Babies & Critters

A few weeks ago Dawn, Bevin, Shauna, and I gathered up the chirn* and went to the Yellow River Game Ranch in Stone Mountain. I had heard about this place from my mom, who had taken my niece there a few times. At the YRGR they take in animals that are sick, injured, or abandoned and would otherwise not make it on their own. They nurse them back to health, stick 'em in a cage or let 'em roam free and then charge people $8 apiece to come feed them. They had deer, goats, sheep, bison, donkeys, various fowl, a cougar, several black bears, 3 kinds of foxes, lots of noisy peacocks, owls, raccoons, and on and on ... The appeal of the place is that you can pet deer and rabbits and chipmunks and such very easily - although we quickly saw when we got there that you wouldn't actually want to touch some of these critters. Mangey is the word I believe I would use here.
Nevertheless, I figured Gwennan and Ian would get a kick out of it. They did.
Herewith, the photo essay:

Gwennan at the beginning of our day:



















Dawn took most of the photos you see here. I was too busy with Gwennan to bother with the camera.




















































So you see, the deer would come right up to you. Mainly because they assumed you had food. Which we did.













The squirrels were the boldest. They would run right up to you and sniff around your feet, looking for a handout.













I thought, "Cool, Gwennan will love this!" So I put her on the ground to get a close encounter with the squirrels. As you can see, however, she was more fascinated with the GROUND! Oh boy, DIRT! and ROCKS! and STICKS!













This here is what we call in the South a mess o' raccoons. You got your gaggle of geese, your herd of cattle, and your mess o' raccoons. I have no idea how many raccoons are here. They were all crammed in together and fast asleep.













If you don't know this about Dawn, she has a rabbit. A rabbit named Gordy. He's pretty much her baby until she and Charles produce an offspring of their own. So when we got to the "Bunnies Gone Wild" section of the park, she was pretty happy.













And here's beautiful, serious, sensitive Ian:



















And here's Shauna and Ian with a goat:



















Gwennan with a donkey:













And finally, the picture that pretty much sums up the YRGR:















*Chirn [churn] - n. Children. (In the South South South Georgia dialect.)
ex: "You chirn quit messin' around and git in this house!"