It's all a bit strange here up here, she indicates the barstools and table, it's like were at the pub having a chat but there's all you down there, and so we are off to the pub for chat with Nicola a self-professed Pollyanna and Lily who says she is not.
Nicola Toki wrote Critters of Aotearoa, illustrated by Lily Duval
Lily Duval has written a book Six-legged Ghosts
Nicola once had the role of Threatened Species ambassador and during an interview with Jesse Mulligan, she found herself spouting management speak boring herself, and Jessie. Then she spoke from the heart on how unless you were a "K bird" you couldn't get sponsorship there wouldn't be any funding for the Smeagol gravel slug. RNZ thought this was great stuff and so the Critter of the Week was born. Just like Smeagol from the Lord of the Rings we tend to identify with characters and people, the best way to get your bug noticed is to name it after someone famous, entomologists know this says Nicola.
Nicola grew up taking holidays in a pop-up caravan and every year her dad would excitedly point to the nursery web spider webs and ask. "Have you ever looked inside a spider's web?" and show them all the little spiderlings. These are the memories she shares that started her on her connection with the natural world, but we are as a nation becoming more and more urbane. We have lost our sense of connectedness. Now we have to take children at school out to look in the soil and find a worm, once we took it for granted every child had these experiences at home. She says of herself, children have a natural biophilia and affinity with the natural world that never left her. How do we ensure it doesn't leave us? Critters is a great way to do that. It's the "I never knew that" moment.
I would like to meet the writer that can think of anything more "out there" than these critters. The peripatus worm shoots out glue to disable its victims and sucks out the result. There's the glow in the dark snail limpet and the jumping abilities of springtails or even better the fizzing bungholes of spittlebugs. Yes, it is an actual thing. Nicola went there during her talk to the Entomologists conference now they have a badge from the entomologists to prove it. It's all about telling a good story; Nicola can certainly do that.
Lily hasn't always loved bugs and professes they still sometimes make her jump. Her catalyst into the insect world was through the Critter of the Week Radio New Zealand show, now heading towards its tenth year. Being passionately deep into her Master of Arts in English at University of Canterbury on insects she just had to meet with Nicola. That was the first time her and Nicola met 16 years ago. These days Lily writes notes for the show for Jessie and Nicola sharing them with entomologists for their contributions.
Lily was passionately deep into her Master's thesis on "Insects", which if you say it a particular way can be confusing. She got used to adding six legged, it seems that stuck as she developed her book Six-legged ghosts: The Insects of Aotearoa. Her book is about examining our attitudes to insects and how we connect to them through art and culture. Asked if she ever thought it would spawn a book she laughs no, but people seem to quite like the pictures! People like an underdog, and they like a narrative, tell the stories that of why they are useful to us.
It's about connecting people with art and culture like when Alice in Wonderland is shrunk to the size of a fly. In conversation with the gnat, they just don't get each other. The gnat talks about the joy and wonder of insects, Alice talks about names and the gnat asks "What's the use of a name?" Alice responds It's useful to the people who name them, "I suppose" Alice says. Art makes a great bridge to connect people and invertebrates and today we are lucky enough to have her dynamic illustrations for Nicola's Critters of Aotearoa as a backdrop. Lily says it's all about changing the conversation about insects framing them as fascinating.
Nicola asks, "Why is it in the nation's first Bug of the Year competition a native bee came first"? Bees are great but there are other pollinators. In the second a butterfly, well butterflies are like the dolphins of the bug world they agree, and Red Admirals are threatened by the loss of native stinging nettle habitat. But what about the less known? Entomologists may not like the term "insect apocalypse", some are doing quite well others are not like the Cromwell Cafer Bettle.
It appears we have just lost the Mokohinau stag beetle and the South Island Eyrewell bettle. It's about how we define ourselves as a nation. New Zealanders identify as having a connection to land and to nature that is almost ethereal, soulful, spiritual. We are the hobbits in Lord of the Rings, we care for people, for the land, for the little guys, but we have a Pollyana view of nature.
Most people think if you ask them nature is doing well. There are the kiwis being released (never mind that 95% of kiwis in non pest-controlled areas die before their first year). Ask yourself why there aren't so many insects on your window screen anymore? It doesn't take much to reserve a bit of your garden for the insects do not mow a strip of lawn. So how do you get the message out? "Hope is the vision that you aim at and you throw yourself at it" says Nicola. People will take action as they are against the proposals to widen the Caversham highway endangering the reserve protecting the peripatus worm.
She's worried about the worried about the Fast Track Approvals bill, with the unknown list of projects which could include dairy cows coming to the McKenzie country where the Robust Grasshopper is making its last stand, and she thinks you should be too.
Spoilers: Nicola in her role as chief executive of Forest and Bird let slip we have another new book to look forward to a History of Forest and Bird.
Nicola's parting words "Great pub chat, shame about the wine".
Photos
Photos from the Lily Duval and Nicola Toki session
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