KEA MAKES LONG TRIP BACK HOME

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 23, 19 August 1932, Page 5

KEA MAKES LONG TRIP BACK HOME

DID NOT LIKE CHRIST\rg< qHURCH ' DECIDED TO LEAVE ■v ■-■,,•. Christchurch is not a bad place fri iti way, and Fendalton, as a ' residential locality, is highly epoken of, but a pet kea, that had been brought all the way from The Lakes station, in the Hawarderi district, decided after a brief sojourn in a Fendalton garden, that there was nothing like the great open spaces after all. So back it flew to The Lakes, 80 ■~-/ miles away, according to a story published in the Sun. The Fendalton. man was staying up at The Lakes, and this ke:. wa:i caught while he was there. And when he came back to Christchurch he brought the kea home with him, as a pet, and put it in a cage in the garden. A Jew days later he discovered that the kea was gone. There were marks of footsteps leading up to the cage, and it looked as if someone had stolen the bird. Whatever the explanation of the footsteps might have been, the people up at the station saw that same kea in the garden, making a meal of the carrots (a vegetable which keas find very toothsome) about one week later. It was unmistakably the same kea, and even after its spell of freedom and its long trip back home it was comparatively tame. The people at the station thought of catching it again, but they decided that after a stout effort like this it deserved ius freedom. The Fendalton man now has two more keas as pets. Keas have very nasty-looking hooked beaks; some of them kill sheep in a particularly brutal fashion. A kea is not, therefore, everybody's idea of a pet. But this Fendalton man will tell you that no bird has a more agreeable disposition than a kea, if you only take it the right way. As a kea-tamer he must have few equals, because these two birds, after being in captivity only a week or two, will let him do anything ■with them. >i J! «-■■ i ..-..