[Mihalic] sik muruk

[Robin Hide]

1. For those of us not privileged to have seen extreme cassowary behaviour, 
the following two dramatic eye-witness accounts (sent to me off line) are 
notable:

(i). from Dan Jorgensen (Telefomin area, West Sepik P):

re: "...in both captive birds and wild ones, I have seen them running 
around in a frenzy, kicking trees and bashing into things.  Could be a 
conceptual link to epilepsy... " AM

“I can confirm this from witnessing a truly scary incident in which a 
captive (adolescent) bird got loose in a village and began running up and 
down the line of houses, pinwheeling its legs, and leaving deep score marks 
on houseposts. Kids ran into houses, adults scattered, and a very nervous 
village eventually calmed it, rounded it up and herded it back to its 
enclosure. The incident did not seem motivated or an act of rage - the bird 
did not respond one way or another to humans around it until the 'frenzy' 
passed. When I later asked folks about it, they said it was pasin bilong 
muruk. They claim to have witnessed such behaviour in the bush, and on the 
part of isolated animals (this not duelling or display, apparently). They 
said a muruk would just kirap nogut and start running and kicking out at 
trees, and said there are lots of scarred tree trunks to bear witness to this.”


(ii). From Andy Mack (at Varirata Park, outside Moresby, Central Province).

  “Oddly, the very first cassowary I ever saw in the wild, on my first 
excited trip to Varirata a day after arriving at the luxurious old 
Jackson’s Airport was of a cassowary fight or frenzy.  It was so nutty and 
fast in dense vegetation, it looked like two birds, but rather than just 
fighting, they seemed to both be in a frenzy.  Or maybe they were fighting 
and chasing.  But it seemed the entire undergrowth around me was alive with 
thrashing cassowaries.  I’ve not seen anything like it since.  Perhaps they 
were pissed off that some punky graduate student had arrived to pry into 
their secret lives
”.


2. Interestingly, Bryant’s earlier ‘death throes’ discussion of sik muruk 
in tok pisin closely mirrors the apparent logic involved in the term for 
epilepsy in the Nissan Island (Bougainville) language of Nehan (though the 
species are different):
Thus:

lolong kapul (from: lolong kapulu) n. epilepsy, name means hanging possum, 
refers to the jerking movements made by a dying possum.
Halia: kotskotsibong.
Nehan-English Dictionary, p. 104
<http://208.145.80.1/pacific/png/pubs/0000020/Nehan_dictionary.pdf>http://208.145.80.1/pacific/png/pubs/0000020/Nehan_dictionary.pdf

Robin Hide
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