A visually impaired Hilo youngster got as close as she’s likely to ever come to a Namibia leopard on Saturday. And Dylan Ono, a Captain Cook sixth grader who also has challenges seeing, was eye to eye with a leopard from Zimbabwe.
“I thought I’d never be able to do this,” breathed Ono.
Kealakekua resident Gene Yap opened his home — and a massive collection of stuffed animals and animal artifacts — to the island’s visually impaired in an event aptly dubbed a “sensory safari” on Saturday morning. It’s the second time that Yap and the Lions Club of Kona have held the event, although Yap has been collecting specimens from swamps, deserts, high mountains and plains around the globe for some 40 years.
“Treat it as you would a buffet,” Yap told visitors. “Go through and visit everything and come back to the things you really like.”
Scores of people — only a fraction of them visually impaired — exclaimed over the collection, ran their fingers over gleaming boar tusks, crocodile skin, lion’s paws, and rhino hides as rough as sandpaper. Stuffed animals, many of them endangered species, ranged from water buffalo and rhinoceros to the less well known red lechwe, an antelope from South Africa, and the Himalayan Tahr, a specimen from New Zealand.
“When they say ‘skin like a rhino,’ I know what they mean now,” said Sally Hammond, who climbed a set of steps to caress the jowl of a stuffed rhino mounted on the wall. Hammond, legally blind, is the president of the West Hawaii chapter of the National Federation of the Blind.
Many of the 200-some artifacts were arranged in natural poses: leopard facing down baboon, lions standing over kills, a puma in the process of scaling a cliff, complete with real stone and brushwood.
And then there were the eyes, glittering and lifelike.
“They look real,” said David Strauss, 9, of Kailua-Kona. “My sister would freak out. My cousin would be crying right now.”
Turning to his teacher, Liz Martin, for clarification, he asked, “has it been killed?” Then he said, “It’s kind of sad.”
Visitors to the collection said they were ready to see stuffed safari animals but were unprepared for the scale of the collection and the elaborate manner in which the objects were arrayed through multiple rooms. About a half dozen visually impaired children attended, along with their teachers. A similar number of adult members of the NFB were also able to experience the displays. But scores of volunteers and others were also on hand, including representatives from the Vision Van and the West Hawaii Community Health Center.
Taylin Smith of Hilo drove across the island so her daughter, Tayani Abadilla, 7, could experience the creatures.
“It’s great for her because she learns by touching,” said Smith, a Keaukaha resident. “And she’s always telling me she wants to go to Africa.”
Jack Vore, who is a Lions Club board member, said the event presented an immersion that probably wouldn’t be available otherwise.
“It’s a way to help the visually impaired get out of their homes and do something socially,” said Vore.