New Zealand 7: Members, and Kiwis, and Wetas, oh my!

Sunday morning, February 18, 2018, we drove down to Rotorua to attend the Fairy Springs Ward. The web site had the times wrong on the wards meeting there, so we were a little late to sacrament meeting, but we enjoyed meeting with the members there.

There was a big family history display in the lobby.

I thought this quote was funny.

 Many of the members there are of Maori descent.

I thought this guy's cane was awesome.

After Sunday School, Melissa Lym stood up for a moment. Unbeknownst to her, someone moved her chair while rearranging things, so when she went to sit back down, she went all the way down to the floor! It was very exciting, and fortunately she wasn't hurt.

After church,  they had ice cream in the parking lot. I asked if New Zealand was really this perfect, but they said that this was a rare thing, and that we were just lucky.



Someone who worked at the bakery also had a couple bins of bread and "buns" (rolls) to hand out for free to anyone who wanted some.

Between the bread and the ice cream, lunch was taken care of!

Here is my kiwi imitation.

We all made friends with people there, and felt right at home.

The bishop's wife was very nice.

At one point, she asked her cute 14-year-old daughter to put the extra bread in the bishop's office. Being 14, the gal acted slightly put off at the request, but she and her friend took the bins inside.

Meanwhile, a handicapped lady, who had been struggling to get around on two crutches, apparently asked if she could have some bread. So when the daughter returned, the bishop's wife told her, "Oh, [sister so-and-so] would like some bread. Could you get her some buns?"

The daughter (jokingly) acted indignant and said, "Well! If she wants some buns, she can just WWWALK right over there and get some!" Then she went and got some. (The sister was out of ear shot). I thought, "Wow! Sassy!" (Or "cheeky", as they'd call it there).

Later we walked around the Rainbow Springs nature reserve, where we had seen Kiwis the night before, since our pass was good through the next day.

At one point, we waited at an owl cage to hear a presentation there. But nobody arrived to give the presentation, so Rob decided to stand up and give it himself (using information he read off of the sign to his right), which was awesome.

Here is just a tiny clip of his "presentation".

There happened to be one ride at the place, which was a log ride, so we gave it a go.

It was pleasant and cute, and taught a bit about the history and ecology of the area. (Including a surprising bit that began, "Hi! My name is Jake! I'm a trout!")

After we went down, Linette yelled, "Again! Again!" Since there was no "queue" (line), the worker let us go again. And then a third time. (We asked what the record was, and he said, "33". We weren't going to beat that.)

We saw various birds, reptiles, fish and other animals there. Here is a (dead, stuffed) kiwi. It's a really interesting animal, with furry feathers, wings that are practically non-existent, and a really long bill. In spite of that, though, it technically has the "shortest beak of any bird", because beaks are normally measured from the nose holes to the tip, and kiwis have the nose holes right by the tip (so they can smell the bugs in the dark).

When kiwis lay eggs, the eggs are huge inside of them, leading to speculation that they used to be larger birds.

A gal was walking by and said that she was going to go in and put the kiwis to bed, and did we want to come? So we got a private encounter with their "daytime" kiwis. Kiwis are nocturnal, so to trick these ones, they have a really dark room so that they'll be awake during the day; and then they turn on the lights to put them to bed.

Here are a couple of unauthorized pictures of the live kiwis.

It was funny that when the gal flipped on the lights, each of the kiwis wandered over to their shelter and went to bed. The gal also went in and restocked their feeding tube with bugs and stuff.

Apparently kiwis are a bit endangered from predators like cats, dogs, pigs and ferrets (none of which are native to the island).

After leaving Rainbow Springs, we visited a public park in Rotorua that has a thermal lake. At first, we just saw a bubbling mud puddle, and weren't too impressed. Then we went a little further and came upon this huge, steaming lake.

It was really hot and steamy in there, like a sauna.

In this video segment, you can get a sense for the bubbling, steaming lake.

I love this picture of the boardwalk disappearing into the steam.



That night we barbecued up the Thai chicken satay we had gotten at the store earlier that week.

Melissa was surprisingly excited about this particular head of lettuce.

The night before, Linette had commented that she felt something "sharp" under her pillow. There was an electric blanket on the bed, so I wondered if it might be a wire to that. But she didn't think much of it and went to sleep.

Then on this night, she felt it again. She started feeling around, and said, "It feels like a fish hook or something...." Then she SCREAMED and yelled, "It bit me!!"

We both freaked out and jumped out of bed, flipped on the lights, pulled up her pillow, and there was an enormous bug under her pillow!!

It climbed behind the bed, so I tried to smash the mattress against it, and it came back up and out by my pillow. So I ran upstairs and got a glass, and then psyched myself up to catch it, because if I missed, and it escaped behind the bed, we might just have to go sleep somewhere else.

I caught it, and here it is inside a glass. It turned out to be a weta, which is like a huge (3-4 inch) grasshopper that is native to New Zealand. ("Weta", as in "Weta heck is that doing under my pillow!??"). New Zealand has no native poisonous snakes or spiders, fortunately, but this thing still has some serious pincers in back, as Linette can attest.

I left the weta under the glass on the kitchen counter all night. But I left a message in Bananagrams letters on top of the glass so nobody would get a surprise and break a glass or something.

I thought maybe it would suffocate under the glass all night, but it was fine. Apparently it can survive under a glass all night. Or a pillow. In fact, one of the scariest parts of this whole exciting experience is the thought that it was under Linette's pillow all night long the previous night!

We let it go in the morning. Here you can see its really long antennae, and the spiny hind legs that Linette thought felt like a fish hook.

When I told the owners of the rental house about the huge weta we had found under Linette's pillow, they replied, "Well, that was cheeky of it!" So that was an exciting end to the day.

In the next and final episode, we finally take some time to kayak at our lake, visit a nearby waterfall, and narrowly dodge Cyclone Gita for the third and final time.