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Superhubby feeding a tiger


me feeding a tiger


Macari (Big Mac) licking chicken juice off my hand

I'm not home yet but I've stolen my sister-in-law's PC because I just can't wait to blog this and know what you think.

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I spent yesterday afteroon INCHES from a twelve foot tiger, three full maned male lions, a pair of rare leopards (two of the remaining 35 in the world), a cheeter, an ocelot, snow leopards ..... It was the most amazing thing I have ever done.

The "zoo" we went to is a private collection breeding endangered species. The animals were MAGNIFICENT, in the prime of their lives. Because they aren't a zoo, the only aim is to keep the animals happy enough to breed, so they get as much human interaction as they want. And BOY OH BOY do they want human interaction.

They lay up against the wire of their enormous pens so we could stroke their fur - yes - an eight foot long Siberian tiger (twelve feet standing on his back legs)weighing as much as a horse wanted stroking like a pussy cat. He's also happily have taken off your arm "in fun", so you don't put your fingers through the wire :-)

We fed them chicken drumsticks - I MEAN we fed them. We held a drumstich and they took it out of our fingers! And then the most amazing thing - one of them licked the palm of my hand. OK it had chicken blood on it - but a TIGER licking my hand like a pussycat!!! He'll happily lick a bare hand too, but the chicken blood just made it more certain that he'd do it :-) It was just like a pussycat lick but 100 times the size :-)

As if that wasn't enough, it got better still - if you run up and down outside their cage, they run up and down with you - PLAYING! If you stop and turn and stop and turn, they do a dance with you. I did it with a huge tiger and a full grown lion with a great big mane. Playing with a LION! Looking it in the eyes from three inches away, at eye height (actually that was scary!!)

My favourites to look at were the snow leopards - the size of a big dog with 5 cm of bushy light grey hair with dark circles all over. They were spectacular. Their tails were the same length as their head and body combined. They had snow-shoe feet and they were very vocal, yowling and groaning to show that they wanted more strokes. Their pen had a complete tree in it because they like climbing trees - with a wire top over it because they are VERY GOOD at climbing trees.

But for character, and to play with, you couldn't beat the 18 month old tiger called Macari - only half grown and already at least 6 feet in length without counting his tail. He was just a big kitten, he would have loved to have been able to play with us without the wire, only he'd rip you to shreds by mistake.

I try to keep this blog to my horse stuff but I just couldn't keep this to myself!

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C

ps if you care about wildlife at all, don't EVER pay to go and see a white tiger. We found out yesterday that they are not a separate breed as zoos and shows would have you believe. They are a genetic mutation from ONE male, which has been inbred and inbred over time. For every one fit to be seen, there are several more with terrible deformities which have either been put down (most) or are kept hidden away in a rescue centre. Even the ones that look right suffer from poor health. To real cat lovers, like the people we met yesterday, they are an abomination that they would like stopped.