We came across a story of two little girls trying to steal the coins from the wishing well in the 70s using a piece of chewy on a stick from one of the Fletcher Jones staff daily updates that were called DO YOU KNOWs .
The Female of the Species
There’s something absolutely unbeatable about “the female of the species.” At our wishing well in the gardens, Allan Jennings discovered two little girls with an ingenious device for pinching the money from the bottom of the well. The little girls had a stick with a piece of well-chewed chewing gum adhering to the end. They poke this down through the holes in the protective grille, pick up a coin, and carefully withdraw it back through the grille. – Not bad, eh!
What would a “poor silly male” say if he caught in this impossible situation? He’d be absolutely stumped.
What did our little girls say? - “We were just trying to get our chewing gum back.”
Yes indeed Mr. Kipling, “the female of the species, more deadly than the male.”
And then journalist Carol Altmann found one of those little girls, now a grown up woman who also remembers the story well! Anne Skepper-VanBakel said "as soon as the chewy got wet it lost its stickiness so we never got a cent! I think it just really amused Allan watching us try.... Cashing in on the drink bottles I found in the FJ gardens was far more lucrative!!!
