Elizabeth's American Safari Experience: 'Blues' to Zebra

Okay, I had a rough start to the day and to be quite honestly I was having a bit of the blues, but we were off for our Safari (though overcast). By ‘bit of the Blues’ do you know that feeling where the air on earth seems too heavy to breath, and your greatest hope is that you somehow end up as a hostage in a bank robbery going wrong and they have to chose someone to kill to prove they are serious and you are already volunteering? Yeah, that ‘bit of the blues.’

The Safari Wild Animal Park is near Squim, whose other big attraction is a Walmart. So I wasn’t expecting much. At the entrance they sell you bread by the loaf and then you are warned not to lower the windows too much because of what can happen. Sounds ominous? It is!

What is likely to happen is that Yak or wildebeest are going to mug you if at all possible. These are the seagulls of the mammal world and, for example to simply SEE the Rhino we had to plot a parking stop too narrow for the wildebeest to get between the enclosure and our windows. He tried anyway. Then sort of stood at the end of our vehicle and pouted until we bribed him to let us leave.

The first thing you see when you enter are Peacocks, which I have seen many times before (and at the Rhino enclosure, they seem oddly attracted to Rhinos, but hey, I am all for diversity, you know!). But there was one particularly nice white peacock, which was albino, and Cheryl said that it was disabled. I didn’t quite follow that because if it snows, all the OTHER peacocks are disabled. Ha!

There were some lama’s which I did not take pictures of, as I see them on farms where they are raised for meat and anything I have eaten jerky of, I tend not to take pictures of. However I have had a Buffalo Burger on Catalina Island where they raise Buffalo, and took pictures anyway. But I get ahead of myself.

Okay, the wildebeest, or Yak, don’t know which, it stands in the road, it sucks up your bread and probably your wallet if it could get close enough to you. Good luck Cheryl getting all that Wildebeest snot off the windows! If it could have SUCKED the bread THROUGH the glass, it would have.

Near the entrance were these deer, which may be rare wild deer, all I know is they know how to bleat in a way which says, “Give me all your bread, because I’m so damn cute!” And it had a strange hypnotic effect on Linda. Luckily I saved most of bread from her as she muttering “Here you go” in these drugged tones and about to hand the whole loaf over.

Next came an “Observation post” which had like half a million stairs, so that was out – it was also the only place you could get out of the vehicle to go inside and take pictures. In California, at a wild game reserve, that would have been cool (as they have mixed habitats), here however they lock up everything that could hurt anything else so there is no point. In fact, many of the animals, particularly the bears are trained to wave and such and are loaned out for films or circuses (so are some of the humans).

Well, here is one of the two animals I came for, the Rhino. And amazingly it had its horn, which was gigantic and gave you a good idea of how it turns over sod and such in search of food. It was great to see a Rhino without the horn removed doing the Rhino thing, which was eating and drinking (and taking dumps). I was perking up, almost happy. Here the Rhino is at the watering hole.
However, I can also understand the fear of the Rhino. Why? Because when HE (BIG Balls, very obvious) is coming toward you with a horn the size that could easily make all three of us a nice skewer (I think he is vegetarian or only eats grubs) one gets a little ansy, particularly when one is hanging out the window.

I don’t know which of the FIVE Rhino this is, because until Dawn talked about going to Cincinnati to see one of the three types she had not seen, I only thought there was like TWO types. I know, ignorant me. Still, a very impressive animal, and you can see how the front legs are so much larger to compensate for the weight of the horn. So, please come by and enlighten us about this Rhino, Dawn?

From there we went down the hill to the bears. The black bear was inside a shelter and didn’t come out, but this brown grizzly bear was out. And if you waved, it waved back which was “Awwww” and “So Cute” until you realize that the little bone next to it is from the thigh of a COW, and that with those claws it can make a swipe and go, “Did I get an apple? Oh, nope! It is a human head. I guess I’m not getting an apple!”

The next bear was a brown bear not related to the Grizzly (I think) which excelled at being, chunky and cute. And made me wonder why these bears weren’t hibernating because this bear is BULKED and ready to GO! Still cute. There were some more black bears (non Grizzly) in the next enclosure but they were kind of depressing.

