Baby animal smorgasbord!

Well, Liz, Chad and I traveled across the horizon of Wisconsin to the sweet siren sound of the Lil' Penguin, who welcomed us with open wings, Tostitos hint of lime chips, a fancy apartment, and a Whirly-Pop birthday gift for yours truly.

It was a grand weekend. Wisconsin was a rich green from all angles, Green Bay was humid, yet the touch of breeze made it tolerable, and on Saturday I spent my first-ever day in Michigan, in the UP, at DeYoung Family Zoo. Quite possibly the happiest, trashiest, place on earth. It is also probably rated "most likely place to get eaten" on some sort of "getting eaten" scale.

If you have ne'er heard Penguin explain the concept of the Northern Michigan family zoo, it is as such: Apparently Michigan has this law wherein it has no law that you can keep any sort of any amount of animals in your backyard. And since a lot of the people in the UP are either a) crazy or b) smart enough to manipulate non-laws for their own profit, Buddy DeYoung of the DeYoung family started collecting tigers. He's an avid animal lover. Then he got bears and lions and monkeys and alligators and peacocks and deer and fat, odd pigs and emus. And those animals have darling little babies, and the backyard zoo grows and grows and charges $7 admission.

This makes it sound bad. But really, the zoo is amazing. First of all, this family really does take care of these animals. There is minimal concrete, they have large cages, and local farmers donate cow carcasses for food. They use roadkill to feed their animals too. So, with volunteer workers and the support of visitors and the community, the zoo is successful. Successful enough to house 4% of the world's white tiger population, successful enough to nurse little babies into big, strong animals. And the owners are crazy enough (or well-insured enough) to keep the animals merely feet away from the public, behind two layers (to prevent the finger-poking of human to large cat) of small, wire fence. You see into, literally, the eye of the tiger. It's amazing. An experience you can only expect in Northern Michigan.

And so, our cameras all died before the day was over, and I don't have the pictures from the rest of Jenny's-birthday-weekend-o'-fun, but I do have pictures of baby animals. And that's all you need.

Baby cougar! Rawr rawr rawr rawr.

Liz, experiencing the best moment of her life, as she holds a baby bobcat. I know it just looks like a kitten, but it's a bobcat. I promise.
Baby raccoon! I'm gonna grow up to eat garbage!

Baby wallaby! It doesn't look like it, but his fur was really soft. And the volunteer carried him around in a little homemade pouch.

A baby monkey that looks exactly like a 97-year-old man. It's just a very-minature senior.

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?
Shut the hell up. I'm gonna eat you.

We fed Emus. They were taller than Jenny, and the rule was that they couldn't peck from your hand--you had to feed them from your corn bag. And every time they went to peck for corn, a thick membrane covered their eyes. Pretty gross. The biggest birds I've ever seen. (It's hard to tell from this picture.) Their damn feet were massive.

This goat was my favorite of the bunch. He was cute. And greedy and fat. He ate most of our corn and then followed us around through the fence as we moved on. I called all of the goats and donkeys and llams and horses meh-meh-mehs because of how they ate. They move their mouths back and forth (no tongues) and just seem to suck the food right out of your hands. It's sort of robotic and very fast. You know, meh-meh-meh.

I adored this horse. He ate out of our hands and he let me pet him and pet him and pet him and I asked if I could do his hair (he said no) and I asked if I could bring him home with me (he said maybe).Llama & Pig: We are different, but we are in love.

The tigers faught over the bath, biting necks, baring teeth. There was a hose/shower apparatus spraying down, like a shower. It reminds me of a bit on Sesame Street--the tigers walking around in the black pool while splish splash I was takin' a bath plays in the background. Then, when the song is over, you cut to the cartoon of one-two-three-four-five...

My absolute favorite picture: lion with bangs. Look at this flock of seagulls thing going on! Get a haircut, hippie! We also saw a duck with a spikey-haired mohawk (unfortunately, didn't get a picture), and we called him punk-duck. Who is your stylist?

The fawn at the deer park, Bambi as he liked to be called, practically licked the skin off of Chad's hand. So unnaturally friendly. We pet him through the fence until we realized that we were allowed to open the gate and run around with the deer in their rehabilitation habitat. As you may have guessed, they really liked that.

Oh, Chad-deer.

Sly bastard. The alligators did not move. Actually, I think they were fake. But I still didn't reach my hand over the whopping 3 feet wall between us and their swamp-pit. Oh, no.


Jenny and I feeding the llama-llama-llama. The best word to say over and again. Llama-llama-llama-llama. He likes corn! So do I. I wish people would hand-feed me corn all day.
Have you seen the little piggies, crawling in the dirt? I love their tiny, tiny snouts.
Meat-eater: They throw huge hunks of red, raw flesh over the fences to all the large cats, who leap into the air and growl at each other for it. Then, when they're done eating, their paws are stained red. And it is scary.

On the way home, we stopped at a geographical marker that stated we were at the latitudinal mid-way point between the equator and the north pole. But then it said it was a hypothetical mid-way point (or something) and directed us to the real landmark. This made no sense to me. At all. Why would you make a fake landmark? Anyway, we're representin' the 45th parallel. What what.