Like Mother, Like Daughter. While visiting the magistic Tahquamenon Falls we noticed warning signs to stay within the fence. Well, often times I tend to selectively "overlook" these signs. Seems Alyssa has this gene as well ... here she is pushing the limits.
The next day we ventured over to the east side of the UP. Although we were hoping to see pictured rock on our way through, the weather didn't feel it necessary and choose to rain the entire day. So we enjoyed the drive and hotel once we arrived, very much looking forward to the day when we would go to The DeYoung Family Zoo, the entire reason for our vacation in the first place!
This beautiful guy pictured above is not Emo, but Emo is a white tiger. We learned that white tigers are very uncommon. White Tigers are actually just bengel tigers. When a bengal tiger comes along with the white gene, often times they are over breed causing serious and sometimes deadly birth defects. Emo was one of these tigers that resulted from overbreeding ... Emo was born with a couple defects. Thankfully for Emo, Carrie and Bud from the DeYoung Family Zoo were there to rescue him!
Since there are so many animals at the zoo, they decided to celebrate all their birthdays on one day ... Memorial Day! Here we have one very curious guy trying to figure out what kind of goodies he was getting!
One of things we really enjoyed about the zoo, besides the awesome work that they do is how close we were able to get to the animals. You are able to join Bud and Carrie as they walk around the zoo feeding the animals. They teach very interesting facts AND you get to see the awesome power of these animals as they eat! Check out this guy making SURE he is the first one to get that raw piece of meat Bud is throwing over the fence for him.
Now this may seem like a crazy picture but not near as crazy as some may think Carrie is. Carrie is known as Big Cat Carrie but she has an extreme soft spot for anything canine. Carrie can literally walk into the wolf enclosure and they run up to her and love on her just like your domesticated dog would do when it's human mama returns home after a day out. The wolves are very respectful towards her and know SHE is the boss. So this picture, well ... this is Carrie half way down inside the wolf den trying to get us onlookers a glimpse of the baby wolves! Sadly, mama wolf had dug her den out way to much and Carrie wasn't able to give us a look at the babies.
Here is Carrie with the Alpha Male of this group. Although, this pup knows who the real Alpha is when Carrie is in the enclosure.
Of course, the big cats weren't the only ones with special treatment for their shared birthday. Here this big ole bear recived his favorite treat ... watermelon!
But first he got a little loving touch by Bud when he hand fed the bear twizlers.
Now, Carrie and Bud were not the only ones that were able to play with cuddly guys! There were baby tigers, baby monkeys (I can't remember the type) and a baby silver fix that we all had fun holding and playing with! We also got to play with a Dingo and the Dingo kissed my nose! There were also farm animals, dogs and cats that we got to enjoy while visiting the zoo!
Unfortunately, at some point we had to return to real life. As much as we all wanted to stay up at the zoo ... it was time to go.
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