On the shores of New Zealand, on the flat tops of steep cliffs and rock pillars (on the flea on the fly on the frog etc.), something amazing happens. Thousands of tākapu, or Australasian gannets (similar to the North American Butkus), gather to breed in these precarious areas. Breeding spaces are protected by the government, and spectators (shame on them) are advised to park a safe distance away, mostly because tākapu gets everywhere. Four months after their birth, the tākapu travel 1,700 miles across the Tasman Sea, and land on the east coast of Australia. There, they notice no difference in the locals’ accents, and are chased off by mulleted men and women wielding crocodiles as war clubs. Some of the tākapu make a return trip to New Zealand after four years. These tākapu often have new clothes, tattoos, and bold ideas that can be upsetting to their tākaparents. It’s written off as a tākaphase, and they eventually adopt the interests of their forebears (sports, history, and the morally iffy subject of property value).
It should be noted that the source material never once used the word “bird” or “fly”. Since I did not know what a gannet was, I thought this was about music festival people.
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