Zoo behind the scenes tour

Jeff's work let each employee donate $1000 to the charity of their choice and being the animal lover that he is he chose the OK Zoological Society. Well, when you donate that much or more you become what they call a "lion member" and get lots of special privileges including season passes, invites to special events and a zoo mobile visit. They also have a behind the scenes tour that we were invited to so Jeff and I went last Thursday as a date night. They didn't allow children or we would have taken Jensen. It was the neatest thing! First they served us snacks and wine then we got to go to the herpetarium (reptile house). We went through the building and the director of the herps told us lots of neat things about all the reptiles then we got to go in the back where they feed and take care of them.

The venomous snakes all had a big red sign that said "HOT"

This thing was so weird, it was technically a legless lizard but it moved like a worm and very little is know about it

Next, we got to go behind he scenes at the Cat Forest and Lion Overlook. It was amazing seeing those huge cats from 3ft away! I can't imagine seeing one of those in the wild. The zoo has a building with cages where they feed and rotate the cats in and out.

I thought this was funny

There are two adult females and a male. The two females gave birth last year two days apart so now there are 3 female and 1 male cubs also. They had to be delivered by C-section so the zookeepers hand-raised them for a while but now they can't touch them because they are 150lbs. They have to keep them separate from the adults for a while longer. The babies still love the zookeeper guy though and as soon as they heard his voice they came up to the gate to try to play.

We got to see some of the smaller cats too although most of them were outside at the time. This is a Jaguar and you could tell they are meaner and really want to eat you!

We learned a lot of things about the zoo and some of the animals and I hope we get to do it again.