Bencarri Farm

Saturday afternoon it was looking like at any moment torrential rains would come, so we decided to stick close to town. We decided to visit Bencarri Farm, which is like a petting zoo on steroids. Visitors are allowed to go into most of the pens and feed, play with, and sometimes get bitten by the animals. Most of the animals at Bencarri Farms are uncommon in New Zealand, like yaks, llamas, and a Texas Longhorn named "Tex".
The miniature horses, "Peanut" and "Elmo", made us feel like giants. They look and sound pretty cute, but the nasty little suckers bite, as Vicky learned quickly.
"Missy", a one-month-old piglet was scampering all over the farm. When Steve picked her up she squealed like crazy, but liked Vicky a lot more and just sat quietly in her arms.
We really liked this little guy but didn’t catch his name. Calves are the sweetest little things!
The tame Anatoki Eels are probably the biggest attraction at Bencarri Farms. In 1914, a young girl named Maggie McCullough started feeding some eels her scraps. They quickly began to respond to her footsteps when she approached. Maggie would even pick up the eels and play with them. Since then, the eels have been fed daily to keep them tame. When Maggie’s sister, Edna, got too old to feed them herself in 1991, she began inviting tourists to do it for her.
We were not brave enough to pick up any of the eels, but we did feed and pet them. Since eels can live up to 100 years, it’s possible that we encountered some of the original eels that Maggie tamed 90 years ago. They are one of the oldest tourist attractions in New Zealand. Below are some pictures of the eels and us feeding them (and in Vicky’s case jumping back when one got a little too close).