Astral Nomads

One man, one woman, one rabbit......traveling with the stars.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Lions and Tigers and Cassowarries, Oh My

Well, I suppose that the last place you would expect to find a game preserve is near the sleepy town of Thurmont in western Maryland. You may remember Thurmont from Thurmont Vista fame, the famous hiking trail on Catoctin Mountain. Since we haven't made it to the tropical south yet, we went in search of the tropics (and a slew of other climate zones) at the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo: it was much larger than I expected and, once you work at getting over the slight unease of seeing animals in jail for merely being what they are, pretty cool. The preserve actually does breeding of some endangered species too, so their hearts are in the right place. Since it's near the end of their season, we got ki-boshed on the alligators but there were still a lot of critters to peruse.

There's a huge collection of snakes:


Not two heads, just good friends.

What I wouldn't give for a rat, a nice juicy rat...

This pig is still enjoying Halloween. What a pig!

There was also a huge flock of these colorful macaws:


Here's Wendy testing a hibernation log.

As two knuckleheads ourselves, we could sure relate to these guys.

'Sup?

A lovely Koi pond:


The petting portion. They gave us a bag of peanuts with admission and these guys went bonkers. One of the goats actually jumped over the fence and was harassing me for a peanut. Actually, I was kind of scared I was going to get gored by the horns.


Baphomet lives!

Way too many bong hits for this dude.

I don't know if this a donkey, a mule, or a pony but
I do know it's only got three legs. Extra sympathy peanuts for sure.

This is a Bengal Tiger, which I thought were
supposed to be orange. Siegfried? Roy? Little help.

To further accentuate my ignorance, here's an owl
awake in the daytime. Who knew?

These Arctic Wolves were very attractive and very attentive.



This female lion let out a few roars that echoed throughout
the park and then proceeded to cough up a hairball.



Well, the title did promise a cassowary or two.

Maybe the dingo...(Oh, never mind)



And stop calling me Polly!

-the usual suspects.

9 comments:

  1. Caged animals. Please release me, let me go.

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  2. No matter what side of the bars you're on, "We are all just prisoners here of our own device."

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  3. @Wen: How'd you get the photos of the snakes through the glass so clear? It's like magic!

    Maybe the dingo ate.....your euro-van engine?

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  4. @erica: no flash and moving dials, according to Wendy. ha!

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  5. Love the pics. We visited a animal rescue zoo this summer and learned Vietnamese pot belly pigs aren't cut little pets. If you feed them they grow to over 100lbs. Not the cute little pets they were portrayed to be. But in the end life is good....Ham for everyone.

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  6. @FJD: Yeah, they're pretty big. Thanks. Wendy's the photographer. She's great.

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  7. Enjoyed my tag along!

    Beautiful photos!

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  8. Thank you Magnolia! Brightest blessings!

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