In fact we got into a section which was a row of kennels. Three ROWS of kennels all the same size. Where we could drive down and see the animals. The first two animals were Timber Wolves. They were in adjoining kennels and were nose licking through the very thick double fence and I didn’t publish the picture because it was kind of heart breaking. Indeed, the amount of space given to a Lynx at the Winnipeg Zoo was about five to 10 times the size of these, the one size fits all Kennels, which were made for medium size dogs, it would appear.

However, THIS is what was in two of the Kennels. That’s right, Lion and a Lioness. Not in a oversized or double but each in a kennel made for a medium sized dog. It was pretty depressing and the thing is I couldn’t stand to see these animals which should be treated with the respect of wild animals being stuffed into the equivalent of small prison cell and then forced to put up with gas fumes and staring all day.

So I asked Cheryl to drive away because while I wasn’t going to start rolling down and freeing all the cages (these WERE Lions and such, and probably pretty cranky ones by now!), I didn’t have to be a part of it.

However, before we left we saw the tale of the Lady and the Tiger. Or in this case the TIGER (impressive isn’t he?), and the stupid little baby bunny rabbits. Because the stupid little baby bunny rabbits were out of the sweet grass because they had eaten it all so they were burrowing into the TIGER’s Cage area from underneath. And when the Tiger would walk by, there was a cascade of baby bunnies all flurrying out of the tunnels under the Tiger’s enclosure. All I was pretty sure of was, a) Tiger was going to get some bunny SOON. And b) since mom and dad bunny were staying far away from the cage, they knew what was going to happen and were going to try on next year’s bunch instead (“You can tell them to stay away from the cage, but do they listen? Oh NO! They’re too smart to listen to mom, ‘oh mom, the grass tastes so sweet….’”)

From there we passed the cattle crossing (the high tech separation system), to where the Buffalo Roamed, literally. The problem was that you had to keep moving the vehicle while around the Buffalo because if they got irritated for some reason they would head butt your car. Don’t worry, their head would be just fine; you’ll never get that car door to open again, but their head will be just fine! So I got this one in passing.

Here is the Buffalo/Bison grazing with the fresh snow of the Olympic Mountains behind. Nice. Also, wouldn’t want to be anywhere near a bunch of them when thousands of there are on the move, I can see why their migration used to delay or derail the trains.

Then came the wild fallow deer. There were cute little deer who came up to the window to beg for bread (which I of course gave them). But then there were also the Stags who were fighting for the Harem or for Stag of the Month, or whatever reasons stags fight. These two were interesting because they were color coded so it was easy to tell who you were rooting for! They just clashed horns a few times and then lay down again.

The other animal I had come to see were the two Zebra’s. However they were grazing on the other side of the field so we had to leave the park and go around the field to stop and throw some more bread over the fence to get them to come over. For some reason I along with many other children (Hey, I’m still young in maturity), like Zebra’s. Maybe it is because even the tufts of hair on their neck are still in the black and white pattern. Black then white, then black then white…..hee hee!

So I got to see my Zebra’s and they were black and white and then black and white. Okay, okay fine! I get it, Cheryl, I’ll stop saying that. We stopped at the gift store to try and pick up some pictures of baby animals for the kids we send postcards out to. Since here were some cute animals like Fallow Deer and they must have postcards right? Well, the gift shop was closed for re-modeling so…no! Darn.

And finally we ended our Safari seeing the most changeable and dangerous animal of them all, the one animal who can control the mind, and turn good into anarchy and even the most jaded item into sugar and sweet. I speak of the Hello Kitty! Here I am, with a Hello Kitty stuffie, one with a soccer/football uniform and the other a softball uniform. So hey, while our literature might not support young women to play sports, at least Hello Kitty does (she also encourages them to learn how to play the slots so a mixed message there).

And that was my wild American Safari in Squim. After a bunch of black fingers and that I went back to day and saw a pod of killer whales IN the wild, the real wild, and the pictures of some of the sightings are in the post below. I hope you had a nice Canadian Thanksgiving/American Invasion day (I mean, Columbus Day) and UK days called, Sunday and Monday.