A lion (and others) in winter

Right now the magno­li­as are in bloom along Roy Street in New­town, and it’s gor­geous. But of course, it’s around this time last year that it snowed, so don’t be fooled – it’s still winter. The good news though, means that Wel­ling­ton Zoo has entry for only $5 on Wed­nes­days through­out all of August.

Nat­ur­ally we don’t sug­gest pulling a sick­ie just to vis­it, but let’s face it, your office is prob­ably full of walk­ing plague factor­ies any­way, now might be the per­fect time to go get some fresh air.

Of course, if you’re unable to vis­it the zoo on a Wed­nes­day (or even if you can), there are a couple of spe­cial kinds of vis­its you might really enjoy. Kim of Whisky and Wry has some great pic­tures from when a group of her friends had a slee­p­over at the zoo,  but if you reaaaaaaaaaally wanna get up close and per­son­al – and you have a good chunk of cash burn­ing a hole in your pock­et – you should book in for an anim­al close encounter.

For Xmas, I was giv­en a vouch­er for a close encounter with a chee­tah, so at East­er week­end I rocked up to the zoo.

Find out what a chee­tah smells like, how their fur feels and what they sound like when they purr. Go into our spe­cial intim­ate encounter space and meet the chee­tahs. Our zoo keep­ers will tell you why these anim­als are endangered and what you can do to help them.

How­ever, it happened to be a very sunny lovely day, and although the chee­tahs were hand-reared and well-trained, they decided they’d rather hang out in the sun than come and meet some people, so we had to res­ched­ule. Appar­ently that’s only ever happened once though. Any­way, the chee­tah encounter was fant­ast­ic! I’m some­what of a cat per­son so it was really inter­est­ing to com­pare and con­trast with domest­ic cats. Chee­tahs are appar­ently the only big cats that purr (and purr loudly they did!) and very weirdly, the bones in their tails are square (you get to touch them!). I wanted to climb up on the tabe and spoon with the chee­tah the way I spoon with my cat, but that prob­ably would­n’t have been a good idea. In fact, you only get to stroke the back of the chee­tahs and the tail, away from the sharp bits.  You’re not really in any danger, but be care­ful though – if you’re aller­gic to house cats, you should prob­ably take anti­histam­ines before your encounter.

The lovely people at the zoo will take pho­tos for you so that you get max­im­um pussy touch­ing time, but I haven’t down­loaded my pic­tures yet, so look at oth­er people’s chee­tah encoun­ters instead!

Of course, chee­tahs aren’t the only anim­als you can meet. A couple of years ago, I took my friend for a Red Panda Encounter for her 30th birth­day.

Hand feed a red panda and get up close to the cutest anim­als in the Zoo and their keep­ers. Sit inside their enclos­ure as the pan­das approach you, put their paws on your knees and del­ic­ately take a grape or some pear from your hand. Inter­act with the red pan­das and their keep­ers – learn why there are only 2,500 red pan­das left in the world, and what makes them so spe­cial.

You get to go right into the enclos­ures with a keep­er, and the pan­das come gam­bolling up to you, let­ting you feed them and climb­ing all over your laps.

Warn­ing: you might actu­ally die from cute over­load when you see the face the pan­das make as they tip their heads back in glee mak­ing sure not to drop any grape juice.

Like I said earli­er, the close encoun­ters aren’t cheap at all (Chee­tah encoun­ters are $150, the red panda exper­i­ence is $90 but some of that money goes to con­ser­va­tion pro­grammes), and access is a little lim­ited (there’s a height and age min­im­um for the chee­tahs so they don’t think you’re prey and try to eat you), but if you’re after an unfor­get­table exper­i­ence for an anim­al lov­er, they’re highly recom­men­ded. I even know people who pro­posed amongst the red pan­das…