Close encounters

It must be years since I last went to Wellington Zoo – and I really feel like I’ve been missing out.

To start with, it’s changed a lot, even in the last few years – one of the biggest and most obvious changes being the addition of a state-of-the-art animal hospital, The Nest, at which you can watch their veterinary team at work and even ask them questions as they go about the business of looking after the Zoo’s animals.

Of particular interest to me, however – and indeed my reason for getting reacquainted with the Zoo – is that they now offer visitors the opportunity to get up-close and personal with selected animals. Close Encounters are available with the Zoo’s cheetahs, giraffes, lions and red pandas (not all at once, clearly, as I’m pretty certain combinations of those four animals might not be compatible) – and I was recently lucky enough to experience the giraffe and cheetah encounters.

Everyone knows giraffes are big. It’s pretty much what they’re famous for. But you don’t really comprehend the sheer scale of them until you’re standing at their feet – it’s kind of overwhelming. The encounter with them is in two parts – first you feed them apples, carrots and pellets; they lean their long necks down to take them from your outstretched hands. They’ll reach out their prehensile tongues for the fruit and vegetables; the pellets get taken directly from your cupped palms. At this point, if you’re doing the encounter with a friend, one of you can even reach out and touch the giraffe’s enormous head.

Once you’ve fed this (frankly magnificent) creature, you get to move around to the side and give it a rub – depending on the giraffe, this could include its belly, legs or even its armpit. This is on a whole different scale to patting the family cat or dog. And then you get to do it all over again with another giraffe – the Zoo has three giraffes, but there’s typically only enough time to meet two of them during an encounter. I met Zahara, the youngest of their two females, and Se Un, the young male giraffe who is their most recent addition; Tisa (who is Zahara’s mother) was feeling a little shy the day I went.

The giraffe Close Encounter is ideal for kids; while the minimum age is 14 to do the cheetah or big cat encounters, you can take children aged as young as 6 to meet the Zoo’s giraffes. The cost of the encounter includes Zoo admission so you can stay on afterwards to look at the rest of the animals as well.

The cheetah encounter is a little different, in that you don’t get to feed the animals; instead you essentially get a half-hour petting session with these large felines. The Zoo’s two cheetahs are brothers called Charlie and Delta, and they’ll let you stroke their backs and even lift their tails (you’re not allowed to touch the sharp end, or their bellies, unless you’re a zookeeper).

They’re coarser than a domestic cat, but still surprisingly soft – and have a loud rumbling purr. If you’re lucky you’ll also get to hear them make their distinctive calls; instead of a roar, cheetahs have a collection of chirps, yowls and growls.

While you’re there, the zookeepers fill you in on some cheetah facts – both about Charlie and Delta, and about cheetahs in the wild. One of the most interesting things for me was hearing about the conservation programmes that Wellington Zoo helps fund, in part through the proceeds of the animal encounters. One of these programmes is Cheetah Outreach, which aims to protect cheetahs in South Africa from farmers who believe they’re a threat to livestock. Cheetah Outreach encourages farmers to protect their goats, calves and sheep with trained watchdogs, rather than with traps, poison or hunting – helping save the lives of many cheetahs killed through these methods every year. A very important task, given that there are only about 1500 cheetahs left in South Africa.

It’s a rare privilege to get to meet such rare and exotic creatures, let alone to feed or to touch them, yet visitors at Wellington Zoo can do this year round, while contributing to international and local conservation efforts in the process. After my Close Encounters I can’t recommend the experience enough. It had been way too long since I was last at the Zoo; now I can’t wait to go back.

Disclosure: I attended the cheetah and giraffe encounters as a guest of Wellington Zoo. Normal full price for the cheetah encounter is $150 per person and for the giraffe is $110 per person.