More pics from Turpentine Creek

Here are some pictures of the animals from Turpentine Creek. By the way, this tiger behind us weighs 950 lbs! Yeeeoww! So they have 62 tigers at Turpentine Creek. SIXTY-TWO. There are, what, two at the zoo? They also have four or five lions. A whole lotta cougars. And an gi-normous grizzly bear that scared me just a bit. So the animals spend part of their time in cages such as these, but they rotate out into HUGE (several acres) habitats, and they spend time with their lion and tiger friends. The cougars have covered cages, because, apparently they will jump out. And kill you. But I digress... The animals are very well taken care of. And every day at 4 (later in the summer), you can watch the interns and employees feed the animals. They have holes in the cages which they shove huge chunks of meat through. When it's close to feeding time, the lions and tigers really get going and roaring. It's pretty sweet. We watched feeding on both days we were there.


They even have a white Siberian tiger...!
A lot of the animals here have arthritis pretty bad because their previous owners declawed them (in the hopes of making them "safer"). It's actually really bad for them and pretty sad...

One of the tigers at TCWR came into their possession because the owner decided he no longer wanted a tiger, loaded it into his TRUCK, drove it to the woods (IN ARKANSAS), and dropped it off. 60 miles from home. Several days later, the tiger showed up on the owner's front porch. It had never learned to hunt and was ready for supper... So now it lives at the refuge. However, said tiger had to walk through (or around) Harrison, AR, in order to find its way home. Food for thought (next time you're camping). YOWZA.


Jeremy got up close to one of the lions. PS, did you know lions and tigers squirt?? Pretty far, too. It's apparently a stinky, greasy substance that doesn't come out of clothes very easily.

... I'm trying my best to upload a video from feeding time. Stupid blogger. Moral of the story is, go see this place! It's awesome!!