Before arriving in New Zealand, I knew generally three things about the sort of animal life to be found in the country:
1. There are no squirrels.
2. There are, however, enough sheep to make up for the squirrels’ absence…and then some.
3. They have kiwis – not kiwifruit, but a little bird that lends itself as a national icon and internationally-recognized nickname for New Zealanders.
Pretty extensive, eh? And I only know point #1 because of a time in London when Arron excitedly showed me a photo he’d taken of a squirrel in Hyde Park. “So what? It’s a squirrel,” was more or less my reaction, but I was soon informed they’re nowhere to be seen in New Zealand.
Yesterday, I had the chance to grow my knowledge on a visit to the Willow Bank Wildlife Reserve. A few friends from the restaurant and I had been talking about a visit and decided this Saturday was the day. Located several miles outside Christchurch, it’s out by the airport, Orana Wildlife Park, the Antarctic Centre, and a few dozen golf courses. It wasn’t exactly easy to find and we didn’t exactly know where we were going. Thus, like any good roadtrip we spent a good half hour on trial-and-error directions – “Now this way!” kind of stuff. As Ellen put it, “As long as we’re not stressed, being lost is fun.”
But of course, we got there in the end. From the eels to the deer to the ostrich we went, shadowed always by a thousand ducks. They were everywhere and often loved to waddle out in front of you just when you thought you’d lost ‘em. If I wanted to feed a duck, I could’ve bought a loaf of bread and rocked up to Hagley Park or Victoria Square. It’s unfortunate for them, really – being so common sort of works against them. But there they were, begging for food nonetheless. We all agreed with Ellen: “I bet these ducks weren’t even invited, they just started hanging around.”
After nearly losing two fingers to the ostrich, we visited my third favorite animal of the day – the wallaby. It was like a kangaroo but more compact and thus infinitely cuter. Many of them seemed unconcerned with our presence, staying still long enough for us to pet them and have our picture taken with them. After being accosted by the deer for food, the wallabies took ages to eat one pellet. After realizing she had probably just wasted several pellets by throwing them at a single wallaby, Ellen says, “The eels are all like, ‘Feed me now!’ but the wallabies couldn’t care less.”
At the far end of the wallaby yard was a three-sided shed with a whole group of them just sitting around. We tried calling them over to us, pretty keen to dispose of our food pellets but alas, they’d have none of it. Alex lamented, “It’s like they’re having a board meeting and don’t want refreshments.” But when you’re that cute, we really couldn’t hold it against them.
My second favorite creature was found on Monkey Island – the black-capped capuchin monkeys, to be exact. While we were first enthralled by the precious sight of a baby monkey on its mama’s back, we were soon in love with a monkey of a different sort. Kailim started the trend of chucking pellets across the water to the island despite the “Please don’t feed the monkeys” sign – as you do. But perhaps because they aren’t fed by visitors as much as the others explains why our little monkey friend went crazy, standing as close to the edge of the island as he could possibly manage, collecting every pellet we threw in his wee little hands and utterly stuffing his face with them. He couldn’t have eaten them any faster – quite frankly, he put the wallabies to shame.
We wandered on, following an endless trail of wooden paths around the complex, and our bags of food grew lighter and lighter. A pair of otters scurried about gathering grass and twigs for a nest presumably. The hilarious thing about their system was that they’d keep going without dropping off their finds, the grass in their mouths growing and growing into a massively long set of whiskers. But then they’d stop suddenly, as if they sensed they were being watched and literally would stare you straight in the eye for several seconds, as if to say, “Yeah, my mouth is full of stuff.”
Despite how much we enjoyed each animal, there was no doubt as to the real reason for the visit – at the top of the favorites list, the kiwi. Even the front of the brochure for Willow Bank boldly proclaims “Your Kiwi Guarantee,” and wooden direction signs along the path simply read “KIWI” – enough said. It was as if each preceding animal was a mere preview building up to the main attraction. As kiwis are nocturnal, an apparently well-known fact I just learned yesterday, they weren’t just kept in the open air like the other animals. You walked through a covered wooden walkway, came to a door with a sign, “Quiet please, kiwi sleeping,” and entered their indoor habitat.
It might as well have been another world altogether. The quiet stillness was broken only by the sound of a little river, unlike the cries of children or honks and breys from animals outside. It took your eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness, but you could soon make out the artificial woodland environment of the shelter. And then…the long-awaited kiwi. I saw two, in fact, one foraging through ferns and grass, another poking its long beak in the river, making a noise that sounded like it was blowing water bubbles out of the end of a straw. For some reason, I’d always imagined a kiwi bird to be the size of a baseball or grapefruit, but the ones we saw were realistically not that not far off from a chicken. Even though my sightings weren’t numerous, they were worth every dollar of the admission fee. To be able to say I’ve seen a kiwi in person makes my whole experience in New Zealand thus far feel that much more legitimate.
Besides the actual kiwi viewing area, there was an additional room that provided not only general information about the kiwi bird, but also a history of animal life in New Zealand as a whole. There’s no arguing the isolation of this country in relation to the rest of the world. Willow Bank traced the cause of New Zealand’s position to when it broke away from the supercontinent of Gondwanaland some millions of years ago. New Zealand’s resulting distance from any other land mass has influenced the flora and fauna found here. Most of the native plants and animals of New Zealand are endemic, meaning that they “occur naturally only in a single geographic area.” At one time, over 120 species of birds could be found in New Zealand, and of that number around 70 were endemic. 85% of flowering plants also are as well as 100% of reptiles, amphibians and bats. Talk about unique. So the fact that the kiwi bird is the national icon of New Zealand makes perfect sense – what better symbol to choose than something that can’t be found anywhere else?
What aren’t endemic to New Zealand, however, are dangerous creatures. Even the government’s tourism website, Newzealand.com, confidently asserts, “New Zealand has no snakes or dangerous wild animals, making it safe for visitors to enjoy outdoor activities.” Only one, in fact, can be found – the Katipo spider – which has caused just two deaths in recorded history. Australia, on the other hand, has more than its fair share of poisonous snakes, spiders, crocodiles, jellyfish, and octopi. The US has grizzly bears, mountain lions, raccoons, and moose, just to name a few potential dangers found in the wild. How New Zealand scraped by with a single spider is beyond me. Most of the mammals here were introduced by European settlers during the 18th and 19th centuries, brought to a country of birds, reptiles, and insects. Even the British explorer Joseph Banks noted in 1770, “It appears not improbable that there really are no other species of Quadrapeds in the country.”
So that’s what a trip to Willow Bank will show you: in a place as magical as New Zealand, you can be left alone at parks from pesky squirrels; you can go camping without the fear of a big, hungry black bear inviting himself along; and if you get lucky, you can bump into one of the national icons running around in the wild, or if you’re wanting more convenience…
Opt for the disappointment-free “Kiwi Guarantee.”