We Went on A Road Trip!!

Last Friday, we took our interns on an educational field trip to Fossil Rim Wildlife Center.  It was a wonderful day!

The weather was gorgeous, sunny and in the 70’s – odd for January, but we’ll take it!  We jumped on the Fossil Rim tour vehicle along with Trich and Jerry, our tour guides for the day.  We drove through the park, checking out ostriches, sable antelope, roan antelope, mountain zebras, Grevy’s zebras, addax, aoudad, blackbuck, waterbuck, bongos, wildebeest and more!  Our tour guides were extremely knowledgeable, and we learned a lot about hoofstock!

Then we headed over to the carnivore areas, where we saw the maned wolves, Mexican grey wolves and red wolves.  Then we met up with Jason, the carnivore keeper.  He spent a great deal of time with us, discussing their cheetahs, and letting us meet many of the cheetahs who call Fossil Rim home.  He also wanted to know how Sam and Kodi are doing at In-Sync, because he was their keeper at Fossil Rim before they came to live with us!  He was thrilled to hear that we are planning to build them a large, new enclosure.

Jason joined us all for lunch, and then took us into their second  cheetah area, where the remainder of their 20 cheetahs lives.  We spent some time with Moose and Bruce, two very affectionate and adorable cheetahs who had been hand-raised.  One female with three 15-month-old youngsters was friendly enough when we approached her fence, but made sure to stay between us and her babies at all times! 

We learned quite a bit about cheetah breeding and management, and really enjoyed speaking with Jason.

Vickie Gorman-Page and Heather Parker
with a new friend!

Driving back through the park, we were able to feed the giraffes, and see two baby giraffes that were absolutely adorable!  Liberally covered with giraffe slobber, we moved on to the white rhino barn, where we were in for a treat – a two month old rhino calf! 

She doesn’t have a name yet, but she absolutely charmed all of us!  Her 42-year-old mother was very patient, and allowed us to observe them for quite some time.  Who knew rhinos could be so adorable!  Little Anonymous was very curious about us, approaching the fence, and then playing and bouncing around for us.  We were all enamored!

All in all, a very fun, and very educational day for us all!

(left to right) Alysia Lavender, Vickie Gorman-Page, Elizabeth Chambers, Emilee Larkin

Heather Parker, Stacy Tekstar

(not pictured, but along for the event were Ken Crenshaw and Chemyn Reaney)

Posting Written By:

Chemyn Reaney

Volunteer Coordinator

In-Sync Exotics Wildlife Rescue

We at In-Sync Exotics would like to congratulate Andrea Torino as she was selected as our new exotic wild animal keeper!  Huge lion roar of congrats to you, Andrea!

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