I mentioned in a post last week that Kyle and I spent part of our Labor Day at a nearby safari park. As promised, here are the pictures! We started off in the zoo area, where we saw all the usual (adorable) suspects and got to feed some sweet little budgies.
We started the day with four buckets of feed. We left the park with one, because I had three buckets snatched from me by a llama, a yak, and, finally, a zebra. We didn't even attampt to feed the camels, because the last time we went there, about a year ago, one stole my bucket from me the second I dangled it out the window. Their enclosures—definitely telling that they're the only animal in the park that isn't allowed to just roam free—were seriously littered with chewed-up, stomped-on buckets, and those were just from the last few hours.
The emus and ostriches were at least more friendly, but they were just as demanding, especially the ostriches. One started loping toward the car and we got spooked and rolled the windows up. He didn't just turn away like other spurned animals, though. He walked right up to Kyle's window and started tapping on it with his beak. It wasn't even like he was mindlessly pecking at it to try and get at the food. It was this insistent knock, an "I'm waiting!" knock that just happened to come from the beak of an eight-foot tall bird.
The whole thing was awesome. The grounds are beautiful, and so much care is put by the staff into making it an idyllic home for this vast diversity of animals from around the world. Always a wonderful thing to see.
Have a great weekend!