Animal Encounters

Has anyone had an encounter with an animal you had never seen but up close? Have you ever touched or held these animals? Let's talk about it.

 

I can't remember the most exotic animal I've felt/ come face to face with. But I'd like to see a camel spider in real life.

 

I'm from the Bronx...roaches and rats were a way of life growing up. Does that count? Lol

 

In 2006 I was lucky to be able to get close to a Manatee.
I have visited Florida many times but never saw one up close until then.
This manatee was suffering from red tide, something that kills many of them each year. They healed it in the zoo and released it to the wilderness again afterwards. I was there when they brought it back and I helped to carry it back in the water. That was a really amazing day for me.

 

I held a baby skunk at a pet store in Daytona. It was said to have been descented. Yeah, right. They didn't leave it in the tomato juice long enough and I had spent nearly 4 hours trying to wash off the skunk funk. Despite the smell, the baby skunk was very cute. I had also encountered a deer and a fawn, snakes, turtles, large birds of prey, dolphins, 4 foot iguanas, a lion, a manatee that was about 6 feet long, bats, a monkey, penguins, a very rare white tiger(I saw it at a Ringling Bros. show in 1978), and rats the size of grocery store shopping baskets. those are just some I had encountered.

 

Bush Baby

 

Hands on, actually toughing them, the most memorable was an alligator baby, a beluga whale and a leopard kitten.

The alligator at an alligator farm outside Miami. The beluga whale, at the SeaWorld beluga whale tank. I was lucky enough to be the one chose from the audience to go down to the tank and interact. The leopard kitten was transported in a cat carrier by a famous dude for wildlife to go to some wildlife place in LA. We were supposed to switch planes in phoenix and as it was the same plane, only me,and the dude w the leopard stayed in the plane w the crew, we all swarmed around him as he took the kitten out. It was aborable. Have pics of all

 

I wanna see

 

I will look for them and scan

 

I'd like to see it, too.

 

YAY!!! :smt045

 

My son got to do that with his dad. He loved it.

 

Couldnt find the beluga, but its coming, the audience is looking at it while I play w the dolphins, yeyyy



Feeding stingrays, nearly drowned that person next to me, LOL



Snaaake! around my neck! Boa-baby, very cute.



Here is the alligator.

 

It was awesome!
You want to take it home!

 

Awww, I want a baby alligator. I also want to meet a pretty lady with a snake wrapped around her neck.

 

A leopard kitten?? OMG I would try to smuggle that thing out in my shirt...I'm such a sucker for baby furry animals!!! The beluga whale is also crazy cool...I'm at SeaWorld a few times per month and I LOVE getting to do the hands on with the dolphins! I've never touched a beluga whale though!

 

That is so cool.