The Wild Animal Park. Hidden treasure!

We live only an hour and a half away from this place called "The Wild Animal Park" but yet never visited it, until now. My brother in-law took his family and said, "you have to go". So we packed up the family and headed to Chittenango N.Y., between Rome and Syracuse. Where we live, up in the boondocks, we are used to driving at least an hour to get to anything, other than trees and cows, so we were there before we knew it. When we got close we remembered being told that the sign was small and tucked backed so pay attention. I'll admit hearing this made me feel like this was going to be some little petting zoo not worth the trip. Someone yells "I see the sign right there" so I hit the breaks and pull in to the parking lot. Once I pulled in I knew this place was for real. I mean, petting zoos don't have trucks or an entrance like this.



The kids were trying to get their mom's attention to the left of the counter because they know how much she loves snakes, NOT!

After about 20 minutes in the lobby we had to convince the kids to leave it by promising that there is more to see outside. They just couldn't stop watching these Squirrel Monkeys play around. They were especially concerned about a monkey that was trying to kidnap a baby right off the back of her mommy.

When we first walked outside it looked and felt like nothing we had seen before.

It had the feel of a petting zoo but yet you know there are some big league animals somewhere. It kept me in suspense, I kept thinking where are the big boys. I quickly forgot about whats to come and was enjoying the moment seeing the kids having a blast feeding all the animals.




Here is my Mother in-law's (Nana) favorite. When, who I call "Old Bucky", came waddling out of the barn it was something out of a cartoon. I think he partied too hard! LOL

Then everything went to the birds! I didn't go in the first time but before we left the kids wanted to go in again and take me with them. It was absolutely creepy at first when all the birds come flying at you to eat off from your popsicle stick which is loaded with seeds. Once I got past their little talons gripping your skin and the tickle of them crawling on the back of your neck, it was a blast.




Bye, bye Birdie, the Girls lost all their friends!

After the birds we started walking down the main path. We knew the big boys were down there somewhere. After some wildebeest and a Warthog there was a big boy indeed. A male and female reticulated giraffes.

I'll let some pictures do the talking for now.




(
They couldn't get enough of Nugget, the baby kangaroo.
)
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We had a great time and the weather was perfect. This place was definitely a hidden treasure!

It was hard to not just dump all my photos of that day on to this blog. I only posted a small portion of photos. They don't represent all of the awesome animals that live at The Wild Animal Park. If you want to see the list of animals residing at the park click this link. http://www.thewildpark.com/animals.html
For The Wild Animal Park home page click this link. http://www.thewildpark.com/index.html