Free Range Zoo

Last week, we took a drive up the road a bit to visit a drive-thru zoo. I am not a fan of zoos, but this was allegedly an open zoo with the animals roaming about on 180 acres. While that may sound like a lot of land, it is not. Not for as many animals as they had in there.

The safari place sells buckets of food, too, and you are supposed to feed the animals from your car. This means the animals are conditioned to think that car equals food. Most of the animals hang out at the entrance of the park, because obviously by the time you get to the middle or the end, you've given out all of your food.

I found it terrifying to have the car suddenly engulfed by a slew of domesticated wild animals. I still have llama slobber on my car window, my repayment for not purchasing the bucket of food.

The following pictures were taken through the car windows, so there is some glare and reflection.

This is what greets you when you drive over the cattle guard and into the safari area.

They don't like unopened windows. Yikes. This is a llama.

These are either fallow deer or axis deer. I am not sure which.

When I saw this, all I could think of was hakuna matata, from The Lion King. However, the guidebook doesn't say they have wart hogs. This may be a kune kune pig from New Zealand.

I think this is an eland, which hails from Africa.

This may be an elk.

I am not sure whether this is a blackbuck from India or a scimitar horned oryx from North Africa.

Some kind of deer. Fallow deer, maybe.

The little axis deer are very small. They came from India. There were a lot of them.

More deer.

Notice the field. There is little grass there for the animals to eat.

This is a blackbuck, which comes from India.

I think this was another elk.

They don't mind getting close.

These were resting a little distance from the car. I think they're elk.

Elk, I guess.

They had several white animals. In the wild, when we see albino deer on the farm, it generally means the herd is too large and there has been too much inbreeding.

This is an axis deer from India.

I think I liked the zebra the best. This is a "Grant's zebra' from West Africa and/or Zimbabwe.

This bird was huge. Ostrich, I think.

This was further into the park. The animals all came running toward the vehicles. Note again the lack of grass in the fields.

A kune kune pig from New Zealand.

A llama who is figuring out it should have gone to the front gate, I suspect.

You could see the giraffes but they were in a different fenced-in area and so they did not come near the car.

A fallow deer. They are found in Europe and Asia.

The farewell team of llamas.

We probably won't go back. We both thought the animals looked listless and sad. We know how many cattle we can run on the pastures of our farm, and it's not anywhere close to the number of animals on this small acreage. The organization feeds hay and there appeared to be a steady stream of cars behind us with the animal food, but this is not what I consider fun. It was a nice outing with my husband as far as that goes, but animals like these need to be roaming free. At the least, the herds of small deer and llamas need to be thinned out. There were too many ostriches, too.