Meet a character in my new novel Beyond the Bukubuk Tree
I took this photograph in Port Moresby on my last day there. My wonderful guide Jacob Eluap and his associates took my to the National Park. The dwarf cassowary is native and unique to New Britain Island and I had given one of my Tolai characters a dwarf cassowary as a pet.
It’s an awesome, glorious beast with powerful legs and beak, glossy black plumage and brilliant pink and blue patches on the neck. The indigenous name for a dwarf cassowary is muruk, which also means glutton. My character’s pet dwarf cassowary is male and named ToMuruk. He and his feral counerparts are plot movng characters, bringing people together and causing accidents that mess up certain planned actions.
I had read that archeological evidence in Northern Australia and New Britain Island sugests that ancient indigenous people harvested eggs of wild cassowaryies and raised them as hunters.
I checked with a friend who’d lived in Papua New Guinea for years my mad idea of giving a pet cassowary to my main Tolai character, the daughter of a big man. I learned that one of her close Papua New Guinea friends had a pet dwarf cassowary. It bonded with him but was fierce with anyone else.
Thrilled, I kept ToMuruk as I had written him.
“Sweat ran down his (Henry Lee’s) back and groin. His eyes stung, and
he was filthy. He missed the bracing sea air and the deck shower
hoses, but at least it was time for his lunch. The hamper was on
a tree stump beyond paint spatter. As he stretched, a prolonged
guttural rattle startled him. Another long rattle, belch-like but
not. Was someone about to throw up on his lunch?
He swivelled to grab the hamper. The rattle wasn’t coming
from a sick human but from a big wingless bird. As the beast
pranced at his lunch, Lee’s eyes registered black plumage and a
long neck with blue and pink patches. He was too late to save
his food. The beak wrenched the paper bag open and gulped
down the fish and paw paw whole. The bird upended Lee’s
tea; that drink evidently wasn’t up to its standards. “Bastard!”
Lee wailed.
“Sori…!” an un-avian voice purred. Lee turned again. The voice’s owner hurried from behind the casuarina tree. Lee stared in astonishment. Here
was the Tolai girl, the daughter of the big man he’d greeted at
Hotel Pacifica…”
To read more of To Muruk’s antics here’s the link:
