Wild Wilderness Drive-thru Safari

On Friday after all of the painting was complete Stephanie and I took the 10 minute drive to our local safari. Who would have thought such a place would exist in Gentry, Arkansas, population around 2000? Carrie first gave me the heads up about this place when she saw it on TV in an episode of TLC's "17 Kids and Counting" awhile ago. Then I happened to run across the signs for it when I took a wrong turn trying to get home from the post office one day. The variety of animals they had was quite impressive!

First we went to the barns filled with monkeys, parrots, parakeets, and other animals not quite ready for the cold air. There were gibbons, siamangs, baboons, capuchins, and on and on. This lemur runs free we're told. We all kept asking if anyone knew he was out - maybe they should put up a sign! His buddies are stuck in a cage right behind him.

I wouldn't want to come across this African porcupine in the wild - look at those quills. This guy has much longer and thicker ones than the American varieties I've seen. When these guys had them extended they were probably 1.5-2 ft long!

Next we went to the petting zoo and fed the goats. Then on to the kangaroo pen.

This was my favorite part of the whole place. They were so friendly and seemed to like having their heads petted. They are SO soft - just like a bunny!

How can this be comfortable - both for the joey and for the mamma. Every once in awhile she would poke him with her paw to tell him to move.

Next we went through the 10 mile drive-thru. It was divided into sections with lots of different animals - some in cages, some loose. There were the usual lions, tigers, bears, wolves, bobcats, and cougars (all in cages of course), then loose were emus, ostrich, all kinds of longhorn and foreign cattle, wildebeasts, camels, zebra, and on and on. Everybody had an itch including this camel who decided to use the rear view mirror to scratch it. This bison below had one too and used his feeding trough. You can't tell but this guy is huge - his hump almost came to the top of my car. Apparently this place started partially because they wanted to breed bison and other free range stock with domestic cattle.

Yak and baby

The tigers loved these towers

This white rhino was MASSIVE. He was as tall and wider than the human doorway in this building. You can see how tall he is compared to the height of the roof! The rhino we saw in Africa had nothing on this guy!