@ANyhuis: I did see Chimney Rock, from a great distance, and it is a rather extraordinary sight.
DAY 4: Thursday, July 16th
I have yet to comment on the heat but I feel compelled to point out that my car essentially does not have any air-conditioning and stepping outside is akin to placing one’s head inside an oven. I end up sticking to the car seat for 12 hours each day, only to feel relief when I venture inside a McDonald’s or Taco Bell. The big dilemma is whether I drive with the windows rolled all the way up, with semi-hot air blasting at me through the air ducts (but at least I can hear the music!) or do I drive with the driver’s side window rolled all the way down but then I feel like I’m in a wind tunnel. Alas, the demands of an extensive road trip are many. Music was supplied by Red Hot Chili Peppers and their Greatest Hits; Moby’s 1999 hit album Play; and Neil Young’s compilation Decade (first disc only).
The highlight of today was meeting Taylor (aka “Black Rhino” on ZooChat) for the first time. He used to be very prominent on this website when he was a teenager but now he is in his early twenties and working part-time as a keeper at Oklahoma City Zoo. Taylor has actually volunteered/worked/interned at four different American zoos (in four different states!) and he has gained a lot of knowledge when it comes to zoos. He and I had always kept in contact with the odd message on ZooChat or Facebook and it was great to meet up in person and we toured Tiger Safari together in the afternoon. I only wish it had been a longer visit as we could have discussed zoos all day long. Unfortunately, I had a schedule to keep and when I left him at 2:30 I still had a couple more zoos to see!
Oklahoma Aquarium:
Oklahoma Aquarium is a non AZA-accredited facility located in Jenks, Oklahoma, that opened in 2003. It is 72,000 sq. ft. in size and has one long, central hallway that has various galleries branching off from it. When one reaches Shark Adventure at the end then they must turn around and return to the Grand Hall entrance area. I won’t post a full review with lots of details but I will mention a few odds n’ ends about the establishment.
Overall I found the aquarium to be hit-and-miss; clearly in the top 50 facilities in the United States (there are 125 aquariums in total) but there was not enough there to keep me beyond an hour and a half. A 122 pound Alligator Snapping Turtle in a largish exhibit was terrific; Aquatic Oklahoma is arguably the best section with its Mississippi Paddlefish and various gars in cylindrical tanks. Shark Adventure has the typical walk-through tunnel format but seeing Bull Sharks was pretty cool; although, the tank is designed to be like the “open sea” but it just ends up appearing barren and incomplete. The Raccoon, North American River Otter and Beaver enclosures are all way too small, but the future Loggerhead Sea Turtle experience is a major addition and the aquarium will add a significant amount of space when it is complete next year. There are some nifty oddities and rare fish that aren’t often found in aquariums, along with some hugely popular touch tanks, and the facility is well worth seeing for all zoo enthusiasts.
Tiger Safari:
This zoo is located in Tuttle, Oklahoma, literally in the middle of the countryside. Mansions abound on both sides of a narrow, rural farm road and then…boom…there is a zoo. It is all rather extraordinary and Taylor and I were not amused to see some of the tiny cages in the massive, air-conditioned entrance room. However, once outside it became apparent that this privately run zoo would not take much more than an hour to see and there isn’t really a single exhibit that would be highly regarded by zoo nerds. There are 5 tiger exhibits (Amur, Bengal, “Golden” plus two enclosures for the rather common white tigers); other cats include these species: African Lion, Cougar, Jaguar, African Leopard, Caracal, Bobcat and Serval. Grizzly Bear and American Black Bear exhibits are spacious but are very poorly designed as they are essentially small fields with a single wooden platform in the middle. In fact, a lack of enrichment opportunities is a common theme at this zoo.
There are a couple of exhibits for Black-and-White Ruffed Lemurs plus 5 exhibits for Ring-Tailed Lemurs; a small set of enclosures for animals that can be petted (Rabbit, Ferret, Kinkajou); other mammals include: Coati, Raccoon, White-Handed Gibbon, Vervet Monkey, Capuchin Monkey and Colombian Black Spider Monkey. None of the enclosures are great but the gibbon exhibit is very long and it is perhaps the best of the bunch as it allows for a great deal of brachiation.
