Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Wild Animal Safari

Dusty, Amy, Brandon, Maddie and myself went to the Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain, GA. It was a BLAST!!! If you haven't been, you should go, whether you have small children or not. I know the four of us "grown ups" enjoyed it more than Maddie, who is 2! We rented a van, that would be the snazzy zebra 1992 Dodge Caravan with only bars for windows, and piled in with our cameras, 4 bags of animal food, and wet wipes, and boy was I glad the mom of the group thought to bring wet wipes. Thanks Amy! Dusty volunteered to drive and he was such a good sport about it. He had to drive really slow 1. because of the 5 mph speed limit, 2. there were animals everywhere that would just walk in front of the van and 3. we took endless pictures, which you can see below, sorry! The animals would stick their head through the bars and into the van to get us to feed them! And boy were they hungry! The animals we saw were: an American Alligator (sorry no pics of this- it was at the second part of the park which was a walkabout.); an American Black Bear (also at the walkabout); several American Buffaloes; several Blackbuck Antelopes; Black Mane Lion (caged); 2 Camels (also caged); a Liger (who, besides me and Amy, thought that Napoleon Dynamite made this up?? He didn't, it's real! Don't worry, he too was caged); Capuchin (a little monkey who was caged); Coati/Coatimundi (raccoon- like carnivore, also caged); Elks; Giraffe; several Grevy's Zebras; 3 Kangaroos (caged in the walkabout); Rhinoceros (caged); and lastly a couple Siberian Tigers (caged). Most of the animals were out running around and we could feed from our hands, but not the Zebra's and a couple others- they bite. They also had Cows, Longhorns, Deer, Pot-bellied Pigs and Piglets, Llamas, Emus, Baboon (caged in the walkabout). Funny story and probably the highlight of the trip if you ask everyone but me. I was feeding a Llama and Amy made a comment to be careful because they spit...yup...sure enough, the Llama spit his food out all over me! It went on my chest, neck, face, mouth, yup, pretty disgusting!!! Luckily, or unfortunately, no one was taking a picture at that moment so we have no documentation, but it really did happen. The last picture with me holding the pink t-shirt up that says "I Got Slobbered", that's from the Llama. We just had the best time!!! I recommend everyone going!!!




































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