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…