A pale greyish-brown owl with fine dark streaks across its chest and a face that looked mildly amused. The chuckle it produced, described by early settlers as a cackle or a barking laugh, gave the bird its English name. Not a bad reputation for a creature that hunted mostly at night. On a dark evening in the Otago backcountry, before the rabbits arrived and the stoats followed, you might have heard it. A low shivering cry that rose into something almost human. Then silence. Then the laugh again from somewhere else. Settlers found the sound unsettling. Owls generally do not laugh. The whekau hunted on the ground more than most owls, chasing lizards, weta, small birds and later the introduced mice that spilled out of European stores. Its legs were long and powerful, built for pursuit rather than the usual perch-and-pounce style. This turned out to be a design flaw. Ground hunting works fine until the ground fills with faster things with sharper teeth. Mice and rabbits arrived and multiplied. The owl ate well for a while. Then stoats and ferrets arrived to control the rabbits. They found the owl easier to catch. A bird that nests in rock crevices and feeds on the ground has few defences against a stoat that fits through the same gaps. The last verified specimen came from the Bluecliffs Station near the Waiau River in Southland. A farmer shot it, as people did back then, and sent the body to the Canterbury Museum. No reliable sightings followed. What remains are a few museum skins, a handful of eggs, and the sound of a laugh that no longer echoes off limestone walls.