It's about the new outlook the managers/owners have about their wildlife park, Out of Africa Wildlife Park in Sedona, Arizona. Their mission strives to educate and entertain; to provide an exciting and engaging opportunity to love and respect creation and Creator. You see caretakers playing and caring for their charges, and animals interacting with the public, like the giraffe taking a treat from someone's mouth.
They list these as their values: "As we attend to each animal’s daily food and husbandry requirements and to their holistic health and medical needs, we experience their gratitude and friendship – their appreciation of us. We consider their social orders, their natural beauty and essence, their sense of feeling safe and secure, their eternal spirituality, and our communion with them as a common community of life. Our commitment to the animals in our care allows them to portray their instincts, intelligence, and emotions. Wisdom is served by learning the integrity of their world, their honesty, their vitality, and their life-on-the-line reality. Their wealth is a life well spent. They thrive by living in the now, focusing their attention, their power, their affection, in acute awareness of life itself. By cooperating with them and their needs, our human family can, to an appreciable extent, integrate with theirs. Our loyalty rewards us with self-respect and self-fulfillment, for we have become something more than ourselves – and so have they. God is pleased."
While I fully enjoyed the video clip and sometimes think it would be wonderful to experience a closeness with these amazing animals, I remember too that they are wild animals, and as I have posted before, they will always be wild and have their wild instinct. And I sincerely hope and pray they never harm someone when that instinct kicks in. And again, I sincerely hope the managers and keepers continually strive to educate the public who visit that they are still wild animals and this is not how they act in the wild. My concern is that a lot of people will get the wrong message here about these animals. They will get an unrealistic view of them and should they run across a cougar in the wild will they expect it to be a nice kitty and want his chin scratched? This is my fear. If you do a Google search I am sure you can find all the news articles about tourists in national parks, like Yellowstone in Wyoming who think that it's a big petting zoo, and will continually feed the bears or think they should take a picture of their child next to or on a moose. And then because the animal does what it normally does like protect itself because it's space is threatened and seriously injure or maim the person(s), the person or family sues the park. All because people have these unreal expectations of animals in their natural habitat and that all animals should be domesticated and controlled by humans. Sorry, it doesn't work that way folks. Quite often we aren't the biggest or baddest on the food chain.
Enjoy the clip, it's heartwarming to see and dream of, but never, ever forget that this isn't a natural environment for them. Love them from afar, respect them in their natural habitat and take only pictures.
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