My love for animals

 

When Maddie visited us recently, we took her to about 3 different zoos here.  Our first zoo, was a smallish, but very interesting venom zoo, in the Kuranda village. It displayed a lot of the most venomous snakes and spiders found in the local area and surrounds within Australia.  One thing that really fascinated me however, was that they had a collection of Australian tarantulas (about 500 - or was that 5000, can't remember!) in their laboratory, (didn't even know that Australia had tarantulas, which worries me a bit,--but they were milking them for their venom, as it assisted with the treatment of Alzheimer's--isn't that fascinating!!)

We then spent a morning a few days later, at a zoo on top of the local casino, which was built within a huge dome, and housed many of Australia's wildlife, including many unusual birds, a few snakes, and some crocs and alligators.  The birds flew freely, and I had so much fun playing with them, and got a lot of good photos.




But then, one hot, and steamy day as it turned out we went to a Safari Wildlife zoo, and saw so many wonderful animals, in a natural, safari atmosphere, and I took some great photos of my wonderful lions, amongst many other wild animals.  I find lions to be so amazing!  But picture this - my ankle wrapped up in a support bandage, and wearing sandals, which were the only shoes I could put on over the bandage, and walking for kilometres around this zoo--up hills and around!  Tried and tired me out, in the hot sun - but was worth it!!

This lion's name is Makumi, and he is the leader-king of his fairly large family.  He and his partner have parented many of the lions that now exist within this safari zoo, and he definitely is the King of his own domain.  He is pictured here eating some meat and bones from an animal's meat, that was provided for this purpose.  He took his time, and watched his lioness' and children hungrily choose what they wanted, and then, with purpose, put them in their place, and chose the best bits of meat for himself, sometimes taking it, as is his right in his kingdom, from whichever lion he desired.  Sounds selfish I know, but an amazingly large, healthy and dominant lion!

I loved the whole day, despite my pain, and limped around everywhere!  We spent about 6 hours there, and in the end the zoo keepers planned our interesting and informative walks at feeding times around my inability to quickly walk up and down the pathways--making the distances shorter, and more direct.  I appreciated that!! 

But I would still go there again - and will, believe me!!