Bushcraft— A Slice of Life

Sudden tragedy, you will remember, struck the gay young members of the V.U.W. Thingummybob Club as they tripped heavily through the dense bush at Wossname in the Tararuas. Struck, indeed, in a sibilantly slicing form briefly known as Atkinson's Awesome Anti-clockwise Aaargh...! - later identified, by a Mr Noumlod of the D.S.I.R., as a mutant frisbee.

This, the first major frisbee tragedy in New Zealand, has a quite incredibly boring story behind it. Working from his armchair in the varsity Smoking Room, our Raving Reporter filed this backgrounder.

The killer frisbees were originally introduced from the U.S.A. by the Department of Social Welfare and the Catholic Education Board to control kids playing on the streets in Naenae. According to one Mr Loonmud, a welfare worker, the frisbees were expected to die out once the problem was eliminated. At first all went well as the frisbees sliced through the Valley's juvenile population. But then, it seems, local members of the Sinn Fein (pronounced "spuc") mated some captured frisbees with the V8 Chev and Buick hubcaps common in the area. They trained the resultant strain to attack, not just kids who were an economic liability on the State, but anyone in whom they detected cerebral activity. "Virtually the only safe people in the Valley were the Irish," said a Sinn Fein member by the name of Dolmoun. "Even Frolman Caser lost an ear."

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The frisbees themsleves were finally driven out by local residents who banded together and marched in a line up the valley wearing stiletto shoes, carrying ice-axes and singing: "Moolund, Moolund Uber Alles". A few frisbees escaped into the bush and it is believed to be these which made the attack on the V.U.W. Thingymbobbers. The only ones spared were Messrs T. Connell, J. O'Brien, R. O'Domlun (yes, he was there) and several law students. When interviewed by our raving reporter the survivors seemed too shocked by the incident to make any sort of coherent statement. Most of them giggled uncontrollably between comments like: "Begorrah, you should have seen those Proddies' heads roll..."

Frisbees of variegated colours have also been spotted flitting through the bush round Whitby where they are believed to have broken into homes and interbred with the imitation Spode dinnersets which abound in the district. Others are rumoured to have mated with floppy hats in the Wairarapa.

The Minister of Lands, Mr Lundmoo, has rejected calls for the D.S.I.R. to mate broad-billed pelicans with ice-axes in an attempt to find a creature to eliminate the frisbees. "Next thing we'd have to destroy the ice-axes," he said.

"There just aren't enough Ken Sullivan types around to do it."

And in a special Easter message from Christmas Island, the Minister of Defence, the Fanatically Right Honourable Mr Doolmun, said the problem was only temporary. "By the year 2400 every dinner plate, lightshade, Fred Dagg hat, hubcap, teacosy, Papal cap, spongecake and N.A.C. jet turbofan in the country will have some frisbee ancestry," he said. "By then, though, it will be so diluted that everything will be just dandy."

He rejected suggestions that the frisbees be sent back to the United States. "The Americans asked us to take the frisbees," he said. "If we want to remain a free and independent country we'd better do what they say."

(Every effort has been made to exclude factual accuracy from this article; however the author takes no responsibility for any truths which may inadvertantly have been included.)

Julian O'Brien