Hey team,
I recently took a weekend getaway with Jonathan and some friends up to a cabin in the Big Bear mountains of California. It’s a beautiful 2 hour trip and it was the closest to “Fall” I will experience out here.
We played games, chatted, watched spooky movies, hiked, and ate All. The. Things.
But the best experience of all was the night zoo safari at Big Bear Alpine Zoo! This zoo was unique because almost all of the animals were rescued and the zoo provided them with a safe habitat. For example, they took in 3 black bears that were on their 3rd strike for venturing into a town, which usually means death. They also had a one-eyed eagle, a hawk with a broken wing, and a mountain lion that couldn’t survive in the wild.
For an animal lover, this place was incredible, but it gets better!
We act like we’re 5 years old, but that’s ok at NIGHT ZOO!
They give tours of the zoo at night by flashlight when all of the excitement happens! Now, I will try to refrain from an excessive amount of exclamation points (it might already be excessive), but this was one of the coolest experiences of my life and I won’t easily forget it.
Since this was a smaller zoo, we really got up close and personal with the animals. Most we could reach out and touch (but we wanted to keep all of our fingers, so we did not).
Jonathan hangs out with eagles all the time. What, you don’t?
Truly, the best part of the night was the wolves. There were 9 wolves in total and they were up running around and howling like crazy.
This is poor picture quality, but it’s the best I could do with 15 roaming flashlights, a crowd, and a moving target.
The wolves reacted to the zookeeper just like Josie reacts to me coming home from a long day of work–lots of tail-wagging, licking, and jumping around.
These wolves still had their summer coats, so they look pretty scrawny. In a few weeks, I have no doubt they would look like the wolves from The Grey. haha Seriously though, those were some big wolves.
This video attempts to capture the volume of wolf howling that was happening, but it really doesn’t do it justice. In fact, this whole post does not do the night zoo justice.
What’s your favorite animal to see at the zoo? Have you ever gone on safari?
-Mads
La Petite Pancake 