Wild Animal Orphanage

Today we met some friends from one of our playgroups and went to the Wild Animal Orphanage. It is right up the street, right by our church. I noticed it a while ago when leaving church, and have wanted to check it out. Last week when leaving church, I looked over at it as I was driving down the road and could see a HUGE tiger.

When we first started the hour long tour, we met Boris the Bear. He was sitting right there and was huge! The volunteer who was giving the tour told us all about his history. I'm pretty sure he was a circus dancing bear that they rescued.

Michael checking out some animals

This is a male lion, he doesn't have a mane because he has been neutered and so his mane fell out after his hormones changed.

They had a ton of monkeys, lots of different kinds. This baby monkey was born at the beginning of April. They had another baby in another part, but it wasn't close enough to get a good picture. It was about a week younger than this one.

Here's one of the monkeys turning the water on for a drink. Another one turned it on and took a little bath.

Michael checking it all out. Notice the tiger in the background. They were SO close and there were so many! The volunteer said they had 22 tigers there! 22! Pretty sure the zoo only has 1 or 2 and they are always far away and sleeping!

McKenzie saying hi to the tiger

Yep, he's licking his lips! Time to go!

The tigers were all so beautiful. It was very interesting to hear about these animals and how they got to the orphanage. Many were kept by pets or people trying to have a "roadside zoo." Crazy!

Of course another highlight for the kids, besides all the cool animals, was walking on the logs like a balance beam.

Michael really liked watching all the animals too.

This interesting animal is a "liger." Someone illegally breed a male lion and female tiger and this was the baby. See her tiger stripes. Her name is Beauty. Well, I know it's name was Beauty, and so I'm guessing it was a "her" but it does kind of have a mane so I don't know... Very neat to see, since we'll probably never see another "liger."

They also had white tigers.

This one's name was Bubba, and since we call Michael "Bubba" all the time, he kept looking at the volunteer as she was talking about Bubba, thinking she was talking to him.

Bubba with Bubba the Tiger.