Our Kerry Holiday 2015

It was July of 2015, and my family and I visited Coolwood Wildlife Park in Co. Kerry, which was home to animals you would expect to see at any petting zoo, including lemurs, raccoons, owls, prairie dogs, New World monkeys, parrots, waterfowl, wallabies and coatis, as well as emus and llamas. Among the animals we never saw before was the coypu, a large, beaver-like rodent native to South America, which we saw swimming in a small lake before coming up onto land just in front of us. Another memorable animal from Coolwood was a large Bengal eagle owl, who was making an ‘ooh-ooh’ call every few seconds, and I had a try at imitating the owl as it called. At one point, the owl even jumped onto the mesh of its aviary, as though it was trying to attack one of us. The biggest highlight from our visit were a trio of raccoon dog pups, which had been born recently and named Duke, Dastardly and Darling. One of the pups came out from under the shelter where it was hiding and hung around outside, and we also caught a glimpse of one of the other pups peeking its head out from under the shelter. We did not see any adult raccoon dogs, although the species was signed on another enclosure nearby. After our visit to Coolwood, we then drove to Muckross House, and went for a long walk along the forest trail and on the grounds of the house in the rain. We also ate at the cafe there, before driving up to Dingle.

The next day, we visited the Dingle Oceanworld aquarium. My Mum once told me that she and Dad visited this aquarium with my sister while she was pregnant with me. Here, we saw gentoo penguins in an indoor enclosure with a large pool, as well as piranhas, pufferfish, sharks, and Molly the rescued loggerhead turtle (the first time I ever saw this species, and indeed any sea turtle). After we left the aquarium and had lunch, we took the boat out to the bay in search of Fungie the bottlenose dolphin. As we set out on the long boat ride in the mild, misty weather, we managed to spot Fungie’s back and dorsal fin breaking the surface at times, possibly my first time seeing a cetacean of any kind. The sighting of Fungie was no doubt memorable, especially following his disappearance in October 2020.

Overall, this was quite a pleasant trip, as we got to see some species we had never seen before, including the coypu, raccoon dog, loggerhead, and bottlenose dolphin. We also got to be out into nature for a good deal of our trip, something that was really nice and helped to complete the holiday with a mentally and physically healthy activity.