Captive kea enjoyed many of his 45 years living at pub
Joe the kea liked his Coke on the rocks, enjoyed steak and raw egg for breakfast and had a penchant for ripping women’s stockings right off their legs.
He was one of the country’s longest living captive kea and spent virtually all of his 45 years at Takaka’s Junction Hotel, in Golden Bay, where his proud owner poured the drinks for nearly 50 years.
Nola Drummond said Joe was brought to the hotel as a big, fluffy chick after being found abandoned in the remote Cobb Valley region in the late 1960s.
He immediately became a ‘‘bit of a nuisance’’ so Drummond’s father-in-law passed the young alpine parrot on to her.
Drummond adopted him and a life-long friendship was forged.
To get him to feed, she would tap the end of his beak with a stick before every mouthful before slowly moving him onto a gourmet diet of raw egg, steak and his favourite, specially sourced dandelion root.
As omnivores, keas usually feed on plants, beetle larvae and other birds – but Joe seemed to do ‘‘just fine’’, she said.
‘‘He thought he was a human so we would just take down a selection of what we would be eating throughout the day and whatever he didn’t want, the sparrows would get.’’
Joe was free to roam the hotel while Drummond and her family worked, but a large cage was made to house him on particularly busy days.
Joe died in January 2012, aged 45. The oldest known captive kea was 50 years old. The average life span in the wild is much less than that, although some have been known to live to their late 20s.
Drummond said Joe had good innings.
His body was returned to DOC for examination and research. He had since been mounted in DOC’s Takaka office, Drummond’s daughter-in-law Karalyn Barnett said. ‘‘It’s upsetting seeing him like that. I don’t know why we weren’t allowed to keep him and then to have him go and then walk past and see him on a wall, yeah, it’s upsetting.’’
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