Actor Dominic Monaghan is best known for playing Merry the Hobbit in the Lord of the Rings franchise and Charlie Pace in Lost, but it's his long-held love for wild animals that led him to his next project. In January, Monaghan's new TV show, Wild Things, which follows him as he tracks down some of the most exotic and dangerous animals in the world, debuts on BBC America.
I was lucky enough to travel quite a lot when I was a little kid. My family lived in Germany and we'd constantly be going to places like Italy, Turkey, Greece, France and Spain.
At one point, when we were traveling to these different countries, my brother and I started to collect lizards. One of the earliest memories I have is catching lizards with my brother, when we were probably six or seven, and showing them to our mom and dad. They both liked animals so they were like, "Oh that's nice, that's a big one!"
Growing up, we had a whole house of animals. We had lizards and snakes and ant farms and pigeons and bees and wasps. I had a tin double-decker pencil case in school and the bottom tin was filled with bees and wasps. If I were in a math class -- because I'm not super excited about math -- I would unleash these bees and wasps into the room so I wouldn't get asked questions about the Pythagorean theorem.
I'm aware when certain animals are dangerous, but I think I have a pretty good handle on my level of hysteria. I mean, obviously if I see a shark or a tiger I'm extremely respectful of that animal, but I think if you approach those types of situations with fear then that's when you're going to get stung or hurt.
On the show I'm constantly getting myself into situations with very, very dangerous animals. We probably see at least one, maybe two snakes an episode. These are highly venomous, extremely aggressive snakes, cobras, vipers and rattlesnakes. I certainly get into situations with those guys where they can hurt me. But I'm showing the audience that even though these animals are extremely dangerous, if there's a level of respect between you and the animal, then hopefully you can experience that animal and not get killed in the process.
We went to Cameroon to look for an extremely rare beetle called the giant white Goliath beetle. They only find something like 10 a year. We had to fly to the capital and then drive for about 10 hours or so to get to this place where they have been found. The people there are very, very friendly and it's a great country to go to, but it's one of those places where there are no roads and there's no sense of, "Oh, head to this address." It was an Indiana Jones-like experience. We did an eight-hour hike which took us to the top of what they said was a hill, but what me and my crew would probably call a mountain. We had to camp there because we had another day's hike at the end of that. We usually camp -- or stay in people's houses or makeshift hotels. We actually stayed in a brothel when we were in Laos, which was a heck of a lot of fun. There were no prostitutes there -- they had vacated for the night, which was good -- but that was pretty epic.
One time we were doing a scene in a rice paddy field in Laos. We were looking for a really dangerous, gnarly aquatic insect called the giant water bug. We eventually found it, but in doing that, my six-man crew kept scaring mice and rats out of the paddy field and we also woke up a monocled cobra. It's the cobra that kills the most people in India. I was lucky enough to see it coming and managed to do a scene where I was able to wrangle it a little bit and talk about just how beautiful an animal it is.
That's how I go on vacation. The idea for Wild Things came about a couple of years ago when I went to Thailand to see if I could swim with whale sharks -- the world's largest fish. When I was 18, I went to Borneo to see orangutans and Rwanda to see the lowland gorillas. I have other interests -- I'll travel around the world for large soccer matches and go to places where the food is amazing -- but a lot of times it is the animals that dictate the holidays to me. I feel rested when I'm active. It's kind of strange, but it's true.
Photographs courtesy of BBC America
