Lions and Tigers and... Lemurs?! Oh, My!

Greetings from Escanaba, Heaven on Earth, God's Country U.S.A.

Yesterday Dad and Roxanne took me, Josh, Jack, and Jillian to the DeYoung Zoo in Wallace. For those of you who have never heard of it, I'd highly recommend checking it out. It's in the middle of nowhere and the coolest zoo experience ever. They have the largest collection of "big" cats (Tigers, Lions, Leopards, etc)than any other zoo in the world. Furthermore, every hour they have "Animal Experiences" where they take out all of the baby animals from the zoo and let you hold and pet them! I thought Jack would go nuts over the baby lemurs but he was terrified of them. What a wuss!

They look so terrifying, don't they? I love the look on this face when they are handing the Lemurs over to him.

When we went in the fawn pen, I was in 7th heaven. When I was a child I used to cry because I didn't understand why I couldn't have a deer for a pet. Jack was less enthused. The baby deer started sucking Jack's little fingers because to a baby deer they looked like, well, you know. The deer thought he was going to get a yummy milky snack out of them.

We bought a bucket of food so Jack could feed many of the animals there. He raced into the goat pen, thinking it was going to be awesome. The goats swarmed him and got the best of him, immediatly knocking him to the ground. Jack would have nothing to do with the goats after that and stuck to more gentle animals such as llamas and donkeys.

For those of you who are interested, the DeYoung Zoo has it's own series on the National Geographic Channel called "My Life is a Zoo." If you are ever channel surfing sometime and see that pop on, check it out!

We also went to the cottage on Thursday night for a bon fire with friends. Much firewood was burned and alcohol consumed. The next day we tried to get Jack to swim in Lake Michigan. He wasn't really game. The waves were scary to him and he hated the sand. We managed to sneak in a few photos with smiles (yes, Josh actually took some pictures!)

Now it's off to Gladstone for the 4th of July festivities to begin. I hope everyone has a fun and happy 4th!