So here’s a strange thing. I was walking back to my hostel through the streets of Wellington yesterday, when I noticed that the road I was walking on, Courtenay Place, was closed to traffic. Up ahead, some men in orange and yellow jackets were milling around an area surrounded by police tape and traffic cones. I assumed it was some kind of traffic accident. Then as I walked closer - it happened to be on my way back, I wasn’t ghoulishly trying to see how bad the injuries were or anything - I saw a huge, dragon-like monster lying on the road, split into three pieces. The police officers were talking quietly to each other and they all looked extremely solemn, so I suppressed my initial reaction which was to ask one of them, “What happened? Someone just didn’t see it?” As I reached the police tape that marked the end of the accident zone, I crossed the road and walked past the beast again just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. And sure enough, there it was again. I decided one of the following must be true:
- This is the real reason for that hastily issued government travel warning for New Zealand. Earthquakes indeed! “Personal security” my foot! I suppose “Giant reptilian monsters stalking the streets of Wellington” would be bad for tourism.
- It had something to do with the third Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King, which premiéres in Wellington on December 1.
If the New Zealand Herald is anything to go by, the second explanation seems more likely. However, I suspect ’tis nothing but government propaganda. “In The Lord of the Rings the Fell Beasts [it was, apparently, a Fell Beast] carry the evil ring wraiths, the Nazgul, as they fly across the battlefields of middle-earth searching for the one ring”. Ha! The perfect cover when reptilian monsters invade a city, I tell you!