It had been raining since they arrived. Not the biblical rains that they had been warned were coming, more of a drizzle. It settled lightly on the fabric of her clothes looking like tiny, sparkling crystals. Her dad had promised it would be sunny. Sunny Nelson, he'd said.
They'd spent weeks climbing through the Ōpārara Basin, picking up birds mostly. The forest here was full of them and their songs, and they gathered quite a haul: kākāriki, South Island robin, rifleman, brown creeper, korimako, kākā, they even got a replacement kererū. That had been important after they worked out that Adam (their male hemiphaga novaeseelandiae) was more interested in finding himself a Steve than the Eve they'd captured him with. They also, finally, found a female forest gecko. She must have been staring at that same rotten log for 20 mins before the little geko had shifted herself and her almost perfect camouflage had broken. It was a good feeling to be able to cross her off the list. She slipped slightly in the mud and had to grab a dripping tree branch to steady herself. In the quiet, she found herself listening to the muddy squelch of her father's bootsteps, and the rustle of his gear as he fought his way through the forest.
In that moment, she found herself missing the warm body of her girlfriend. The beauty of this wet, wild landscape didn't change that. It had been cold in the tent, and her father's snores had done little to ease her sense of loneliness.
In a place like this it was easy to imagine relaxing, to imagine pleasant strolls through New Zealand's native bush, having family picnics; to be able to hear a bird call and not automatically mentally file the bird according to order, family, genus, and species. There was no time to relax. The rain was falling. She adjusted her pack so that it sat more comfortably.
She decided to take solace in the fact that today would not involve a complicated pick up; no scuba diving through subterranean caves, no mountaineering, no tree climbing or wading through swampy marshes. This day was spider day.
Gnats flew out from their fungal hiding places, and she was grateful that they had already collected the 63 local species of mycetophila. A little pīwakawaka careened towards her, chirruping noisily, calling for his cousins to come in for the feast. Quick, jerky movements as he flitted between branches were in stark contrast to her own as she tramped over rotting logs and swept curling fern fronds aside. Papua New Guinea and Australia had similar little guys: rhipidura rufifrons. Similar, except for their brighter plumage. She remembered splashes of orange across their tails, backs, and brows as if God had been careless with a paintbrush. This energetic fuliginosa, by contrast, had no bright plumage. Like most of Aotearoa's birds, his colouring erred on the side of brown, but she was drawn to his frowning, eyebrow splashes. Quick! Quick! Quick! his peeping call seemed to say, as if the little bird was horrified by her slow stumbling. Fix-it-fix-it-fix-it-fix-it! She scraped the rheum from her eyes and picked up her pace, slipping slightly in the mud. He was joined by family; three of them urging her on through the now booming forest and cackling at her ungainliness. Their darting bodies were tiny blurs and fan-flashes as they greedily devoured the insects that had been disturbed by her passing. One of them was a rare black fantail. Morphs were not on the list. Her father had made it clear that it would skew the genetics too much. She raised her fingers to her forehead in a hopeful salute. And then sighed.
Individual raindrops thrummed arrhythmically against her canvas hood and for the first time she became aware that the rain was falling more heavily. The large purple rucksack in front of her slowed its bobbing as they reached the forest's edge. Her dad swung the pack off his shoulders and leant it against his leg, breathing heavily. It was the first time he had looked vulnerable, old even. She threw him the water bottle. What else was there to do? A glossy brown skink scuttled over a gnarled root ball, but they had a pair of them already, so she took the time to catch her breath and listened to her father's heavy breathing over the noise of the pattering rain.
They leaned their battered packs against each other, left them in the shelter of some overhanging bush, and followed the rockface downhill to the cave entrance. They were only carrying the bare minimum: the torches, knives, and ropes were buckled to their belts. She carried the collection containers and her father held the red pine pole he had picked up somewhere in Syria, worn smooth with age and daily use.
"There," her dad pointed.
She sighed in relief. She loved the easy ones. Two males and a female, all healthy-looking examples of spelungula, the Nelson cave spider. Each had a leg span of about 14 centimetres, so they were large, but obviously they had dealt with bigger spiders than that. Some twice the size.
"No egg sacks, though," her dad continued. She could tell by the way that he was holding his shoulders that he was worried.
He picked up a container and headed deeper into the cave, leaving her to gather their new crewmates.
When he returned it was with a sad shake of his head as he clicked off his torch. He nodded at the cave wall where she'd left the smaller of the male spiders. "Better bring him as well. Give them the best chance we can."
She nodded and hustled the spindly arachnid into the container with his buddies. Her father picked up his worn, red pine pole, and they stepped back out into the rain.