land based snakes in Brunei so I ignored him.  So I stepped off the path and directly onto a monitor lizard... It just took off away from us very fast.  Murray was absolutely terrified, but I still think it was hilarious.

6. Little Richard coming into my life.  I could not have anticipated the massive effect rehabbing this duck would have on my life. She came into our lives early on in 2021.  When we first met her, we named her Wombat (her siblings were named after other marsupials) and we assumed she was a boy because we'd never seen a female duck with a ring neck marking before.

She and her siblings visited our place with their Mum like quite a few other ducklings around this time.  But one day Little Richard hurt her leg somehow and could no longer run fast enough to keep up with her whanau.  So, based purely on gut instinct, I caught her, strapped her leg and popped her into our chicken coop. She was probably just a few months old.  It really upset her and her family, so we decided to keep her in the coop only overnight and allow her to be with her family during the day.  And when she was fast enough that I couldn't catch her anymore, I deemed her well enough to go back to being with her whanau fulltime.

Little Richard has a permanent limp, and as such her first few years were pretty rough.  When she was about three she was so badly attacked by male ducks during mating season that we had decided to put her back into the coop.  She had a serious eye injury, and the back of her neck was featherless and raw.  I put antiseptic on her wounds.  She was so miserable that after three days we let her out because we thought she might die from depression.  Even though she was here most days, she is still a wild duck, and being held in captivity is extremely unnatural.  We were not sure if she would survive, but we could not be responsible for her being so miserable.

She has been visiting our place for more than five years now.  Thankfully, breeding season has gotten easier for her, and while she still has a limp (which is always worse in Winter) she is a very bolshy duck who can hold her own.  Little Richard taught me that you could rehab a duck without removing them from their flock.  Since then, we have rehabbed quite a few ducks with minor injuries (even a partial amputation!) which we have been very lucky to see grow into adulthood.

7. I saw a bittern in the wild!  They are EXTREMELY hard to spot and also exceptionally rare (less than 1000 left in Aotearoa) so this felt pretty special!  This happened last year while my Grandmother was dying.  My Aunt was sure she'd seen a bittern in this paddock one day, so I decided every time I was driving through we'd do a 'bittern check' to see if we could spot one.  The first time I saw one I was over the moon!  It helped put a bright spot into a difficult time, and gave me something to look forward to.  I have seen this same bittern in the same paddock a few times now, and it never fails to make me smile.  I also campaigned for better signage to help protect the bittern from being struck by a car (it is right next to State Highway 16) and this campaign has resulted in a sign.

8. I met a cat at a beach!  On one of my many alone time holidays in Warkworth I headed out to Algies Bay to go for a walk.  I don't tend to like walking around the more popular places because I like to be alone on my alone time holidays (the whole point is to not have to deal with so many people), so I'd gone to a not very swimmy looking rocky place only accessible at low tide.  I was just walking along when I noticed a cat on the beach.  As soon as it saw me, it ran away toward the treeline.  Then I noticed some people were also at the beach - a man a little older than me, and his son - about Etta's age.  The cat was their cat.  They lived just up the hill from the beach and their cat had started following them when they went out on walks to the beach, so they had started just letting him.  We had a lovely chat, and whilst I definitely prefer being alone on my alone time trips, I really didn't mind meeting this man, his son and their cat.  It was an unusual but lovely interaction.

9. I found some cool mushrooms and ate them.  And then I made a map to lead a friend to them.  The cool thing about mushrooms is because of how the mycelium works, most of the time you can reliably find them in the same spot during suitable mushroom fruiting weather (wet, but not too wet).  I was extremely excited to find what I thought were wood blewits on a track I often walked down.  And, after asking online, checking the spore print and smelling the mushroom - I found I was correct!  So I have harvested and eaten wood blewits from this spot a few times.  I was talking to someone I met through the school Board of Trustees about them (because he's a mycologist) and he said that was one mushroom he'd never found in the wild.  So I used a combo of Googlemaps, MS Paint and a photo of the mushrooms in situ to make him a 'map' so he could find them too.  And he did!  And he sent me a picture of the wood blewits he found.  I felt like a pirate leaving a treasure map somewhere that successfully led someone to a treasure.  It still makes me happy just thinking about it.

10. I went to the Helensville Museum and ended up helping ID people from photos from my Primary school!  The weather was absolutely atrocious that day, but I'd wanted to take the kids to the museum for a while, and we made a day of it and brought Mum and Auntie Shaz too.  As we were paying our entry fees we were asked if we were local (probably different pricing for locals than proper tourists) and I said that Mum and Shaz were, and I'd grown up localish but had since moved.  They asked where I went to school, and when I told them they said 'Oh!  Someone has donated a lot of photos from Waioneke but we don't know who anyone is.  Could you help us?'  After a very enlightening tour of the buildings, I sat down and looked through photos from my primary school, naming people where I could.

They also let me take photos of some of the photos - which was amazing!  I could remember some (but not all) of the events in the photographs and found some amazing pics, like this one which was from a bunch of us singing along to a Sting and the Police song around 1991.  I can name everyone in this photo (I won't - but I'm the second one from the left).  This is definitely not what I was expecting to be doing on a visit to a small museum, but it was definitely pretty special.

There are so many other memorable things that have brought surprise spots of joy to my life - finding a double daisy, another parent helping me rescue ducklings from a drain, hearing a kookaburra in New Zealand for the first time - I could probably list at least twenty more pretty special things.  

The point is, we never know what each day will bring us.  No matter how tough things are or how much craziness is happening in the world it's important to remember that there is always joy to be found in amongst it.  It's important to lean in when these opportunities present themselves - when we wonder about those mushrooms, when we hear about cool birds, when we think something looks a bit odd.  


* By planning holidays, trips to the beach, walks in the cemetery - just generally ensuring I do things that allow me to enjoy my life.

** On arrival we discovered the theme park did not open until 5pm - which was about 6 hours away.  Weirdly though, you could just walk around the theme park when it was closed - so we did!  That was pretty cool in and of itself.  It was one of the craziest places I've ever been.  Very outdated - the major feature was some kind of fountain that played music by Michael Jackson and The Backstreet Boys