Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Ligers and Tigers and .................................




I just got these pictures off my phone after about 1 month of trying!

About a month ago, N and I went to Safari Sanctuary in Broken Arrow while J and B were camping. I was just back from Asia and recovering and N and I were going to spend a weekend doing whatever the hell we wanted. I wanted to read. Then we decided an adventure was in order. We drove through a trailer park to get to Safari Sanctuary after MapQuest gave us the wrong driving instructions. It took awhile to find. So, by nature we were a smidge wary of the place. We were wondering if it was going to be great or sad or a terrible way to spend an otherwise slothful Saturday.
It is actually really neat. I was impressed by how clean and healthy the animals looked. The first thing you do after entering is buy a bag of about 15 frozen chicken legs which you can feed to the big cats from long poles. The cats crunch through the bone and everything to eat the legs. We had our own tour guide too which was cool.

They have about 30 cats there and two of them belonged to Mike Tyson. He had to give them up after filing for bankruptcy. The guide kept telling us stories of how the animals ended up at Safari Sanctuary. Most of the stories went something like, "She raised the bobcat from a baby but she didn't really know how big it would get. And then one day it tried to attack her toddler. She was surprised but decided to give the cat away." Or, "They got the tiger from _________ but then they had a baby and didn't think they should keep the tiger around the baby." Ummmmmm..... I didn't realize so many people were into exotics as pets. It has never crossed my mind to order a baby lion over the internet.

And, they have a Liger. It is not just a figment of Nap. Dynomites imagination. It has a Lion for a mother and a tiger for a father. Or vice versa. There is also a Tigon, although Safari Sanctuary does not have one of these. This is a picture of N feeding the Liger, I think. N loved the whole experience and I thought it was cool how closely you could interact with the animals, by feeding them through the poles. A simple yet effective tool. All in all a very good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.




No comments: