Boulder Ridge Animal Park

My sister loves animals. She has cats, dogs, guinea pigs, and various other creatures. Sometimes I think she uses "The kids would love one of those" as an excuse to get more animals. It wasn't a shock to me when she said, "you have the day off, lets go to the zoo". So we went to Boulder Ridge Animal Park in Alto, Michigan. I was thinking, "hmm, a zoo in the middle of nowhere in Michigan, what could they possibly have? A couple stray dogs and maybe some ducks."

That was not the case. 

Boulder Ridge Animal Park is full of exotic animals that would normally have no business being in Michigan. The place is amazing. It is located on 80 acres of land, so the animals have a lot of space to roam. Typically I would think it is cruel to take animals out of their natural habitat. This place really takes care of the animals well. They've bred a couple of rare species animals - Donkeys (an Asian breed with a population of less than 300), and rare breeds of wildebeest. These animals have been sold to zoos and other animal preserves. 

When we started our tour of the animal park we walked through a few cages with various birds. I wasn't immediately impressed. We got to see some exotic patagonian foxes, then we got to see kangaroos and crocodiles. Not in the same pen obviously.  The Crocodiles and Alligators were interesting. They always lay so still it's hard to tell if they are alive or not.  The fence on them isn't very high, so my sister wanted to climb over it, which is probably not a good idea. 

They have a reptile house with a variety of turtles, snakes, and lizards. There was also a giant Tortoise in there. The people at the animal park weren't sure how old it was, but they guessed it to be about 80. 

Moving on from the reptile house they had a petting zoo set up with lots of goats and cows. The goats were adorable. In the very first pen they had a baby zebra that they had named Zeus. He was so sweet and we fed him a little and watched them feed him out of a bucket.

After we saw Zeus and the goats we went on a tour with a really souped up golf cart. We saw Peahens, Antelope, Bison, some Emus, wildebeest, Ostriches, Donkeys, Rare horse breeds, some Asian deer with stripes on the bottom of their feet, and at the end we saw a Cassowary. The Cassowary is what we really wanted to see. It's a very dangerous bird. It can kill people. It has razor sharp talons. It was very aggressive as well, it came right up to the cage. Jenn wanted to get out, she kept saying, "this was the only animal Steve Irwin was afraid of... " They don't let you out of the cart and there is a fence separating you from the animal. It is a bit scary looking at it. This bird is extremely dangerous looking. It's hard to put into words, but it was like an evil Disney character.

Anyway, we finished our day feeding hundreds of parakeets in the parakeet room. It's a giant screened in area with a ton of parakeets. When you walk in you put the seed stick out and they land of you. It's pretty cool.

I will post the website of this place and my youtube video at the bottom! Hope you enjoy it in the spring when it re-opens.  They are raising money for giraffes, which would be really cool because giraffes are amazing when you feed them.



http://www.boulderridgewap.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkFwBD11dM0