Get close to giraffes

No need to travel to the Serengeti when you can visit the Global Wildlife Center in Folsom, Louisiana, 1-1/2 hours north of New Orleans. The village of Folsom, named for Frances Folsom, wife of President Grover Cleveland (1885-89 and 1893-97), is a lovely, wooded area where more than 3,500 endangered and threatened wild animals far out number human beings.

Given my skeptical nature, I wondered if these mostly African animals would be living happily wild and free, but indeed they do roam on a 900-acre landscape that looks strikingly similar to their native land.

Founder Ken Matherne says he didn't set out to create a wildlife park 30-odd years ago, but after acquiring a few deer, kangaroos and giraffes in the early 1990s to set them free on his St. Tammany Parish property (easier than mowing!), a public attraction was born. Now, Global Wildlife Center has become the largest free-roaming wildlife preserve of its kind in the United States!

I bought a reasonably priced online ticket to ride in a covered wagon train for a 1-1/2-hour afternoon guided safari. A smaller, more agile private tour can be reserved in a Pinzgauer, all-terrain, 4WD vehicle to get up close and personal with the animals.

The spring day was breezy and the afternoon sun just warm enough to keep almost 100 passengers comfortable and entertained in open-air cars traveling 5 m.p.h. in order to view animals lazily grazing in their habitat. Most of the other sightseers were families with young children jazzed up to make contact with zebra and giraffes. One mother brilliantly pointed out that spring is the best time to see babies.

For $4, you can buy a cup of animal feed while $32 buys a family-size bucket. Fortunately for the animals, but less so for children, they are quite well fed by 4 p.m. and not that hungry to scramble after bucketsful of grain pellets.

Unafraid of humans - although these were a pretty boisterous bunch - the antelope, deer, donkeys, cows and bulls gathered around the the wagons. The only beasts we were repeatedly warned not to feed were zebras who might munch your fingers along with the feed. Whole herds were hanging out at the water hole together, different species getting along amicably.

Winston, a 2,000-pound bull, Bactarian camels, American Bison, Peruvian llamas and alpacas, reindeer, burros and giraffes all came to greet us. Wildlife Center animals are herbivores. No carnivores, although you can imagine how that might make for a more exciting tour! And no monkeys because they manage to get inside cars, causing havoc.

I’m not sure how educational the tour was and some of the guide's jokes were pretty lame, but I did learn a few tidbits. Donkey’s hee-haws can be heard a mile away. Zebra foals memorize their mothers’ stripe pattern, which is white on black, not the reverse. Emu lay up to 20 eggs at a time. Camels can drink 30 gallons of water in 13 minutes. A giraffe’s tongue is usually 1” per foot of height. Thus, a 20’ giraffe might have a 20” tongue.

A pleasant afternoon was spent communing with nature and see gangs of children, whom I rarely see in the city.