Dunger by Joy Cowley Page A

Doesn’t look much, does it? An astronomer lived there. Came all the way from California with his telescope, to see Halley’s Comet.”
    â€œIs he still there?”
    She shakes her head. “I don’t know and if I did know, I’ve forgotten. Over there is D’Urville Island. The bush was cleared by burning and when the smoke was over, the ground was littered with kiwi skeletons.”
    Too much information! There are some things you don’t need to think about. But both my grandparents have an appetite for the sensational, a genetic trait that is lacking in my father and me, but occasionally apparent in my sister. Melissa has a flair for the dramatic.
    At a suitable moment, I say to Grandma, “Did you know that Melissa stabbed an inflatable castle to death with her spiky shoes?”
    Grandma laughs. “Yes, she told me. A pity no one filmed it.”
    That’s exactly what I mean about being dramatic, my sister indulging in sensationalism even when she is responsible. The truth is she should have been too ashamed to mention it.
    As we get close to D’Urville Island, Grandpa takes over the wheel and throttles back. He calls me up front to man the anchor. It turns out that anchoring a boat is not a simple matter. It requires knowledge of wind and tidal currents and the amount of chain and rope to be let out, approximately four times the length of the boat. This is a grapnel anchor like the skeleton of an umbrella, and suitable for these conditions, Grandpa says.
    â€œHow do you know it’s suitable?” I ask.
    â€œI just know,” he says, which is not helpful to some-one wanting information. Then he yells, “Right you are! Drop your lines.”
    Our bait is frozen pilchard, half-thawed and very effective. The second my sinker hits the bottom, there is a heavy tug and my rod jiggles.
    â€œWind it in!” yells Grandma. Her voice gets louder. “Oh boy, oh boy! I got one!”
    We wind in two big cod, almost black, and swing them over onto the deck. They flap close to our feet.
    â€œGet them off the hook,” Grandma says. “Both of them. I can’t see to do it.”
    I’ve caught fish before, herrings off the end of the wharf, and Mum or Dad has always taken them off the hook. It’s not that I’m afraid of cod, simply that no one has explained the technique for doing this. I touch the fish’s head and it goes into a spasm, jumping over my feet and tangling my line.
    Grandma says, “Grab a cloth and hold it by its stomach. Go on, grab it! That’s right. The spines can’t hurt you. Now hold it firmly and work the hook out.”
    It is a very unpleasant task. I imagine how I’d feel with a hook through my upper lip and then I think of the holes in Melissa’s ears. She sticks earrings in and out and it doesn’t seem to hurt. Her friend Jacquie even has a couple of holes in her nose – and I’m not talking about her nostrils.
    Still holding the fish with the cloth, I drop it into the plastic bin. It thuds against the sides, desperate to get back to the sea. It’s gross. I’m not super keen on fish and if I have to eat it, I’d prefer it came from a shop. But now I have to get the hook out of Grandma’s cod. This one has swallowed the bait and the hook is deep inside. It all turns out a bit messy, and the fish looks quite dead when I’ve finished. I think of a lion biting a gazelle. I read somewhere that lions bite the back of the neck to break the spine so that their prey feels no pain. It would be good to know that fish, being cold-blooded, don’t feel pain. That would be a logical assumption since they frequently take chunks out of each other.
    Grandpa is taking Melissa’s fish off the hook and that’s okay because she hates wet and slimy things. We now have four cod, all in about five minutes of fishing.
    Straight away Grandma gets another, but this time it’s a small