Red Neck Riviera

In mid June we decided to take a trip to Gulf Shores Alabama (aka: The Red Neck Riviera). I am not a big fan of of road trips, but we decided it was going to be much cheaper to drive than to fly out there. We went a little over half way the first evening, then finished the trip the following day. Along the trip down I-10, I noticed that we passed three Bass Pro shops along the way, so I decided that this has to be part of the business model. The biggest of stores being in Baton Rouge, not in Texas...

Prior to the trip, Patrick had read on Trip Advisor about the zoo in Gulf Shores, and the ability to do encounters with lion cubs, lemurs, and kangaroos. We were so excited to have the opportunity, so we planned to do all three while at the zoo.

A little side note about the zoo... A couple of months ago we were watching an Animal Planet special about a little zoo that had survived 3 hurricanes over 18 months, and the staff at the zoo literally took the animals to their houses to help save the animals during the storms. At the end of the show, Jack Hannah brought a black panther as a gift to the zoo. It was such an amazing story.

Well, as we were pulling up to the zoo, I realized that the show that we had watched was about this zoo in Gulf Shores. Sure enough we get to the entrance, and they are selling copies of the segment that we had watched. It was such a small world... If interested the segment is called The Little Zoo that could.

Anyways, I digress.... The first encounter that we did was with the kangaroos, which were really neat animals. We bought got a new appreciation for how powerful those animals are since one started jumping off as Patrick was petting it. The second encounter was with the lemurs. We went into this enclosure, and the woman running the exhibit handed you a banana chip. The lemurs came right up to you and would do anything to get that chip from you. Once they figured out that we had treats they were literally biting everything, including my flash on my camera to ensure we weren't hiding anything. The third encounter was with the lion cubs. These guys were very young and just starting to go to the bathroom by themselves and were still drinking from a bottle. We had strict rules that we had to wear close toed shoes and long pants, which I was really excited about in 95 degrees at 100% humidity. We got into the exhibit and the woman tells us that if they start biting you need to tell them "No". This seemed so strange to me because these now cute little things were going to grow up to be an animal that could kill a person, and here we are telling them "No" like we do to our dogs.

Well, the lady was right these two little cubs were pretty aggressive. I was trying to take a picture with one, and while taking this picture with her she bit my wrist. It wasn't a bite like a kitten bite; this one hurt. Well, Patrick was playing with the other cub, and started to wrestle with like he does with Ranger (our dog). Patrick pulled back and the cub jumped up and bit his nipple. This was taken right before the incident:He commented that it hurt at the time, but four hours later he was still saying how much it hurt. When we got back to our hotel that evening he confessed that afterwards when he was changing he made sure he wasn't bleeding. It was such a neat experience to be able to interact with all these animals in Gulf Shores. Who would have though Gulf Shores would have something like this???