08/18/24
Whooosh! Love seeing my flash fiction A Femur, A Rib And Two Claws soar to highly commended for NZ Flash Fiction Day.
This is a story about Te Hokioi, a giant, man-eating raptor in New Zealand, that became extinct just five hundred years ago. European settlers did not believe the word of Maori people about a man-eating eagle, with claws as large as a tiger, a bird that was twice as big as the largest living eagle today. They dismissed it as a fairy tale…then they found some bones. Now scientists believe that Te Hokioi’s main prey would have been (also extinct today) moa, flightless native birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall. Thanks NZNFFD team!