Wimoweh, Wimoweh .....

[bizling]

I just had one of the best weekends ever. Instead of trying to find Christmas gifts for the family, we all did the "Zoofari" at Dubbo's Western Plains Zoo together. I'm still trying to work out what my favourite bit was. I'm not sure if it was:

• being 2m away from a Sumatran tiger as it was being fed
  The tiger's jaws are amazingly poweful. I have seen a tiger in the wild, but nothing compares to seeing one devour pounds of flesh and bone, metres away from you, while you are safely on the outside of its cage
• hanging out with the African elephants as they were fed
  Dubbo has the only African eles in Oz - everywhere else has Asian elephants which are smaller and less "wrinkly".  An elephant's trunk is amazing, and being close to animals that are so much bigger and stronger than you are, yet are so dextrous and smart just took my breath away. They have really long eyelashes, too. Elephants don't need volumising mascara ;)
• seeing a 1 month old Black Rhino!
  The little guy doesn't have a name yet and hasn't really been advertised. He was playing with his mum and he loped around with massive "puppy" feet, still a little unco-ordinated like all young animals are and was the cutest thing ever!
• seeing the hippos get fed a night under spotlight
  Hippos are nocturnal, so it was very cool to see them up and about and active. Hippos are big, have bad eyesight and kill more humans than any other animal in Africa. Their skin is so thick it moves strangely - like a dinosaur's skin in Jurassic Park. Made me realise that some of those effects were more realistic than I thought!

Other highlights included:

• feeding a giraffe
  They eat carrots. Its blue tounge licked my finger as it took the carrot. Apparently giraffes look pretty docile, but if you get in there with them, they are likely to headbutt you
• feeding a Black Rhino
  The tour guide cut some fresh stuff for the Rhino as we fed it through the fence. We were watched very closely to make sure our hands stayed on the outside of the fence. If you get you hand caught between the fence and the rhino's horn, it will probably need some quality time in a cast afterwards
• Getting close to other big African animals including a cheetah, some zebra and a lion
  When we saw the lion it was just light enough to see him, but not really light enough for my camera to take good photos. Just being close enough to get a good look was special
• Seeing other cool animals like meekrats (tiny, cute with intelligent eyes), white handed gibbons (so graceful as they whip through the air), otters (again, tiny, cute and great to watch as the play in and out of the water) and Galapagos Turtles
  

We also saw animals that I had barely heard of before including eland, bongo, oryx and various horse- and cow-like things.  There was also more regular zoo animals like wombats, kangaroos (in the African Savannah enclosure! apparently they can't read ;) ).

I'll hopefully get time to write a little more about the weekend, and post some photos soon.  This was one of those times where you get reminded how amazing and diverse life is and I left just hoping that my kids and grandkids get the opportunity to do the same thing, and that when they do, most of the animals are thriving in the wild rather than just hanging in by a thread in the zoos of the world.