SAFARI!!!!!

This weekend I did one of the coolest things I have ever done in Dallas!! Just outside a tiny little town called Glen Rose (2hr. sw of Dallas), there is a place called Fossil Rim Wild Life Reserve. They have several hundered acers with a 10mile route that you drive through. Along the way you get to meet up close and personal all sorts of "wild animals". I put that in air quotes because clearly these animals are so used to humans they are not really wild. But I still have to say it was quite an experiance to get up close to some of these creatures. Some of them made me more nervous then others. The giraffe's where my favorite hands down!! Because they don't have top teeth we got to let them eat out of our hands. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagened that I would hand feed a giraffe! It's tounge really is bluish green like you always hear, and it feels like a wet bristle hair brush or something. Here is a picture that captures my first experiance feeding a giraffe! Just ingore the crazy face, I know I look ridiculous but I still love the picture because it perfectly captures the emotion of that moment! You can just see my thoughts. They went something like this, "Holy cow, thats an honest to goodness giraffe sucking on my hand!"

Here is my friend Kristi feeding a giraffe whose entire head is in the car with her! You can also see the crazy tounge in this photo.
Look at this face!! Giraffes are so cute and gentle! My new favorite animal!

Zebra's on the other hand have this shifty look in their eyes that made me so nervous!! It might also have been the signs every mile or so that said, Beware zebras will bite! Anyway i had a feeling that at any moment the zebra might snap and take a chunk out of my arm so I tried to keep my distance. But they seemed to love me for some reason. I have included a sequence of photos that fully captures my zebra experience.

1. Our first meeting. I'm trying to keep my distance, I'm practically on the drivers side of the car.

2. Zebra decides to get a little closer and begins to invade my personal space. Plus he's sticking his tongue out like he wants a lick. And look at those eyes, they look a little crazy!!

3. I've made some peace with the zebra, he seems to have backed off a bit and I'm a little calmer. Still really nervous to take my eye off of him though.

4. Laughing nervously, praying he'll go away and leave me alone with out incident.

5. More nervous laughter. I'm really terrified at this point. The camera just missed it but the zebra kind of nuzzled my shoulder for a second. I'm trying really hard to maintain my calm.

6. I finally give up all pretense and duck and cover.

Here are the rhino's we saw. Quite the animals to see in person!!

The ostriches were great. They move really fast so, they were kind of hard to get good photo's of. We had one that poked his (we took a vote and decided he was a male, although he could have been female) head in every single window of our car as he circled around. We felt like he was judging us and that we had been found unworthy because he just walked away when he was done with us even though we were feeding him.

This is my favorite photo of the day!!!

I love this one too!!!