land sharks ahoy

I was reminded a few weeks ago about how awesome my nephew Thomas Te Hira is and was just sitting by the fire now and thinking about how blessed I am to have wonderful nieces and nephews.

Tommy T is a great road trip companion. You might remember he came up to the Northern Regionals a few posts ago. While we were in Dargaville Thomas hit it off big time with Jim Hopkins.Jim is great at talking fantastical talk ideal for a smart seven year old. Thomas totally was up with the play although not entirely sure if Jim was entirely truthful in the stories he was telling my boy. The best story was about how Northland has land sharks. You have to understand Dargaville sits on the edge of a lazy, muddy river (it's a cursed river too) and very coastal so land sharks are entirely possible.

However these land sharks are not all sweetness and light, well kind of light as they sleep a top street lights and have been known to launch themselves onto unsuspecting passersby. I do have admit that as we left Dargaville in the early hours of the morning that all of us, Thomas, Jim and myself were concerned that one of these land sharks might just drop upon us and we would find ourselves stuck in the car at McDonalds, unable to get out for fear of our lives. Thank goodness for drive through.

Luckily at the Regional Contest Committee BBQ, Thomas was taught the correct method to repel any attacks and that is to Morris Dance. For some unknown reason Morris Dancing creates confusion in the small but cunning brains of land sharks and they end up twisting themselves into pretzels type shapes and render themselves useless - which is the perfect kind of land shark.

Our only worry was that Thomas was rather tired at the BBQ and didn't take in the entire dance but I'm sure that since then Thomas has brushed up on his Morris Dancing skills and I will feel confident of his ability to chase and confuse any land sharks.

For more fantastical beliefs take a look at I used to believe and add your own, like this one...

"Not knowing the word "tailgater" I assumed that it must be a variety of alligator. Family trips to Colorado were terrifying for me, given that my father spent hours cursing all the tailgaters that were RIGHT... BEHIND... OUR CAR."