Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

MASTERTON, New Zealand — The Fernery at Queen Elizabeth Park houses more than 60 varieties of fern and, as of this week, a problem the Masterton District Council was forced to describe in an official statement as “several incidents recently of people defecating in the Fernery.” The building closed on Wednesday for “cleaning.” 

Something stinky this way lurks. (marinesea/depositphotos)

Queen Elizabeth Park contains public toilets two minutes’ walk from the Fernery. The central business district, a few minutes further on, offers what a council spokesperson described to 1News as “regularly-praised toilets,” a phrase nobody has yet been asked to explain. Whoever is doing this apparently has options beyond pooping on ferns, including the celebrated infrastructure on his way to the ferns.

The Masterton Beautifying Society built the Fernery in 1924. The Society spent the next century filling it with fern varieties and, in the words of local media, making it one of Wairarapa’s most distinctive green spaces. Council staff spent Wednesday inside it, wearing gloves and using disinfectant, undoing last week’s unknown visitor’s unwanted contributions.

Deterrence now rests with the Summary Offences Act 1981, which criminalizes defecating in a public place, also notable for being passed in 1981 because apparently, before that, it was game on everywhere. 

Diana Abraham chairs Friends of the Park, the volunteer group that maintains the facility, and she supplied the most thorough official assessment to date: “That’s disgusting — revolting.” The fern, meanwhile, remains on the All Blacks’ jersey, on the tail of every Air New Zealand plane, and on the headstones of New Zealand’s war dead, so the country is treating the matter with the seriousness it believes this deserves. The Fernery reopens Thursday, assuming the cleaning holds and no one sneaks in overnight with some unfinished business. 

To read Chloe Hokenson’s Odd Take on this story, click here.