One of our favorite leisure pursuits is to head over to a place called "African Wildlife Safari". They have a small zoo there with several species, but the main event is to drive your car through the area where the buffalo....and dozens of other critters...roam.
They give (sell, actually) you these cups full of all-purpose animal feed. You are supposed to allow the kindly critters to eat from the cups. Right. More than once we've had a moose simply rip the cup out of our hands and guzzle the feed. So we break the rules and do a lot of hand feeding. It makes you want to beeline for the hand sanitizer or restroom immediately afterwards, but there is no thrill quite like hand feeding, say, a buffalo.
The inventory of critters probably makes no sense; I am sure African wildlife is mixed in with domestic deer or northern moose, with some llamas or alpacas tossed in. The good news is, the animals do not seem to be intent upon eating each other, so I guess they researched their mix pretty well.
We met the daughter and son in law there and sacrificed Linda's car. You tend to end up with a car with feed in all the crevices and on the carpets, and more than one large slobber mark on the exterior. And at least once I heard the smack of a horn or antler against the car. Yeah, I spent some time today shop-vacuuming out the car.
One observation: It is remarkable how far a moose (the kind without a rack) can extend its head into an automobile: past the driver, over to the passenger side. Then it detects an apple (intended for human consumption) on the console, where one may put one's coffee cup. Long story short, the moose got the apple in one swift bite.
It may sound all scary or dangerous, but these guys (and gals) are just happy to get fed by the countless humans who drive through, and aside from fighting for the cups, they are just taking care of the business of getting fed, practicing a "live and let live" philosophy. Ok, maybe not quite "Ghandi-mals", but pretty close. seems pretty peaceful out there in the "wild".
So here are but a sampling of the bazillion pictures I took while driving, avoiding collisions, and holding off the varmints.
The venerable wart hog. A lovely, regal specimen, eh? This one is not "at large", but in a pen with others of its kind.
This is what you face as you drive through the gate...
Roll down a window and you get this kind of action.
Some get their feeding done by other means.
It's like trick or treat.
Well, THIS one was a little intimidating.
9 comments:
WOW!! I wish we had a place like that to drive thru around here. The closest we have at our local zoo is a platform you can walk out on to feed the giraffe. Yours looks a lot better!!
I could almost hear that warthog singing "akoonamatada"!!!
yeah, we were calling the wart hog "Pumbaa".
Yay, good pictures! It was a blast seeing you, and my moose bitten finger is mostly better! :)~Emily
It sounds like you had a lot of fun. The most fun thing we did around here today was to figure out how to relight the pilot of our water heater. Actually, it was exciting because we didn't have to call a plumber to get our hot water back.
I'll never complain about the dog nose smudges on my front window again.
Yes, Margaret, you haven't lived until your car window bears the smears of a couple buffalo noses.
Animal Planet in Ohio!
Sounds like African Wildlife Safari represents a microcosm of all that is right and all that is wrong with America, but the right greatly outweighs the wrong, and if you don't like the wrong, nobody forces you to go there anyway. Great pix. But since you didn't include the disclaimer that "no animials were harmed during this blog", somebody's lawyer might be getting on the case even as you continue to blog.
"no animials were harmed during this blog"
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