Day Five: Lion Wrestling

Today we had a day off, so we were able to go to Boskoppie. Boskoppie is a lion park about 1.5 hours away from the Dell. So all of us volunteers piled into the van at around 8:30 AM and made our way there. The day started off with a tour of the facilities, which hosts about 170 (yes, one hundred and seventy) lions and some odd number of jaguars, leopards, tigers, caracals, and a single cheetah. There was this massive tiger that weighed at least 450 pounds...and he was the biggest baby, talking and rubbing up against the fence. Don't worry, we stayed well on the safe side of the fence with the big cats. What really surprised me was the fact that the adult lions and tigers are often kept in the same enclosures. Our guide informed us that this is not possible in the wild, and is only possible in a captive situation when the animals are hand-reared. There were so many amazing photos...the lions were big hams, posing for the photos and everything. This lion park is also trying to breed white lions, so there were quite a few of those animals as well.
After the general tour, we were nearly mauled by a lion named Luna. Luna is a whopping five weeks old an about as big as my head. Never in my entire life would I have though that I would be able to touch and hold and cuddle a little baby lion cub. It has to be one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. After Luna, we were able to go in with some bigger lion cubs, who are much more active than our cheetah cubs here at the Dell. Pretty much everything is fair game when it comes to chewing toys...hair, clothes, shoes, fingers, and braids all were in a lion's mouth at one point or another. I was especially fond of Iggy, a white lion cub who sat in my lap and tried to eat my braid. After we survived these cubs, we were allowed to go into an enclosure with some even older cubs. In this enclosure, there were tawny lion cubs, white lion cubs, and tiger cubs. Tiger cubs are even more ornery than lion cubs. They are rather fond of jumping on you while your back is turned. So many amazing photos! It is hard to describe in words what it is like to hold these amazing wild animals, and be so close to them.
Like all good things, our time at Boskoppie quickly came to an end. On the way back to the Dell, we stopped for lunch and we were able to get ice cream! Yum yum.
And....I figured out how to get my photos onto the computer. So feast your eyes on this!

More to come, I promise, but I've spent two hours figuring this out and I am sick and tired of the computer.
Over and out
Taylor