No shipwreck could be complete with out some stowaway pests!

Christchurch based sculpture Donald Patterson created two gnarly looking rats biting their way out of grain sacks to give kids some fun at the Caroline Bay Playground.

New Zealand has no native rats, and three kinds came here on the early sailing ships and since then have caused widespread distruction.

• The Kiore, the first documented wild rodent in New Zealand, was brought by Polynesian settlers in 1250-1300 AD. Very few kiore now survive on the mainland as more aggressive European rodents have replaced them.
• Captain James Cook logs the first sighting of the Waitoreke in 1772, a native land mammal cryptid.
• The Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus), also known as brown or water rats) and house mouse are introduced by early Pākehā settlers in the late 1700s and 1824.
• The ship rat (Rattus rattus, also known as black or roof rats), arrived in the late 1800s, but these did not become established until after the 1860s.

Every bit of bush in the North and South islands harbours house mice (Mus musculus), sometimes in plague numbers. By eating insects and fallen seeds and berries, mice deprive many native ground-feeding animals of food.

• Mice will eat almost anything! They eat invertebrates, seeds, fruits, leaves, birds’ eggs, fish eggs, chicks and insect larvae
• When mice first arrived in NZ, people had never seen them before and called them “Henriettas” after the ship "Elizabeth Henrietta" they came from Australia to New Zealand in 1824.
• All mice and rats are called kiore in Te Reo.

With the rise in population of introduced rodents and other pests like stoats, cats, deer, goats, pigs, and wasps, came the sudden decline of many native bird and bat species.

Rat Sacks by sculpture Donald Patterson (who also created Timaru's iconic Captain Cain sculpture).