Grunt Work

Today I ventured out to Carolina Tiger Rescue yet again. If you recall, last time I was there I was chopping down trees and brush to clear a path around the perimeter of the rescue. This is to A) discourage hunters from trespassing onto the premises B) Provide a fire break in case of a brush fire, and C) provide a fast route around the premises in the case of an emergency. So basically, this path is very important. However, since it was forged through a forest, there was SO MUCH underbrush and things to chop away. And when the chopping is finished, there is just a lot of branches and such just lying around.
So that was today's task - hauling brush/sticks/smallish trees from the path to a large brush pile that will eventually become a large bonfire. This path through the woods, besides being uneven, is fairly long. I'm not sure exactly how long, but it took 20 minutes to walk from the brush pile to the end of the trail. So pretty long. On top of this, it rained all day yesterday. So there were giant mud pits everywhere. Also, there was a creek with a bridge composed of four logs. Four very slippery logs. So it was quite a challenge. I'm fairly certain that we were only out there doing grunt work for 3.5 hours or so, but that was more than enough to wear me out. My feet were wet and muddy, I was beaten up by a thorny tree, and generally tired. But there is nothing quite like a hard day of manual labor. At least it really makes you appreciate a shower at the end of the day. Despite the fact that I should have been so tired of sticks and logs that I'd never want to see one again, I did take a picture of some pretty cool bark patterns:

As always, we were given a tour of the facilities in return for our labor. My legs were so tired that I was considering just sitting at a picnic table and never getting up again. But I went anyway, and I was glad I did because I got some pretty entertaining videos:
This first one is of Elvis the serval (you all know how I feel about servals). He wanted a treat very badly. He did get some earlier, but clearly he didn't think it was quite enough.

This second video is of one of their lions stalking us. Actually, I think he was stalking our tour guide because he had some meat treats. But that was fun to watch. His name is Roman.