FISH OUT OF WATER A Walk on the Wild Side W e were five minutes into our North Georgia Zoo excursion and of that five minutes, I had been stressing out about my mud caked jeans and shoes for approximately four minutes and fifty-seven seconds. It was a rainy day in Georgia and a dusty animal experience had turned into a muddy one. I have to admit that with four more hours to go in our day, I was already anxious about how we were going to get back into our car without getting mud on everything and whether or not I would make my son strip in the driveway once we got home so he didn’t track “the zoo” through my foyer. We had only just arrived and already I was preoccupied with the logistics of getting home and wondering how we would sanitize our hands throughout the day. What a sad preoccupation to have when there was such a wonderful day ahead of me. My son? He didn’t have a care in the world. He wanted to see some snakes. That’s the difference between being the one in the front seat of the car and being the one in the back. Spotty cell service and mud shouldn’t determine my day. I needed to mentally get in the back seat and be a kid again. Thankfully, I did just that. At some point while we were feeding the goats and sheep from our hands, my adult worries began to slide off my back. It was nearly impossible to think about car floor mats with so many baby goats running around. I made a vow that we were going to have a great day and we just might end up very dirty. It would be okay. At first glance, the North Georgia Zoo looks more like an animal refuge than a proper zoo. It is missing some 34 of the grandeur and crowd conscious flow one would expect when catering to people. It’s a collection of pens and enclosures nestled in the safety of a valley in Cleveland, Georgia. It was what you might expect of a place that started small and grew slowly over time to accommodate new animals. Rather than ridding the land of trees and leveling it to make more room, the zoo is careful to blend into their space and use what’s already there to accommodate growth. Using a lot of recycled and repurposed materials, they want to cut down on any waste they can. I saw more than one old garden shed and fast food playground equipment parts being used to house animals. Where a lot of attractions at typical zoos are built solely for the ticket buyers, North Georgia Zoo was built for its residents. It’s not the 1950’s anymore. The zoo doesn’t exist to delight and captivate its audiences with views of caged up, frustrated animals. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. We are there to be delighted but also to be educated. The animals housed within are ambassadors of their species and their message is simple. We matter, care about us. North Georgia Zoo works to bring the animals out from behind the ridiculously high fences, knock down the double pained glass windows, and forego the deep ditches between us to bring the encounter as close to the visitor as possible. Interaction makes the experience personal; because personal experiences can change the way we think and motivate us to action. Sam and I spent the entire day having one close encounter after another. We touched deer, snakes, a porcupine, a fox, a chinchilla, a camel, and some animal whose name I still can’t remember but By Rachel Turner who loved eating marshmallows off sticks. We were followed around by two of the friendliest deer I’d ever met and Great Pyrenees guard dogs were at every turn waiting to have their ears scratched. We fell in love with animals that I previously had no idea even existed. The staff was nothing short of incredible. Made up of professionals with different areas of expertise and college interns, they were enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and took their jobs as caregivers very seriously. Mainly they were excited. They wanted us to encounter as many animals as we could in one day. My son and I were taken on a behind the scenes tour where we met everything from wolves to three different species of marsupials that an hour earlier I would have thought were all kangaroos. During the tour, we were frequently asked what type of animal we were looking at. We repeatedly answered incorrectly. Just so you know, the javelina is nothing like a ground hog, the beaver is not a hedgehog, and that seemingly innocent looking dog is actually a wild dog from New Guinea. I’m glad we weren’t graded. I have to be honest. I like animals, but I’m not drawn to them like some people. As my son repeatedly reminds me, he is the only child in his class without a dog. It’s just not part of who I am and it’s easy to disregard animals as a whole. After our day at North Georgia Zoo, I now may be a bona fide animal lover and advocate. I was honored to hold a fox in my lap, feed lambs out a bottle, and nuzzle a baby goat. I mean, can we just say cuteness overload? In addition to that, I learned the full impact of what happens when an entire species is wiped out. It’s really hard to walk away from that experience and not whole-heartedly care about the delicate balance of our environment and the huge impact (both negative and positive) that we have on the entire animal kingdom. www.nwgeorgialiving.com Right: Angel, a Great Pyrenees Dog, taking a break with one of the baby lambs that she works hard to keep safe. Center: Pygmy hedgehogs make cute mini ambassadors to guests of all ages. Below: Ruffed Lemurs Zachius and Silas love to make new friends. Above: A Nigerian Dwarf Goat enjoys a snack on the goat bridge where guests can send up food for them to enjoy. Left: Gideon, one of the wolf ambassadors, loves to howl with the guests on the wildlife walk. firsthand encounter with a wide variety of animals. Be prepared to get a little dirty and to leave there an animal lover. In addition to being a zoo, the facility is home to multiple projects in sustainability and helps to breed endangered animals. The breeding is done to diversify the bloodlines and preserve the species. The objective of the staff and the interns is to get you to care about the animals and they truly believe that this can be achieved through personal encounters, and there are a lot of encounters to be had. You can have firsthand encounters with wolves, www.nwgeorgialiving.com lemurs, and camels just to name a few. Our day of getting dirty and playing with animals we would have otherwise never touched was both educational and therapeutic. I knew that I could wash a pair of mud-encrusted jeans and my cell signal would come back, but it was not everyday that a group of animal ambassadors could etch themselves so deeply into my heart. I advise you to skip the big zoos for once and head up to Cleveland for a Rachel Turner is a freelance writer and humor blogger. She also runs a traveling murder mystery party business called Make it a Mystery. Georgia born and raised she lives in Woodstock with her husband and two sons. Drop by her blog, www.rachelshumor.com or email her at [email protected]. 35