Illustration by Jan A. Igoe
Back in the Stone Age, I dreamed about traveling the world on a grand quest for adventure until my fantasies were interrupted by some weird kids in a minivan who insisted on calling me “Mom.” Before I could object, family and career swallowed me whole.
Instead of zip lining through rainforests in Costa Rica, I pushed swings at the park. My photojournalist friends roamed Kilimanjaro on wild animal safaris while I fed goats at the petting zoo. No, I never got to snorkel with the loggerheads at Ningaloo Reef, but when my kid’s retainer got lost in the cafeteria trash, I could dumpster dive with the best of them.
Now that I’m older, wiser and wrinklier, I still crave adventure but preferably in wimpy places. By that I mean places with the fewest indigenous creatures intent on mauling tourists. Take New Zealand, for example, which is mostly sheep and kiwi birds. Kiwis are small and can’t fly. (That’s so cruel. What’s the point of being a bird if you can’t fly?) Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been pecked into submission by a kiwi.
Better still, New Zealand has all kinds of penguins, mostly short. Every animated movie assures us that penguins love to dance and are less likely to be sociopaths than some uncles. Even if things did turn ugly, your chances of outrunning a homicidal penguin are pretty good.
Although New Zealand has no deadly snakes or spiders, there are still a couple of things to avoid, like the world’s heaviest bug, which can weigh as much as a small bird. It bears a striking resemblance to a palm-sized grasshopper wearing body armor, which can’t be good.
You also need to watch out for flesh-eating snails that can be as large as Mike Tyson’s fist. Any time “carnivorous” describes a snail, I don’t require details. But if you do, this thing “sucks up worms and spaghetti,” according to pocketdive.com. I can’t imagine who needed to know that snails like Italian food, but researchers aren’t happy until they’re up to their eyeballs in useless factoids. The takeaway here is not to order snails in New Zealand. And check your spaghetti carefully.
Before I became domesticated, Australia was at the top of my bucket list. There was nothing like watching Steve Irwin spontaneously dive off a rowboat to fetch a man-eating snapping turtle or wrestle a crocodile. That country is no place for wimps because pretty much anything that flies, slithers, swims, crawls or hops is out to kill you.
Snakes? They’ve got 100 venomous ones.
Jellyfish? The “box” kind has 15 tentacles, each armed with 5,000 stingers.
Spiders? Funnel-webs have fangs that can pierce fingernails and venom twice as powerful as cyanide, according to farandwide.com.
Man-eating sharks? Yes, several kinds. You will absolutely need a bigger boat.
Wild dogs? Check with Meryl Streep.
The Aussie version of Big Bird is a 6-foot cassowary that can hit 30 mph when it wants to meet you. It has a 5-inch talon on each foot that is “powerful enough to sever your arm or slice through your abdomen in one swoop,” per faraway.com. Besides eviscerating you, it can kick, peck and head-butt when the mood strikes.
So, adventure-wise, New Zealand is more my speed. If I am going to run away from a renegade bird, I want it to be a kiwi.
Jan A. Igoe is no crocodile hunter. However, she does hunt humor columns in some primitive places, such as Big Lots. Join us anytime at HumorMe@SCLiving.coop.