Lions, and Tigers, and Sheep, Oh My!

I'm really not sure what happened to me since coming to New Zealand, but I love animals more than I ever have in the past. According to Buzzfeed, this is all totally normal (See their recent article on why we want to squeeze cute things)

This week was full of wildlife and it made my heart full. 

This guy.

The first was on Thursday when my friend Jess asked me to go for a run with her workmates. When I first heard the route I was pretty hesitant. I had hiked part of the route around this time last year, and tried to run part of it last (New Zealand) summer, but realized it was a tough trail to run.

I could tell Jess really wanted to go, so we went for it. After 1 mile of flat ground it was straight up hill. I was questioning our decision, but when we got to the top.. Sheep! And not only that - So many lambs. I kept thinking "I wonder what Cam would say if I came home holding a lamb and just said I got us a pet?" He might not be so thrilled.

Almost to the top!

So we kept running and a minute later while I was getting distracted by the scenery and the sheep on the left side of the road, I stumbled upon these two cuties on the right. Melt my heart.

Hey guys!

If we just stay still, maybe she won't see us.

And finally, after we started heading down I turned back to the top of the hill and saw the sillhouette of a single sheep and snapped this photo that made me happy.

The rest of the scenery wasn't bad either.

Yep the running route was from the beach, up this hill, and back. At least there were views :)

Always a classic - Port Hills to Bank Peninsula

Finally going down to Taylor's Mistake

After one more hill and a few more miles, we were back at the starting point. 8.5 miles and according to my iPhone health app, 107 flights of stairs climbed.


This Saturday Cam and I went out for a much more intentional and less tiring animal experience. 

My friend, Jess (same as before), is a volunteer at Orana Wildlife Park. They have an amazing lion encounter we had been meaning to go to. We chose this Saturday to bite the bullet and go. We showed up around noon in time to feed the giraffes, then walked around the park for a couple hours, saw the tiger being fed, and finally made our way to the lion encounter.

Tiger being fed - Apparently oppotunistic eaters, they eat whatever they can,
 whenever they can.
Don't want to cross one in the wild.

We mainly went to the giraffe encounter because Jess was there, but this ended up maybe being my favorite part (hard to beat the lion encounter but the giraffes were so funny!) I had imagined giraffes as beautiful elegant creatures without much personality, but at least the ones at Orana were pretty cheeky. I found them to have so much personality!

That face.

First of all their heads are just so big. And they stretch their neck to wherever the food is which just seems unnatural. They chew these crazy weeds that are rough and pokey, definitely not a plant that any human would ever want and once its in their mouth it was crazy to see how big their chewing muscles were. One muscle above their eye was literally pulsing.

I'll have that.

That's mine too.

They were not messing around at the feeding - any food they saw was well within their reach and they were going for it. One little girl was holding her branch, not ready to give it up, and was a little bit out of reach for the giraffe's large head. So Zuri (that's the giraffe's name) just stuck her white-ish-gray-really-rough tounge straight out of her mouth and took the branch from the little girl's hand. Needless to say, she stared crying. While everyone around was laughing, Zuri was just not phased. She was on to the next branch.

Mine please.

Before we left I got to know the other giraffe. We bonded. It was great. I want to go back again and see these giraffes before I leave.

True love.

And finally, the LION encounter.

The lion encounter was everything I dreamed it would be. Basically, you go in a cage in the back of a truck, which drives in to the lion enclosure, and the keepers feed the lions meat, which encourages them to jump on the sides and top of the cage. Luckily for sharing this story, my friend Jess watched the encounter from outside and snapped some photos.

That's me looking scared, and Cam taking the photos. What a guy ;)

From the inside it looked more like this:

Lion on top of the cage!
(I accidentally wrote "cafe" at first, but i guess that works too)

LION KING!

Feed me!

In case you couldn't tell from the photos the lions are HUGE. I mean look at that paw. (There seems to be a theme today - animals are much larger in real life than they appear on TV. Turns out the camera doesn't add 10 pounds)

And that HEAD.

The interesting thing about the lions at Orana is that they were snipped when they were young because they are all related and Orana didn't want any inbreeding to occur. So these lions don't have any manes and the main way to tell if they're male or female is just how giant they are (slightly giant = female, seriously giant = male). I'm not sure if this lack of testosterone affects their roar, but it wasn't the most intense roar I ever imagined. I call this video "Working on my ROAR".

These lions are also a bit on the chubby side as lions go, since they get fed a ton at the wildlife park. Daily visitors and shows mean they get a good bit of food. Apparently the park lets them gain some weight for the cold New Zealand winters but theyre currently beginning their diet. So, I think a real safari is in my future - gotta find some skinny lions with manes to get the full experience - but the lion encounter was one of the coolest things I've ever done, and probably one of the most unique encounters of most zoos.

Clearly, I loved it. Lion in the background is not so sure.

Next up - swimming with fur seals in Kaikoura next weekend. It's the capital of whale watching in New Zealand, but I've been whale watching many a time in my life (not that I wouldn't go again) but my friend Jess (who I've now mentioned multiple times in this post) and I decided to try to swim with seals. Stay tuned for that!

Also Orana had ducklings!
I've never seen so many ducklings that just wanted to say hi.
And their mom (luckily) didn't mind!