SD Wild Animal Park, 3-13-2006

I had Monday off from work so I took Adam to the Wild Animal Park. He's been before but it has been a while for me.

I wanted to see the new lion exhibit that opened last year. We saw that and it was very cool. We saw both a male and female lion out sunning.

Then we walked along the trail. We saw some elephants and then moved along the main trail toward the Heart of Africa exhibit. That was a nice walk and we saw some interesting animals, okapi, duikers, flamingos.

Then we got to the cheetah enclosure. The cheetahs weren't there, but this is what we saw:

Yes, that is a lion cub playing with a puppy.

They are buddies.

The WAP had a lion cub born about 6 months ago. The mother lion couldn't take proper care of the cub so the nursery staff is raising him. His name is Koza. Because lions are social animals they decided to find him a friend. They found Cairo, an Italian mastiff puppy. Cairo's mom was a dog rescued from hurricaine Katrina.

So, apparently, the dog and the lion go out and play in the exhibit a couple of times a week. It was the cutest thing I've seen in a long time and quite possibly the most amazing thing I've ever seen at the Wild Animal Park in 25 years of visits. I could have stood there watching for hours.

Adam on the other hand didn't quite realize how amazing this was. He just kept pulling his hat off and trying to eat it. I tried to tell him that he would probably never see a sight like this again but he wasn't listening. So we had to move on.

But it was awesome.

Just to demonstrate what a unique place the San Diego Wild Animal Park is, those are a group of rhinocerus in the background.