A one-year-old Auckland giraffe has setting off on the adventure of a lifetime.
The city's zoo has bid farewell to Zuri, who is due to be reunited with relatives in Wellington tonight.
She'll be exposed to a lot of unfamiliar sights during her 12-hour truck journey, but Auckland Zoo Pridelands team leader Nat Sullivan will be there for support.
"What we can do is give her familiar faces and familiar food," she says. "There's myself and Henry, and we both worked with her her entire life, so she knows us really well and she should get a lot of comfort out of seeing us, and we're going to be following behind her."
Zuri, who will travel in a specially constructed crate, will join her grandmother and aunt at Wellington Zoo.
Ms Sullivan says zookeepers have been working for weeks to get Zuri prepared.
"Zuri is almost three and a half metres. The crate that she'll be in is four metres tall. All up, once she's sitting on the truck the whole height is about five metres."
Zuri's trip's been meticulously planned so she doesn't strike bridges or buildings along the way.
"Her mother was actually born in Wellington Zoo, so she'll be going down to relatives -- she's got her grandmother down there," says Ms Sullivan. "There is a family resemblance. It's quite nice that she'll be going down there and having that connection with them."
Zuri won't be sedated, but a vet will be with her for her entire epic journey.
Newshub.
