Let me set the scene: you’re captive in an aluminium tube, thirty thousand feet above the ocean, cruising at a speed of over eight hundred kilometres per hour. Hours have passed, and hours are yet to pass. With your senses dulled from your fourth complementary beverage, you crave a simpler time. You don’t find it – it finds you. Wistful memories of childhood innocence surface. You feel a primal instinct to frolic in nature. What once was lost but now is found, virtually represented on the seat in front of you.

 

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10. Nile Crocodile

You’re not in a plane, you’re in de Nile.

 

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9. Grizzly Bear

Fun trivia: Grizzly Hills is the second zone in the east of Northrend. If that means anything, don’t touch classic until after exams.

 

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8. Dingo

The Din-go skrrrahh, pap pap ka-ka-ka

 

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7. American Black Bear

This is a bear-heavy listicle. I was a beer heavy passenger.

 

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6. Greater Flamingo

 ‘Regimental Frog’

 

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5. Kiwi

Flightless no more.

 

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4. American Black Bear (but in Canada)

American Black Brrr.

 

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3. Coyote

My favourite Dunedin Sound band of 2018.

 

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2. Yellow-eyed Penguin (Hoiho)

This is your reminder: Bird of the Year voting begins on Monday 28 October and ends Sunday 10 November - https://www.birdoftheyear.org.nz/

 

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1. European Badger

 “so you’re a tough ger,
like it really rough ger,
just can’t get enough ger,
chest always so puffed ger,
I’m the bad ger”