Posts Tagged lion man
Our Visit to Zion Wildlife Gardens
We went to Whangarei last weekend and stayed at Lupton Lodge. On Saturday we went to Zion Wildlife Gardens, Craig Busch’s Big Cat Sanctuary, to meet the boys’ favourite animals in person. We walked around the park with a guide, met the black leopard which was an amazing chocolate colour with spots of the same colour, then the old baboon which delicately picked food off our hands.
We moved on to the barbary lion enclosure. They spotted Connor, our youngest immediately and their eyes followed him as we walked. These lions from the Barbary Coast of Africa are very rare with only about 250 left in the world. The first thing you notice is that the lions’ mane continues down their back and over their tummy. About this time, we heard a motorbike and all the lions took off towards the other side of their enclosure. It turned out to be Craig so they had all gone to see him. The boys were very excited at catching a glimse of “The Lion Man”.
We were keen to see the lion and tiger cubs which we saw being born on the tv series a few weeks ago. They were all in a pen together and we got quite a shock – they were huge. Apparently only stopped being bottle-fed recently but that was very hard to imagine. They were really playful, stalking a “tiny” domestic cat walking unconcerned past their enclosure, pinning each other down and chewing on one particular lion cub’s ears. He didn’t seem to mind. It was amazing seeing lions and tigers together so happily.
Most of the adult white lions and tigers were happily sleeping and enjoying the sunshine after a few weeks of rain so weren’t too interesting in us. Still, it was amazing to see these beautiful animals, learn a bit more about them and realise what an important part Zion is playing in their survival. We bought series 1 and 2 of the Lion Man series on dvd and have been watching it since we returned home.
1 comment December 25, 2007
