We drove out to the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park, an 1800 Acre reserve for wild animals. Here they do major breeding research that has been most successful with hundreds of animals being returned to the wild, or exchange with other zoos. What a great success story.
This bird tried to join us for lunch, note no fences here.
Here's an overview of about half the 1800 acres. What a wonderful place to house wild animals.The whitish area at the upper left consists of a group of tents for those who want to spend a night under the 'Roar and Snore' option.
What fun that would be, except we don't do tents anymore...
Near the entrance you walk by these parrots who seem wild, but they were removed before we left. Mind you, if you were a parrot, why would you want to go elsewhere?
Same for this blue dude...
This Rainbow Lory was in a walk-in enclosed area where you could bring in a bit of food for them. This one was just sitting around just waiting for a friendly patron. Sorry, not us.
Cute little fellow though.
Here's a challenge for the grandkids, or bigger kids: Can you find the lions? One is a lot less obvious, so finding one would be great. There are giraffes to be found also...
Other than that,what a great place, right?
A few years ago I made a photo of this leader on top of a Land Rover. This looks a little more natural.
During our walks we found this monkey who shared two small islands with another monkey. Part of their breeding program maybe?
What a great place to live, surrounded by ducks and other waterfowl who are no threat at all.
One of the very large enclosures had this stunning bird with a bad hair day...
One of the shows-du-jour available was the Cheetah Run. Cheetahs can run at 70 miles per hour for 100 yards or so. The viewing area was narrow and filled with gawkers and wannabe sport photographers like yours truly. Now 70 MPH is damn fast. That's my excuse, and you have to live with it. All this to say, I have a poor picture of a cheetah streaking across my limited field of view, and it's so bad that I won't share it.
The net result is I have this last picture to share with you.
The Cheetah has run the 100 yard dash, has spent about 5 minutes recovering, and is now walking back to the truck with the lady on the other end of the leash.
This Cheetah's companion is a type of dog that protects farmed animals against cheetahs. What a switch, here it's a cheetah's best friend while in the wild, the same dog would keep the cheetah away from the herd, thus saving the cheetahs from the farmers. Neat!
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