Wild Animal Safari

One of the things neither Geoffrey nor I had ever done was going through one of those wild animal places where you drive right by the animals, feeding them, taking pictures, etc. So, our first stop is the Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain.

The ticket lady was cheerful and very helpful. We had of course seen those many scenes on AFHV where people get slobbered on and huge tongues come wandering in the window, ewwwwwwwwww.

Clearly we needed appropriate food, a slobber towel, and most definitely renting one of their vehicles to drive around the park avoiding slobber and hair on ours and even more importantly, damage!

This car in front of us shows how the animals come running for the food as well as showing what the vehicle we used was like. If you look carefully through the giraffe's legs you can see what I think is an emu beyond the giraffe. It may even be the same as the one that turned up at my window later.

The rolling tree-covered hills  are lovely in this part of Georgia and are a perfect setting for these animals.Most of the various four legged beasts are loose within the park with a cattle guard set in the entrance so that the animals can't get out.

There are a few caged locations for animals that perhaps need more control including the lions. There were also a few caged animals which were the same as ones that were free. We assume that those particular individual animals turned out to be a bit too aggressive for those driving through.

There is also a walk-about area which has birds and monkeys and some other exotic animals that can't be roaming free as well as a petting zoo area. We decided we had seen enough of the animals though and skipped the walk-about section.

There was a trio of very persistent zebras that showed up at several points on the drive. We are pretty certain they are the same ones in each place and that they were smart enough to have shortcuts across the drive through area!

We were quite grateful for the bars on the windows which allowed some of the smaller animal heads some access but kept the really big ones outside the window area!

Signs advised throwing the food out on the ground as a better alternative to letting them eat from your hand and we took the advice seriously, getting quite good at tossing the food pellets out on the road a little ways from the vehicle. Our advice for people thinking of doing one of these, get plenty of food! You don't want to run out! And, once you get a good look at the horns on some of them, including reindeer and pronghorns as well as this fellow giving Geoff a look, seriously consider using a park car rather than your own.

We had a good time, took lots of pictures and got good at food tossing so we didn't get much slobber. Of course that was probably helped by our mutual decision not to feed any of them from our hands.

A new friend for Geoff?