insideKENT Magazine Issue 36 - March 2015 | Page 90

DAYSOUT
© Dave Blissett

© Patrick Fowler

DAY OUT AT

howletts

Howletts Wild Animal Park is full of adventure – whether it’s the exotic and
sometimes endangered animals, the children’s playground, the treetop
challenge, or choosing which delicious cake to try in the café, this is 90
acres of fun for all the family.BY LISAMARIE LAMB
The first task upon entering the park
was to decide which animals to see
in what order. The great thing about
Howletts is that it's designed to
enable visitors to walk around – it’s
a long walk, make sure you’re
prepared – the entire park without
missing anything, no matter where
you start. With that in mind, and
map in hand, we ventured off to find
the gorillas. Although it was fairly
early, there were one or two who
were keen enough to come out from
their cosy quarters and begin
swinging from massive tyres and
climbing with seemingly no effort
around their enclosure. They have
a number of fun toys to play with,
and although we desperately
wanted to see one of them come
down the gorilla-sized slide, none
obliged. Maybe it was a tad too cold
for that!
Following the well-signposted paths,
we looped around and discovered
my absolute favourite animal, the
capybara. There were three of these
large rodents – distant cousins of
the domestic guinea pig – and it
was a joy to see them.
And so on we went, following the
paths, and discovering interesting

and rare creatures at every turn.
From the beautiful tigers that stalked
us as we walked by them to the
funny anteaters who ignored us
completely and continued to play
with a ball, throwing it up into the
air (who knew anteaters played?),
we were educated and entertained
in equal measures.

giggles and exclamations of
wonder followed, as the
lemurs seemed to pose for
photos.
The snow leopards were also
particularly fascinating.
Beautiful creatures, Howletts
has both a male and a
female, and is hoping to
breed them. That is, after all,
what the Aspinall Foundation
is all about – it is committed
to the conservation,
breeding, and eventual reintroduction of rare and endangered animals into
the wild. These particular snow leopards were in a playful mood, and were
enjoying a run around their enclosure. We stood to watch them for a while,
until their keeper arrived. The keeper kneeled down next to the fence, and
the female snow leopard came straight up to him, nuzzling him as best she
could, and, we’re almost totally sure, purring as she did it. It was incredible
to see the unbreakable bond keeper and creature had.

The lemur encounter was superb,
and shouldn’t be missed. We
entered a special area of the park
put aside just for the lemurs, to be
confronted with a large glass
enclosure, in which lemurs were
having lunch. Cries of “King Julien!”
rang out from our four year old (King
Julien is a character in the
Madagascar films), and she was
right – here we were face to face
with perhaps a dozen King Juliens,
nibbling away and bouncing around
the ropes that hung from the ceiling.
There was a path to our left, and
we followed it, curious to discover
what was around the corner, and
thrilled to realise that it was more
lemurs, only this time they were right
in front of us. Literally Their enclosure
.
was open to this area of the park,
meaning that they could come
outside and surprise the visitors at
any time they wanted to. Many

Day over, and a very tired but happy Lamb family left Howletts with some
unique and wonderful memories.
Howletts Wild Animal Park
Bekesbourne
Nr Canterbury
CT4 5EL
01227 721286
www.aspinallfoundation.org/howletts
@howlettspark
/howlettsanimalpark

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