Iona Winter

I caught a whiff of death in the garden late last night. It was a cloying smell, edging on bad feet mixed with summer heat and dry grass. I knew the scent immediately, having grown up surrounded by native forest in West Auckland in the 1970’s. Long before the developers came and destroyed the bush and orchards from which we’d steal fruit – sometimes chased by a shotgun toting owner. I don’t recognise this place of memory now, driving past at high speed, the area is saturated with infill housing…all the trees gone.

The smell of death also reminded me of the possums my father and brother would cull, as they (the possums) ate through our supply of fruit each year. It reminded me of dead bloated cows on the roadside during summers as a child…strong encounters with large creatures dead and not buried.  Worst of all it reminded me of the intense smells which would inevitably come during spring and early summer. The gagging, rotting smells of poisoned rats who were trying to nest in the ceiling. I can still hear their little clawed feet running above my head or beside my ears as they scrabbled up and down the walls.  Living on the edge of the bush, there were many things we had to contend with. Things I’d partly forgotten until now.

I lovingly watered my plants this morning and spied the source (of the smell). Blowflies were humming in a thick blanket above a small and tightly curled hedgehog. I felt sad. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was because the wee creature looked so peaceful, not hit and squashed on the road as their kind often are, but gently wrapped up in a c shape as if sleeping.

I wondered if it was a sign…perhaps death was on it’s way in the family.  Having mixed ancestry (Pakeha and Maori) I look out for such signs by habit. And so I checked the ominous thought with myself and realised it was simply a dead hedgehog in amongst the herbs. This intuitive knowing created a gentleness in me, and scooping the hedgehog up with a spade I respectfully placed it deep into the weeds at the back of the section.

Death of creatures makes me revisit the past. The pets we buried in our own garden: cats, guinea pigs, geckos and mice. The ceremony and ritual around death, has always interested me (despite it being somewhat bleak for most people). The sadness we feel so intensely which always passes with time. DEATH – the big thing we all have to contend with in our lifetimes and the thing which for the most part we avoid.

I’m so glad I found the hedgehog today. Pleased I could send it deep into the dark forest of weeds, rather than letting it lay in the blistering sun.