Arbuckle Wilderness Park:
Arbuckle Wilderness Park should be renamed Ramshackle Zoo as it is one of the all-time worst zoological facilities that I have ever had the displeasure to visit. It is located in Davis, Oklahoma, and judging from the steep drop in the range of species on display over the years it appears to be heading towards possible bankruptcy and oblivion. The establishment is primarily a drive-through safari park and I was just about the only visitor in the place. I actually thought that they were closed when I arrived as there was not a single car in the parking lot, and as it turns out the walking section was closed due to a flood, a small tornado and a “downsizing of the collection”. I was greeted by two apathetic workers behind the cash register and once I paid my outrageous fee of almost $20 I spent exactly one hour driving through the park and I never again saw another employee.
What I did see was a road that was so badly pockmarked with potholes, dents, loose curbs and other debris that it is a wonder that the zoo is even allowed to remain open. The horrendous condition of the road has been a gradual decline and bumping and crashing through the safari park was an arduous chore. A good chunk of the animals are ones that I had no interest in seeing: Donkeys (at least 40 of them), Emus (annoying as hell as at one time 8 surrounded the car pecking the windows), Dromedaries, Jacobs Sheep (in a separate enclosure), Domestic Goats, Llamas, Alpacas, Yaks, Domestic Horses, Texas Longhorn Cattle and Scottish Highland Cattle. I did see a few exotics, such as a solitary giraffe, one White Rhino, a couple of Przewalski’s Horses, Common Eland, Scimitar-Horned Oryx, Pere David’s Deer, Grant’s Zebra, Nilgai and American Bison. A single white tiger was in a chain-link yard but two other exhibits that were clearly for carnivores were both seemingly empty with zero legible signs in any direction. All of the signs are atrocious, there was hundreds of empty plastic cups (for feeding the animals) strewn in all directions, and the place is a dump that is waiting to be closed for good. I can’t imagine being paid enough money to ever make a return visit.
G W Exotic Animal Park:
G W Exotic Animal Park is a non-AZA accredited zoo located in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, and it was founded in 1997. Garold Schreibvogel was a young man who was killed by a drunk driver, and his parents founded the zoo (once known as a Memorial Foundation) in his honour. The zoo is situated on 54 acres and is somewhat infamous for numerous animal abuse charges and incidents.
I would recommend anyone who is interested in the owner of the park (“Joe Exotic”) to check out this wildly entertaining five minute video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFGzoT9L_k0
I’m not even sure what to make of this place. Walking around is kind of unnerving as there are growls and “chuffs” from all directions. The overwhelming shock of seeing so many big cats in one place wears off after quite some time, but this park has approximately 190 big cats and almost all of them are in fairly small, chain-link metal cages. Of that astounding total, probably 175 or so are tigers and the sheer volume of tigers is something that needs to be seen to be believed. A waiver form for liability reasons has to be signed before a visitor is allowed in the park and it is easy to see why when it would be simple to stick one’s hand into a tiger cage at any given moment. The standoff barrier is waist high in most places and there is only slightly more than a two foot gap between a visitor and a growling tiger. It is all rather remarkable and the scent of cats is in all directions.
I chatted with three different employees and there were certainly a lot of workers inside, although I suspect that for the hour and a half duration of my tour I was the only visitor in the establishment. How do these small zoos in the middle of nowhere survive? One guy told me that Wal-Mart is the only reason why the zoo stays in existence as 100% of the meat is supplied by that company and he said that it is a full-time job just walking around ensuring that the 190 big cats have all of their food. The facility does have a lot of people sponsoring a number of exhibits, and the zoo does a lot of good in rehoming bears, primates and big cats that have been pets or illegally kept in captivity by abusive owners.
Besides an endless stream of 175 tigers, there are other mammal species on display that include: Grizzly Bear, American Black Bear, African (Barbary) Lion, Cougar, Spotted Hyena, New Guinea Singing Dog, Coyote, Coati, Raccoon, Striped Skunk, Chimpanzee (two elderly retired apes), Mandrill, Hamadryas Baboon and Colombian Black Spider Monkey. A pitch dark Reptile House (woefully inadequate), several crocodilian pools and an endless array of chain-link yards makes up this zoo. However, there are a couple of very large, naturalistic tiger yards that stand out from the rest of the enclosures.
