A good friend of my suggested that we visit Cedar Cove, a feline sanctuary and education center just outside of Louisburg. After I researched it a bit.... I thought it might be a neat little excursion for the kids. The weather was perfect this morning...so we headed out! Sophia was a bit nervous at the thought of being so close to REAL tigers....but once we arrived and she saw the fences....she was eager to see them. We had an excellent tour guide and saw a variety of tigers, and lions and other felines....(sorry Joe...no bears, though....he kept asking if we would see bears!)
Brett and I learned things we never knew...For instance.... they feed the tigers only every few days to mimic their eating habits in the wild. When tigers kill their prey and eat...they gorge.....and then fast for days so as to have a clean system in order to go on the hunt again. We also learned that tigers are endanger of becoming extinct...there are only 3000 remaining around the world.
Here are some of the pictures from our morning...
By the way... the man in this picture... was missing a leg... I couldn't help but wonder whether it was the result of a tiger attack??? The tour guide did say that these animals' temperments can change at a moments notice. But all those keepers who work there do so with the understanding that these are animals and that the keepers are responsible for themselves...whatever injuries they sustain....they do not place any blame on the animals.
A lion and a lion cub....notice they are in separate cages. The keepers are not sure how the lion would respond if he were in the same cage as the cub. They worry that the lion may be too big and may play too rough with the cub.
This keeper went in the cage with the lion and the lion would give him kisses....but he would constantly try to chew on his arm....they like to bite and chew just like puppies!
A white tiger...very pretty....He had blue eyes....Sophia thought he looked like her...
The next picture is a leopard, which the tour guide described as extremely sneaky...and inconspicuous. She said generally you can tell ahead of time when the tigers are going to get upset about something...but the leopards never give advance warning....you never know when they might attack... This guy looks pretty harmless here...but I sure wouldn't want to be in that cage with him!!
Sophia looking very interested...
I even hadAnimal crackers for a snack in the bag...pretty apropos don't you think?
1 comment:
Wow, this looked pretty interesting!!! Pretty amazing facts! Glad the kids were not frightened. Can't decide whether J was more interested in the animal crackers or the the animals themselves!!!! :-) <3 Yiayia
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