Hobbits

A friend of mine who moved to New Zealand a few years ago told me that he recently got very drunk with someone who comes from a small town not far from Matamata on the North Island, and claimed to work in the Kaimai-Mamaku Forest Park.

After having met on a technical training program. They had gone for a drink with the rest of the class, and had been chatting on and off all night. At a certain point, late in the evening, it was only him and this guy left, and they were both pretty steaming by now; talking nonsense. Or so my friend thought.

But then at a certain stage the guy started going on about this secret he had. Something he was sworn to secrecy by the government on. My friend said he started goading him on, because the guy was so serious about it being a secret on the one hand, but kept saying it was something the world deserved to know on the other; that it wasn’t right it was hidden.

Eventually he seemed to suddenly crack, and poured forth a horrifying tale. Apparently not all of the hobbits from the filming of Lord of the Rings were accounted for after filming was over. Some either escaped or were let loose. This must have happened in small numbers during each of the films. But eventually enough of them must have been out there, in the wild, to form a stable community; able to breed and sustain itself over time.

He said no one knew at first, but there had been rumours. At a certain point the rumours became too numerous and convincing for the local government to ignore, and they had sent out some trackers to see what could be causing the rumours. And lo and behold, what was causing the hobbit rumours was actually…hobbits.

My friend said this was when the guy started to get really upset. Because what happened then was that somehow news of the hobbit population got back to some people in Wellington. And what they decided was not to leave them alone, or to try to relocate them somewhere. What they decided was to quietly set up a program of extermination. Certain people in the government decreed that this was an invasive species that put native wildlife in jeopardy, and could even harbour diseases that could put human life at risk. But that because of the global popularity of hobbits, this would have to be carried out under the shroud of utmost secrecy, lest New Zealand become reviled the world over for killing this most popular of fantasy creatures.

The guy my friend was talking to claimed that he had been employed years ago as one of these hobbit hunters. All these years later, he was riddled with guilt; it was a burden he lived with everyday. His wife had recently given birth to their first child, and with that, all the guilt and all the horrors that he’d seen, out there in the forests, came back to him. The innocent little life he saw in his wife’s arms represented the innocence of all the hobbits he had mercilessly slaughtered.

In the end the guy passed out on the table, sobbing. But my friend thought I should know. And I, in turn, feel duty bound to share this shameful story with the world.

(*names and countries and fantasy creatures have been changed to protect the real identities of those involved)