The Wild Animal Sanctuary

Mark's birthday landed on a Sunday this year and so we had to do our celebrating mostly on Saturday.  He decided for his "activity" to go to The Wild Animal Sanctuary.  We didn't really know what to expect when we got there but it was so neat.

Apparently this is the oldest sanctuary of its kind and it specializes in rescuing large carnivore animals.  They had: leopards, mountain lions, tigers, African lions, bobcats, lynxes, wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, foxes and a camel.  I can't remember the exact number - but they had something like 250 animals all together - CRAZY!

The rescue stories were incredibly sad.  I just really can't imagine the circumstances that these huge animals were in prior to coming here.  Sad that a place like this has to exist but grateful that it does at the same time.  Their most recent major rescue was for 25 Bolivian lions from the circus.  We watched a little documentary while we were feeding Jacob and it was just so sad.  But they now have a beautiful place to live now and will remain here for the rest of their lives.  

Anyway, we went at the perfect time at the end of the day.  The weather was perfect!  How it is set up is they just have a mile long pathway that is probably like thirty feet in the air (totally guessing on that) and you just walk right above the animals.  They have so much land and they just let each species wander around their individual areas.  They do have areas for newly rescued animals to get used to the area privately before they move them with the rest of their kind as well.  Overall - SO COOL!

The best part had to be at the end when the sun was starting to go down because all of a sudden all of the wolves started howling and the lions started roaring.  Pretty incredible.  You can see some farm houses and such on the outside of the sanctuary and we just kept thinking how crazy it would be to fall asleep to the howls and roars of wolves and lions every night while you are going to sleep - and live in Denver.  CRAZY!

Clearly they are being fed well - holy smokes - look at the size of the right one!  This was one of the adjustment areas where they are in a smaller space with just one another tiger to get used to one another before going into the large areas. 

This is the walkway that you walk on above them - pretty neat idea actually!

How would you like to live in that house?!

They have so much land!

Again one of the adjustment areas for the lions - the right one is very comfortable :)

I know they don't look very lively but when the sun was still out they were all pretty much resting in the shade.  We didn't really get any pictures once they got hopping :)

Jacob was not enjoying our time there as much.  Mark had dressed him in his tiger outfit and so we wanted to get his picture taken with one of the big stuffed animals or something that they had in the gift shop.  However, he wasn't going to work well with that plan so we just did our best to get him with a tiger in the background - oh well!

 
We had planned on going out to a nice dinner afterwards but Jacob was not feeling the day - poor little muffin.  Just another learning thing for us as parents - little Jacob NEEDS his nighttime routine.  So we ended up getting Sonic to go and eating at home while watching the Discovery Channel.  Oh well - it was still a really fun afternoon!