Meet the Kea

Friday night we stayed near Arthur's pass, the highest and most beautiful pass of NZ, especially when there's snow on the mountains. No snow present yet though. It is only late autumn, and still a bit too early for snow. The weather was a bit drizzly, but nevertheless it looked pretty nice with low cloud creeping up the mountains. Saturday morning we hiked up to a waterfall, via a wooden stairway that just never seemed to end (it wasn't even that far up, we are just a pack of wusses). At least our fitness exercise for that morning was completed in full :-) The waterfall itself was really beautiful, we could just see the top before the low cloud took over.

The Arthur's pass is the home of NZ's own parrot species called the Kea. The Kea is a super intelligent bird (video). That in itself is pretty funny, but it can be pretty annoying too. They are so curious, that they like to take things apart to see how they are put together. For some reason they especially like rubber, and whaddaya know, rubber is abundantly present on cars!

The NZ Department Of Conservation (or DOC for short) is warning people to take the rubber off their cars, yes even to take out the rubber of their car's sunroof. I thought that advice to be a bit over the top, until I saw the Kea at work myself (luckily they had chosen to work on another car than ours ;-). They really demolish your car as you are standing by watching. They try to tear the rubber off, if you're really lucky they snap off your windscreen wipers or they cut open your tyres. Legitimate feelings of rage are suppressed by the cuteness of these birdies so you just let them be.

The whole exercise was an instructive experience though: we will never ever book a night in the village of Arthur's pass itself, because the mania for destruction that these birds display, no car can withstand… :-)